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.

"It’s probably more that enough Londoners took preventative action early of their own volition,"

Yes. It also got real more quickly here - I’m in London and the potential danger was apparent to me by the second week in February, when a number of my team at work were asked to self isolate following their attendance a conference in central London where a delegate fell ill with CV. Business travel was locked down the week after. The week after that, we started moving people to WFH and to remote sites.

It was a very frustrating three weeks talking to friends and family elsewhere who were blithely going about everything as normal, and insisting the danger and my fears were overblown, even as people I know personally started falling sick.

here you all are

Place marking

derby I said "current death rate", because I can only calculate wrt known deaths
Too many unknowns for a final death toll of this wave:

We don't know how many of those seriously ill will die
or if we will have a even worse flood of deaths in care homes
or how many people living along have died without anyone realising, until the neighbours complain about the smell

Come to think about it, how will we decide when this 1st wave is over

• as we look likely to end up at some lower plateau, not near-zero ?

John Burn-Murdoch@jburnmurdoch (FT stats geek)

Great Britain:
• Hospitals in almost every region now have fewer covid patients than same time last week

• Suggests UK is at or near peak for new confirmed infections,
though UK testing still lagging, and care homes absent from this view

Italy:
Almost all Italian regions now in "reduction" phase :-)

France:
• All regions beginning to see total occupancy fall, including former epicentres Ile de France & Grand Est

Spain:
• Madrid now firmly in "reduction" phase, Catalonia fighting to stay in reduction
• (Other Spanish regions not shown due to problems with their hospitalisation data)

Stockholm:
• Remember Sweden has not locked down like most places. Social gatherings still common.
• But data show steady deceleration in new hospitalisations
• Daily hospital beds occupied now unchanged vs last week, and on course for net week-on-week reduction very soon

Thank You for the thread Barracker.

This is a screenshot of UK deaths from previous respiratory epidemics and pandemics. Worth noting that seasonal flu in 1989/90 resulted in 26,000 excess deaths.

It is taken from this document. www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan/coronavirus-action-plan-a-guide-to-what-you-can-expect-across-the-uk

The Times has been publishing deaths by hospital and outside of the metropolitan hotspots of London, Birmingham & Manchester, it appears that there is a bit of an East / West split. I’m more familiar with the East of England region, but was struck that Stevenage appears to have had half the deaths of Harlow despite relatively similar demographics. Bradford, Milton Keynes and Swindon are Lower still. I’d be interested to hear people’s views of their locality. Does this table reflect what you might expect? And does it show the impact of the timing of the lockdown?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f085a20c-6863-11ea-b156-51160e094d11?shareToken=31ddf004e451f8b6b6e37455f290d1dd

John Burn-Murdoch@jburnmurdoch

NEW: Tue 21 April update of coronavirus trajectories

Daily deaths:
• Still too early to say if US has peaked
• Beginning to look like UK has
• But descents look much slower than ascents
• Successes in dark blue: Australia, Norway, Austria

Now back to cumulative deaths:
• US death is highest worldwide and still rising fast
• UK curve still matching Italy’s < not Scandi countries >
• Australia still looks promising

These threads fill up quick don’t they? 💪🏼😊

Thanks for new thread.

Thanks a lot for your great charts, @ShootsFruitAndLeaves

London case is indeed very interesting. I agree we should not discount the hypothesis that London may be closer to herd immunity than we think. I do not mean 60-80% infection rate - however there is a non zero chance that a significant percentage of those who could be infected has already been infected.

If we look at "closed environments" (Diamond Princess, Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier), only 12-18% of passengers ended up getting the virus. Even if we allow for unidentified asymptomatic cases, the number will still be lower than 30-35%. It will not be entirely unreasonable to hypothesise that the majority of us might have some sort of natural immunity to the virus and might not get infected if we get exposed to mild to moderate viral load. If it is the case, the bar for herd immunity may in fact be much lower than 60-80% of the total population quoted by epidemiologists. We may only need 60-80% of the "vulnerable" population (i.e. those who could be infected).

