Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 6

[Barracker]

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.

Why isn’t it going down?

Maybe it's because of delayed reporting (like the extra 84 backdated Welsh deaths) I'm going to hold fire until we see Shoots chart!!

A large number of the english deaths reported today were delayed reporting as well, over 100 were pre 9th April.

Out of interest how wide do we think transmission is at the moment? Like in theory if I were to hug 10 random people, what would the risk be (obviously I won't!!!)

One issue with the Imperial study from 30/03/20 BCF cited is that it is based on the assumption that the first death tested for in a country is "patient zero" in a country. Places like California have now found by Post mortem cases of C-19 dating to early Feb. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ….. which may mean that C-19 had longer to spread than the analysis allows for and as London is an international hub perfectly reasonable get a higher figure than Spain's 15%
Country % of total population infected (mean [95% credible interval]) Austria 1.1% [0.36%-3.1%] Belgium 3.7% [1.3%-9.7%] Denmark 1.1% [0.40%-3.1%] France 3.0% [1.1%-7.4%] Germany 0.72% [0.28%-1.8%] Italy 9.8% [3.2%-26%] Norway 0.41% [0.09%-1.2%] Spain 15% [3.7%-41%] Sweden 3.1% [0.85%-8.4%] Switzerland 3.2% [1.3%-7.6%] United Kingdom 2.7% [1.2%-5.4%]

Today’s number tweet

Try again

Typical... first attempt doesn’t show up until you post the second

The Imperial estimations of infection rate only look at some European countries, not the US

It may be that there was the very occasional case in a country,
but that is not relevant unless that case actually spread the infection, which has not been reported in any European country

Looking at the UK, deaths from respiratory ailments were lower than usual for the first couple of months

When we had a genuine "patient zero", i.e. the patient that is the first in an epidemic, it very soon became apparent from the growth in cases

That Oxford report claiming that COVID has been around for months in the UK no longer seems to be taken seriously by scientists

Have we seen @Barracker volcano graph recently? I'd be really interested to see it after the recent numbers being very up & down.

There was a different graph from a newspaper I think which seemed to clearly show that the peak for deaths was 7 or 8 April but that was a few days ago (I think, each day merges into the last at the moment).

Interesting piece from the Spectator today

Looking at all the curves, the UK seems 2-3 weeks behind the epidemic on the continent, for geographical reasons

So it is reasonable that the UK has a much lower rate than Spain, which has nearly twice the number of deaths per million as the UK
and also more confirmed cases in a smaller population

Until we get reliable antibody tests in organised samples around the country, we can only speculate

The govt may be waiting for these before deciding how to proceed
At the moment, any relaxation would be a pure shot in the dark

There may also be sharp regional differences:

prosperous metropolitan communities with large numbers who went on ski holidays etc
may have a much higher rate than poorer rural areas who almost never go abroad.

Or community transmission may have made these earlier differences unimportant

We need data

Agreed Bigchoc - a lot of fumbling around in the dark until there’s proper data. And this, along with accurate testing, is why it makes sense that’s no apparent plan as to how to ease the lockdown yet.

I wonder if the 20,000 antibody tests in uk are London or countrywide? 20,000 spread countrywide wouldn’t give a reasonable amount of useful info, surely? Anyone know?

London hospital curve very encouraging;
the other regions have flattened and are slowly improving too, but from a much lower base

COVID cases in critical care also falling, in all 4 UK nations,
but a long tail is to be expected

As someone with a non-scientific higher education, a non-analytical mind, a brain that frankly works the other way, I have been grateful for the bits of information I can grasp from these threads.

From today and just recently I am sensing a bit of positivity in an otherwise horrendous experience for the UK and many of our near neighbours in central and western Europe.

I’ve been out delivering scrubs today. I got stuck in a traffic jam, and people were everywhere. Last 2 weeks were deserted.

Surely the numbers will go up again if this is what continues to happen?

When comparing flu to Covid-19, the flu mortality rate is commonly identified as 0.1%... However, this appears to be based on symptomatic infections

www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

So whereas certain studies have indicated a mortality rate for CV broadly comparable with the flu (by comparable I mean 2-3 times higher
rather than the order of magnitude higher of other studies) these tend to include a substantial assymptomatic element not included in the flu figure.

Those who wish to compare flu and Covid-19 (generally minimise C19!) by referring to these figures are therefore comparing apples and pears.

"The Imperial estimations of infection rate only look at some European countries, not the US " I realise that which is why I cited their results, however the US is the only place that has gone back and looked at old cases for C19 as far as we know.

^It may be that there was the very occasional case in a country,
but that is not relevant unless that case actually spread the infection, which has not been reported in any European country^ I disagree as the very first few cases are minimal until a certain number is reached and the graph becomes steep - this is what exponential growth means. It is unlikely that a case would exist in isolation and not spread infection given what we know of C19

Looking at the UK, deaths from respiratory ailments were lower than usual for the first couple of months Irrelevant - the first few cases could have been hidden by a lower than normal flu rate this year or not noted on death certificates

When we had a genuine "patient zero", i.e. the patient that is the first in an epidemic, it very soon became apparent from the growth in cases Again see my comments on exponential growth and without knowing R figures we can't comment on that only speculate.

That Oxford report claiming that COVID has been around for months in the UK no longer seems to be taken seriously by scientists And by you clearly.

• • • DAILY UPDATE * * * Friday APRIL 24th

Total UK cases: 143,464
New UK cases: 5,386
Total UK Deaths: 684
New UK Deaths: 29,506

Yikes, typo, sorry

Deaths total is 19,506

Deaths in the UK are already at 19,000+

So we're going to be way past the mark of the "best case" 20,000 deaths scenario. God I feel miserable.

There are promising reports of a Chinese vaccine trial (sad for the monkeys).

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/covid-19-vaccine-protects-monkeys-new-coronavirus-chinese-biotech-reports