Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 7

[Barracker]

Welcome to thread 7 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.

@NewAccountForCorona I've often wondered about the economic impact if we hadn't locked down too when people complain about being in lock down.

Surely schools/pubs/shops etc would have had to close anyway when numerous staff were off sick & certain places turned into hotspots. I expect people would have naturally stopped going to these kinds of places impacting revenue, my office was already letting people work from home on a rota & other companies sent their employees to WFH before Boris said they could, the economy would have naturally declined on its own just without presumably all the financial support we've got now.

@FiveOutOfFiveGoldblums I was thinking the same. The recovery numbers on the worldometer just say "n/a", but I had thought they used to have actual numbers?

@Nquartz

You also have the economic considerations from other countries lockdowns. In a global supply chain, it is very difficult for manufacturing to continue in any meaningful way. I am guessing this is partly why the ford CEO spoke as he did. They can resume production all they want. But if even 5% of their components are missing they are going to struggle to build cars in any meaningful way.

Quartz indeed, the economic hit of an overloaded NHS, at peak inthink they said 1 in 5 employees off sick , in many cases for a month or more, and up to 1 in 100 employees dying, and the associated fear and then a loss of confidence in government and society

Thank you to those of you posting here. I am dipping in and out and find the sanity here really useful for maintaining my own sanity!

I have a question or two about the developing world. It seems to me that most countries now have seen Covid amongst their populations. Some - South Africa and India - have put in some form of lockdown. Death rates remain low ( at least in comparison with here and the US) yet something much of the developing world has in common is sprawling cities, close living, shanty housing with no running water, poor people who’s livelihoods can’t just stop due to a lack of social welfare infrastructure such as we have here. So why is there not yet a higher death toll? Is it just too early in the curve or am I missing something? I guess poorer testing facilities will play a part in reporting but although I have seen some indicators of places struggling (articles on BBC Mundo suggest issues in Ecuador and Peru), it all seems..., well too good to be true? Or are harsher regimes politically playing a part in keeping the populations compliant? Or are warmer weather conditions doing something to transmission rates? Or is it just a disaster on the edge of happening?

@Howaboutanewname
Someone, I think Bigchoc, posted some info upthread about age profiles and demographics in developing countries. Generally younger populations with greater likelihood of mild symtoms and full recovery, herd immunity more likely to develop wider more quickly etc.
S America stats quite worrying though due to impact of various political regimes on decision making ( or lack of)...

I have family in SA and they don't believe the govt statistics.

That said the demographic most affected seems to be male, overweight and elderly. The average age in SA is a lot younger than here or Italy.

There is also good tracing and other medical skills due to the HIV epidemic.

I'm sure I read about malaria medication having a positive impact as well somewhere.

Belarus hadn't put in place any social distancing measures at all and is still far from the catastrophe that was predicted

Thanks, the younger populations makes sense. Hadn’t thought of that. When you say your family doesn’t believe the Government stats, @titsbumfannythelot, why is that? What is their experience?

They think that the govt is very incompetent and corrupt.

I saw a clip of a minister talking about essential hospital equipment and he referred to vibrators rather than ventilators which kind of ratified the incompetence theory. Although we all make mistakes.

I watched the Chris Whitty Lecture the other day and he showed a slide (I’ve tried to attach it) with the age distribution of various populations. The number of older people in Western Africa is tiny when compared to Europe.

I’d also assume that due to less developed and accessible healthcare the risk of those with underlying health conditions dying of those conditions is higher. As those are the two main groups affected in terms of fatalities caused by the virus it seems logical that places like West Africa will have fewer deaths caused by the virus.

I also read that the death rate in SA has declined due to less homicides and road traffic accidents.

Thanks, those charts make great visual sense. Thank you.

Hello everyone

I’ve been lurking for a while and really enjoy the stats on this thread.

Veering slightly off stats ( apologies) re the developing world, I think we very much do not have the full picture as yet and all the aspects mentioned will play a part. However some countries in the developing world do have a good understanding of basic public health measures and principles ( partly because they sadly don’t have the access to medical resources). As I think covid has shown basic public health key principles for epidemics remain key ( so public messaging, attempting basic hygiene measures, track and trace etc).

Median ages of population:

In Africa, HIV wreaked carnage and left an even younger population than before

17 Uganda
18 Nigeria
22 Ghana
25 Egypt
28 S Africa
28 India

47 Italy
46 Germany
45 Spain
42 France
41 Sweden
40 UK
38 Ireland

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

If we look at deaths rates in the West for say those aged 28 and under, it would be well under 100 deaths per country so far

Apologies if this has been covered already but I'm struggling to ascertain if the daily deaths and total deaths for various countries are a fair comparison. Particularly for UK vs rest of Europe.

I know some countries are including all deaths, others just hospital deaths but I'm not sure which is which?

I'd really like to be able to see a fair comparison but I'm not sure if there is one. I guess it would be along the lines of deaths per million of population to smooth out population differences. However the deaths would need to be measured in a similar way across similar settings- which doesn't seem to be happening.

My Facebook feed is so full of people claiming that the UK has the worst death rate. It's hard to know if this is true or not!

Comparing countries is useful to examine the form of similar curves and to assess where we might be heading with similar measures

However, it is pointless if the intention is just to treat it like a football league table

@BigChocFrenzy sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like that. It would be so crass for this to be any kind of league and I apologise for giving that impression.

I also realise that given the enormous differences in culture, population density, demographics, GDP, geography etc etc comparisons are really tricky.

I guess I wanted to better understand how our approach and outcomes could be compared to others....

Belgium includes all deaths anywhere, including care homes and at home,
even if there is no positive test, just the diagnosis of a doctor that COVID is a possible cause

Other countries in Europe count "with" COVID as "from" COVID, but only if there is a positive test, before or after death

Countries that include care home deaths:
Belgium, UK, Ireland, Germany, France

Belgium is overstated compared to all other countries statistics, so it is difficult to judge whether their death rate is genuinely that much higher than everyone else's

However, this graph is normalised wrt population, for countries which include care home deaths:

Wow, those median ages are sobering . Explains a lot of the difference.

However, this is only the1st phase, while lockdown measures are still mostly applied

As lockdown is relaxed, countries with low death rates may see these shoot up
So relative death rates will change a lot, depending on how each country decides the balance of economy vs lives

(exponential growth will hit the economy anyway, but a certain number of extra deaths within "managed growth" woould not)

This crisis will probably last for 2 years or more
So far too early to say who will have done "best" by the end

And what is the criteria ?
Total number of deaths, or how deep the economic Depression in that country, or (my opinion) the best compromise ?

@BigChocFrenzy thank you very much for the graph and the explanations.

I agree that a compromise has to be made. The correct compromise is impossible to agree on as people's views are clouded by their own situation, fears and hopes. This in turn means more and more debate, disagreement and mud slinging.

I'm not sure where to find UK recovered numbers, if they have been issued at all ?
Anyone know ?

Germany, approx

165,000 confirmed cases by tests
130,000 recovered so far
25,000 with mild-moderate symptoms (home or non-ICU hospital ward)
2,000 still in ICU, of whom statistically 30% or more would die
7,000 deaths so far, hospital+care homes

@Barracker Is it possible to do a volcano with care home deaths added in a different colour ?