Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 6

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Welcome to thread 6 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.

www.leadershipacademy.nhs.uk/programmes/the-stepping-up-programme/

I have a colleague wgo has done the above course. I do think it's a real thing, although accept it may have nothing to do with C-19 rates

@Nquartz have been looking and there is advice on the NHS website (pre Covid I think) about how to get enough. From memory it's something like in the 3 summer months 15 mins of direct sun between 11am and 3pm. So not that hard unless you're stuck in an office with no lunch break most days? Maybe the latter is the problem nowadays?

Look at the research and you'll find a lot of scientists who think the recommended levels of vitamin D are too low They are designed to avoid rickets and support bone health not support immunity. Anyone who hasnt been taking suppplements all winter will be a bit low now and I'd suggest at least 20 minutes in the sun with more than just forearms exposed.

Interesting that the south west has a relatively low level of infection so far despite having a high number of elderly people. Obviously not having a lot of public transport or crowded cities helps but still suggests it could be worth increasing vitamin D levels.

In addition to some sun without sunscreen, at least until the very hot summer sun starts,

I recommend eating oily fish - salmon, mackerel, sardines etc - 3 times per week,
or having a daily spoon of fish oil, rather than capsules

Antwerp University have tested 3,600 blood samples that had been given by patients for all kinds of other reasons and found that 3% of samples showed antibodies. The samples they used were taken three weeks ago. Apparently, antibodies only become visible two weeks after infection so it indicates that the 3% of the population were infected before the lockdown came into force in Belgium. I can't see any information on how they selected the sample group. They're going to continue screening every three weeks.

Belgium is not testing widely in the community so there is no accurate data on the number of infections in the country.

Even so, that may represent a total of 330,000 infections in Belgium compared to the 42,797 recorded cases.

Ireland statistics are rather different to UKs on care home deaths...

Over half of coronavirus deaths are in residential care (57%) - way above the 13-14% of coronavirus deaths that have been in care homes according to UK figures.

Ireland’s dashboard shows other structural differences to what UK is doing...

Much smaller proportion of those hospitalised going to ICU - ie they are using capacity to see 2065 people with Covid, who don’t need intensive care, and only 322 who do need ICU.

nauticant Dh and I thought that too. Say too much more and everywhere will sell out.

I've been taking a higher dose spray, between 3-5000 (not sure which measurement) as I'm breastfeeding, and I remember a fellow bf mum who was a consultant saying we should take more than 4000 to actually impact milk levels. I'm being careful as I know too much is also bad; I've taken it as much as I can remember to since the winter and he's had nhs drops.

I somehow managed to get into a peculiar vit d fb group where they have quite an extreme 'protocol' but I think it's more for those with deficiencies who've had issues actually getting the levels up even with prescription. I was going to leave as it wasn't what I thought it was, but a few things have been interesting esp since Covid came along.

One thing they shared the other day is that too much washing limits the body's ability to make it via skin? Or similar. I wonder if that can be a factor Nquartz?

In the past on sunny days I've done short sunbathing in order to get whole body exposed. I had mild deficiency once and it was shit.

NeurotrashWarrior, I think I know exactly the group you mean!
I had a deficiency some time back, did my research, sorted out what I needed, and then exited a 'protocol' type FB group pretty sharpish because of its zealotry.
This is a problem, that people can land on what is ostensibly a sound premise, but then build it into a sacred cow to the point that it becomes counterproductive.
It becomes hard to see the wood for the trees.

Did anyone start a physiology thread? I've been thinking about this again today, having read an article on clotting and COVID-19. It would be good to have a place that pulls together all the recent thoughts and developments on factors affecting the disease.

Yep it is an alternative to have a separate thread series discussing published science papers about COVID, anti-virals, vaccines, Vit D, science-based measures to exit lockdown etc

rather than have these in your statistics threads

Or is that too many threads to follow ?
I'm not bothered either way

Politics is already handled v well in the Westministenders threads (under the Brexit topic, but now nearly all COVID)

zealotry is definitely the right word. Obsessive... ott.

Very occasionally someone shares something that is interesting. And I correct people being silly about hypothyroidism.

My biggest concern is that the guy leading it doesn't think about how some of these things they're doing impacts women's health, especially the vitamin a stuff re pregnancy etc.

I'm now too fascinated to leave...

Yes apologies for diverting from the stats; a physiology thread would be interesting.

Can we go back to Sweden for a bit. I was astonished by the most recent Worldometer Stats for Sweden vs Norway, Finland and Denmark. Sweden has a population of around 10 million, the other 3 have around 5 million, but looking at no of deaths per million population Sweden has 192, followed by Denmark (66), Norway (35) and Finland (27) per million.

Looking at testing is also interesting - Finland has (approx) 13,000 tests per million population, Norway 27,000, Denmark 20,000 and Sweden only 9,000.

So not only are Sweden not social distancing, they don't appear to following up with testing and contact tracing. In fact, they seem happy to let it just take its course, and they don't appear to have peaked yet.

Anyone who thought this course of action was good for the UK must surely be rethinking now. Sweden has over 5 times the death rate than it's closest neighbour, Norway. If the UK had 5 times the rate of France that would be 1600 deaths per million population which is an extraordinary number - upwards of 125,000 people (if my maths is correct).

I made some more graphs, as per attached example. Should be more legible below:

imgur.com/a/FH6QOkX

Source spreadsheet:

gofile.io/?c=CIoJbK

the individual graph links:
Midlands region: i.imgur.com/1Gojjqr.png
NE/Yorks: i.imgur.com/q3CtnVL.png
NW: i.imgur.com/m8AYIGw.png
SE: i.imgur.com/Yq2vvH7.png
SW: i.imgur.com/iMFKWIo.png

Do use your browser's zoom function.

Should add that those figures are per million population, but the definition of population seems a bit fraught. I think that hospitals do have defined catchments based on specific bits of CCGs, but I can't find that data anywhere, so the divisors might be a bit off!

Tweet from Dr Gabriel Scally

Ireland is an 'experiment' in #coronavirus response. N Ireland has followed Whitehall approach. Rep of Ireland has followed @WHO advice. The death rate for #COVID19 deaths in hospital (and for all COVID deaths) is 50% higher in Northern Ireland. bit.ly/2zhaPJf

Contact and testing?

That's interesting Focal. Add to that the fact that there is no international transport in Northern Ireland, and that Belfast (280,000) is a lot smaller than Dublin (1.4 million), and the figures look even worse for the North.

Interesting to read that French docs are now saying that smoking may help protect against CV19 rather than contribute and planning to try nicotine patches as a potential helpful aid.

I don't smoke cigarettes anymore but I vape. I thought that if I fell ill I would vape menthol flavoured one. Like when menthol helps with the cold.

Oh, brilliant, I've been hankering after a cig, maybe a good reason to start again. And it'd get my BMI down in a flash.

Someone mentioned blood clots and increasing evidence that these develop in some more severe cases. It could be determined by the deficiency in Leiden Factor 5. About 5% of the population are born with this but not all develop blood clots. Maybe Covid-19 is a trigger like frequent flying or certain medication or other factors can trigger blood clods in these type of people. I’m not sure but from what Si remember only people of certain ancestry have this deficiency.