The second alternative mentioned by @Derbygerbil (that Londoners took preventative action early of their own volition) is equally interesting. If it is indeed the case, it demonstrates that R0 (transmission rate) can be reduced below 1 through a subset of lockdown measures and, more specifically, without closing schools. Imperial research appears to assume that school closures are a vital measure for keep C19 spread down but, based on London trajectory, it may not be the case.

twitter.com/d_spiegel/status/1252526609116135424

image did not seem to come through

Thanks @crsacre, that's a really clear graph!

winter I gather that the high requirement for herd immunity is to protect the more vulnerable % of the population,
who are probably not immune and who are at higher risk if they catch COVID

We had cases in Germany - and also in SKorea - of "superspreaders" infecting hundreds of people at a single event

"It will not be entirely unreasonable to hypothesise that the majority of us might have some sort of natural immunity to the virus "

It would be an optimistic hypothesis on the limited evidence we have,
especially in the case of the 2 Navy ships, with fit mostly young sailors

It looks quite possible that there is some % with natural immunity - I postulated this on an earlier thread
We could be lucky that this is indeed a substantial %, but we need much more data
e.g.
How many people who didn't catch COVID on board, especially on the Diamond Princess, have since caught it and if they did, how severe were their symptoms ?

Looking at other natural immunities to viruses,
there are well under 10% with full or mostly partial immunity to HIV

I don't have figures for natural immunity to other viruses - anyone else ?

What's its source please?

Source is the ONS link in the twitter thread
From the thread, I think he creates his own graphs from the ONS data

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest

The Times has been publishing deaths by hospital and outside of the metropolitan hotspots of London, Birmingham & Manchester, it appears that there is a bit of an East / West split. I’m more familiar with the East of England region, but was struck that Stevenage appears to have had half the deaths of Harlow despite relatively similar demographics. Bradford, Milton Keynes and Swindon are Lower still. I’d be interested to hear people’s views of their locality. Does this table reflect what you might expect? And does it show the impact of the timing of the lockdown?

Not sure what is meant by Manchester being a hotspot?

Sheffield, which has always had high numbers and is usually just behind Birmingham, has twice as many cases as Manchester

If you mean the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, then it's about the same numbers as the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire. Both county's have similar general populations.

Also at times there has been a higher number of cases, by percent of population, in Birmingham and Sheffield than in London

Re: earlier discussions on Ww1 & 2 weekly death rates. I posted already, but will post again the 12000 deaths in 4 days from 1952 Great Smog. It just blew my mind.

Did anyone else note that year to date We have had 32,000 deaths from flu and pneumonia. Just an additional wow.

NY are going to do random antibody testing . That will be a very interesting proxy for London.

There is evidence that some people are naturally immune to other viruses too. For instance, look at this piece on Norovirus:

theconversation.com/your-blood-type-may-influence-your-vulnerability-to-norovirus-the-winter-vomiting-virus-129125

"People who do not make H1-antigen in their intestinal cells make up 20% of the European-derived population and are resistant to many strains of norovirus."

The norovirus immunity seems to be tied to blood group and there is some (possibly slightly ropey) evidence that those with blood group O are less likely to succumb to Coronavirus:

theconversation.com/coronavirus-are-people-with-blood-group-a-really-at-higher-risk-of-catching-covid-19-134181

@wintertravel1980

If we look at "closed environments" (Diamond Princess, Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier), only 12-18% of passengers ended up getting the virus.

It doesn’t follow that because they were “closed”, that all those on board were exposed. Once identified, the ships to measures (certainly Diamond Princess and presume the Theodore Roosevelt) to minimise exposure to the virus and infection risk. It seems perfectly plausible to me that many just didn’t get infected due to the measures taken by the ships.

took measures...

Following, thanks OP

Both Navy ships would take isolation / separation measures as soon as they realised the infection was on board