Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 4

[Barracker]

Welcome to thread 4 of the daily updates.

Resource links:
Worldometer UK page
Financial Times Daily updates and graphs
HSJ Coronavirus updates
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre
NHS England stats, including breakdown by Hospital Trust
Covidly.com to filter graphs using selected data filters
ONS statistics for CV related deaths outside hospitals, released weekly each Tuesday

Thank you to all contributors for their factual, data driven, and civil discussions.

I feel that over time coronavirus may well 'mutate down' to the virulence of the common cold.
alternatively it may behave like a rapacious dragon which returns time and again until there are none of us left 🤷‍♀️

Why are ONS figures so muddled, why can’t they just clarify exactly what they mean?

Which part of the ONS figures are you having difficulty understanding @captainmarveldanvers

I struggle with the ONS figures as well.

I’d like to see a chart showing total recalculated daily deaths and daily recalculated deaths.

I’ve seen the volcano chart, but I don’t really understand what it’s showing me?

Here’s where we got a bit baffled by the ONS release last Tuesday:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/a3870224-Daily-numbers-graphs-analysis-thread-3?pg=20&order=

blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving-the-coronavirus-covid-19

@NewAccountForCorona

Tue 14-Apr-20 09:09:27

I wonder if that is causation or correlation, LWJ70. The latitude includes all the higher populated wealthier countries - US and most of Europe - who are likely to (a) have had a lot of movement via air travel and (b) be keeping records of increased deaths.

I’m a qualified scientist. I recovered from covid 19 three weeks ago. I live in SE Asia. My country has had an explosion of infections since 13th January and millions of Chinese tourists in the last three months. We have a population of 70 million and so far ............38 deaths.
There are more road traffic deaths each day (with no traffic) than total covid 19 mortalities here in SE Asia. Virus is not hitting geographical regions in the same way.

I've come across vitamin D3 deficiency in the Middle East and I was astounded!

Countries between the 40th and 50th parallel north are just coming out of a long dark cold winter and it stands to reason that there are gonna be a whole lot of people with D3 deficiencies.

Exceptions to this are Scandinavia and Iceland which supplement and eat shed loads of oily fish. Also Ecuador with lots of deaths - but Ecuador has a surprisingly high deficiency rate.

Returning to the ONS figures, does anyone have any more thoughts on that excess of around 3000 deaths - not attributed to COVID, but surplus to the five-year average?

Just caught the tail end of a discussion on this quesiton on Radio 4. The expert said that now the rules around certifying deaths have been changed due to the pandemic, meaning the dead patient does not have to have been seen by the certifying doctor (or indeed any doctor) during their most recent illness, doctors are unwilling to cite COVID-19 for deaths in instances where the patient hasn't been been tested, and where the doctor hasn't been able to examine the patient clinically to 'soft' diagnose COVID.

So it's likely a proportion the excess community deaths are COVID, but not recorded as such.

But they said other deaths could be due to people not accessing healthcare (due to the pandemic), evidenced by the drops in A&E attendence, coronary clinics, stroke admissions etc.

Ah, thanks. I wonder if that proportion of unrecorded but related extra deaths - 60% - will remain the same this week.

Ok, so here's a summary of a pre-published research paper from Imperial College, London and University of Birmingham

www.dropbox.com/s/ka7h4fbi7xdz9s9/Covid-19 and Vitamin D Information.pdf?dl=0

They have sent out a summary above with a poster calling for hospitals to urgently analyse serum D3 levels from covid 19 patients. Their paper is a meta analysis, which means that it collates masses of data from previous studies involving 1000s of cases.
Summary:

1. Winter Vitamin D deficiency is common in northern latitudes above 20 degrees and (Apr - Sep) in southern latitudes 20 degrees below the equator.
2. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses in the past have displayed very strong seasonality with winter appearances Severe Covid-19 outbreaks have happened above 20 degree winter latitudes whereas outbreaks in the southern summer hemisphere have been mild and case fatalities relatively low. Case fatalities show a striking relationship to latitude.
3. The most severe outbreak in the north has been Italy where it is noted vitamin D deficiency is one of the highest in Europe.
4. Japan is an outlier in the north, with only a very mild outbreak and has the lowest incidence of Vitamin D deficiency thanks to its high fish-content diet
5. Research suggests covid 19 can lead to a cytokine storm (where the patient's lungs fill with fluid).
6. Research shows that Vitamin D acts to limit the cytokine storm and limit lung inflammation.

There's a shed load of extra evidence which I've not had time to summarise.

Vitamin d will now go the way of toilet rolls and flour, a few people will hoard it all and there'll be none left for the rest of us☹️

Yes, but seriously. If there is a mass delivery to the most vulnerable here and in other nations, it could potentially save thousands of lives and millions of pounds (a ventilator costs 16,000 whereas you can get two months supply of vitamin D3 for a quid).

Moreover nations in the southern hemisphere who will shortly be going into their winter will have a head start on protecting their most vulnerable sections of society.

Very true LW!
I just found a bottle of vitamin d pills in my kitchen cupboard 👏
happy days🤩👍
(It says expire march 1972 will they be ok?)

Cases for today, UK 813
Wales 19
NI 10
Scotland 40
England 744

I can't help feeling the numbers for the Easter weekend are likely to be nonsense although I'm actually surprised it's so high, I guess tomorrow will tell how much of a dip it's been.

Agreed I think tomorrow will be more telling

Today’s numbers tweet

I think it's best to treat todays figures like we would normally treat a Mondays figures. The weekend/Easter lag will no doubt be more prominent tomorrow

I'm dreading tomorrow's numbers and maybe Thursday too will be still reflecting the bank holiday lag since they have an extra couple of days to catch up on compared to the normal weekend.

It seemed like Patrick Vallance said yesterday he expects deaths to continue to rise this week and then possibly plateau for two to three weeks? If that is the case where would we be approximately in terms of cumulative deaths with or without ONS figures? I know we don't know how much the rise will be but even if we just worked out the plateau from here it would take us well over the 20,000 'good' outcome, wouldn't it?

Sorry, sky news are now saying 778. Not sure if that is England's figures or UK, as they had just had strapline with the figures I had quoted about 10 mins ago.

Can I ask a question? I live in the US but I'm British, so following news in both countries.

On international data comparisons, it's widely acknowledged that the UK has been under-reporting quite seriously (the UK is about the 5th least reliable country for data in the world). I know this morning that The Guardian has run a story about not reporting deaths from care homes.

But how well-known is this in the UK generally?

My parents & sister are life-long Tory supporters, and they totally accept that the govt is doing a great job, best govt there's ever been type of rhetoric. They think I'm massively at risk (I'm near Detroit), but this seems to be based on the Telegraph. So I get the impression that people in the UK are falsely looking at the US and thinking they've got it good, when in fact the UK is one of the hardest hit countries of the world (going by death per million, if care home figures are included).

I'm scared to ask this elsewhere on MN as don't' want to come across as Brit-bashing from across the sea, but I'm hoping that people who like looking at the data might give me some insight.

Thanks for breakdown LW that does make more sense with each point listed.

It will be interesting to see results from tests, be good if other countries are doing too.

I take vitaminD combined with calcium everyday for oestropsorosis. ( Don't know if I spelt that right!) Does that mean I'm protected from Covid?

Why is there a discrepancy in the figures again?

It is being reported as UK death toll at 778 and yet if you total England, NI, Scotland and Wales it's 813?

@Inkpaperstars if the (optimistic) two week plateau had a (low) average of 800 deaths we would still be well above the "good outcome".

I think the 20,000 ship has sailed, sadly.