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.

I think they'd need longer than 4-6 weeks in the winter BigChoc.

Neurotrash I was thinking that by winter the dept of education should be able to roll out home ed courses for different ages on TV (as almost everyone has TV)

So kids might need to be off school for longer periods, depending how the situation develops, but some would be holiday and some would be home ed

A certain % of the population have "Innate resistance" to specific viruses
This can be full or just partial and may be genetic,
e.g.

Innate resistance to HIV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnateresistancetoHIV

A small proportion of humans show partial or apparently complete inborn resistance to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The main mechanism is a mutation of the gene encoding CCR5, which acts as a co-receptor for HIV.

It is estimated that the proportion of people with some form of resistance to HIV is under 10%

More or Less now on Radio 4:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hfqq

It's repeated tomorrow evening at half 9. Definitely one of the more informed programmes on the BBC. (Maybe not that much competition.)

If there have been 40,000 deaths, and a death rate of 0.5%, that implies that 8m UK residents have been infected? Unless, those in care homes and hospitals are both particularly likely to be exposed and particularly vulnerable which would totally skew the death rate.

UK testing looks even more unreliable than we feared:

Important to establish whether this leak is genuine:
One of the criteria for lifting lockdown should be not just the capacity for mass testing, but reliable testing

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exclusive-nhs-using-flawed-covid-19-test-missing-25-of-positives/

NHS laboratories are using a flawed test for coronavirus,
according to a leaked Public Health England document seen by openDemocracy.

Experts warn that the test fails to detect up to 25% of positive COVID-19 results.

Although the current test is known to be inconsistent,
NHS labs are nonetheless being advised to continue using it, while an urgent “migration” or shift to a commercially available test takes place.

Is 0.5% reliable, or is it calculated to take account of what is unknown in the main statistics ?

The estimated death rate of any disease relies on some official means for establishing the number infected

(in Germany this is a test or a doctor's diagnosis, then the # deaths is divided by this and x 100 for %)

Ah ok Big. Tbh, they've completely got the skills to do that and make it entertaining (socially distancing aside) as my son has watched so many horrible histories he now spouts random facts about the Crimean war in the bath. He's 7.

What do you think about people like pregnant women and the group who weren't shielded but advised to socially distance for 12 weeks? That was really to ease the nhs pressure but it's going to be hard for some to go back into the fray so to speak. Especially pregnant women, though there's a finite end date of 9 mo with them and then maternity leave.

Thank you for the new thread!

A certain % of the population have "Innate resistance" to specific viruses
This can be full or just partial and may be genetic,

I keep banging on to anyone who might listen but the Derbyshire Gene! Eyam, Black Death etc.

I agree it is highly possible that some have innate resistance neurotrash

Govts desperately need to know this %, the full and partial too

• and it may even vary between regions / ethnic makeup

like e.g. sickle cell anaemia and resistance to malaria

Resistance among under 5% of the population vs 50% or more totally changes the necessary strategy

Thanks Chaz and others

The 0.5% is calculated based on what is known in France and also looking at the Diamond Princess, which is probably the best ‘total population’ study we have, although with a skewed base. It doesn’t take into account care homes.

Care homes account for less than 1% of the population but around 50% of coronavirus deaths. You could argue that they should be included as they are such a high share of deaths. However, this would give a really misleading death rate for the general population as people in care homes have a very low life expectancy, so even a mild illness can be fatal. With care homes, the virus is bringing forward deaths that would have happened months later. Of course that is sad for the families, but it gives a totally misleading indicator of the risk to the rest of the population.

Even excluding care homes and just looking at hospital deaths as in Italy, around half of coronavirus deaths are in the over 85s.

Going back on the thread a bit, I worked in care back in 1999 and it will always stick with me when about a third of the residents in the care home died. The home owner told us we were in financial difficulty due to the deaths, and there was nobody to fill the empty beds because the same had happened to so many elderly people.
I was thinking about it recently, influenza immunisation was introduced the next winter and the winter of 1999/2000 saw 48000 EXCESS deaths in England and Wales.
It made me think how much of a difference it appears the flu vaccine has made to our annual death rates.

It seems perfectly plausible to me that many just didn’t get infected due to the measures taken by the ships

Hmm - not sure, TBH. I've been on Diamond Princess (though not the aircraft carrier!!) and if we accept the advice that folk transmit CV before showing symptoms, I'd have thought the sheer proximity of passengers would have caused many more to be infected before the (inadequate) measures were even thought about

re elderly deaths

• very tempting to discount them, especially now more people are getting bored, frustrated, skint with lockdown

Statistically, it's not as simple as just counting how many years until the elderly reach average life expectancy,
like calculations from Toby Young & co, who want to make money again

A woman who reaches age 80 has an average life expectancy of 10 more years
A man has 9 years

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

@Eyewhisker
Is there a reliable source for saying care homes account for about 50% of covid19 deaths in UK?

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Agree totally. It certainly seems possible that there are at least a proportion of people who don’t get infected for whatever reason, maybe because their immune system attacks the virus before it can establish itself. There was a study which found that 30-40% confirmed ill with the virus developed no antibodies and that elderly people were much more likely to develop antibodies than younger people. But the younger people beat the virus better so there is a possibility that they can beat the virus without being infected and without producing antibodies.

This possibility is also supported by the experience of aircraft carriers. In both the French and US examples, around a third of those on the ship get infected - though many have no symptoms. If the virus is so contagious that we all have to stay indoors, how come the infection rate on aircraft carriers is not close to 100%? Again, it is possible that some just don’t get the virus despite exposure.

If any of this is true, then we do not need 60% of the population to have antibodies for herd immunity.

There is likely to be a difference in how many people get infected in a couple of weeks mingling on a ship
and how many get infected during normal life over the next 2 years say

As posted before, I hope govts are closely monitoring all these people who didn't catch COVID on board
to find out how many have caught it since then

@PIbrookes - not in the UK, but it seems to be around half in those countries that do record them - Ireland, Sweden, France, Belgium. Not sure why the UK would be different.

Big choc - a life expectancy of ~ 10 years at 80, is entirely consistent with a coronavirus survival rate of 95% at age 80. Death rates for the over 80s increase dramatically each year, so that in any year, around half of those over 90 die.

A survival rate of 95% at age 80 is not as bad as media portrayals.

"If any of this is true"
but we just don't know

We know that superspreaders in Germany and SKorea infected hundreds of people at a single event

We need to be able to identify who - if any - has innate resistance,
what % of the population has full,
what % partial

Until then, it's all just speculating on what we'll do with a future lotto win
when we don't know whether it is 250k or 25 million

@crunchycarrot are you still doing the chart that compares us to Italy? I'm wondering how we're doing on that front.

I have real doubts about using the Diamond Princess and Theodore Roosevelt as examples of the spread of Coronavirus except in relation to their own unique circumstances.

It seems strange to me to do that when we are being cautioned against drawings parallels between what's happening in the UK compared with, say, Sweden.

@Plbrookes