Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 8

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Welcome to thread 8 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.

We locked down later than the rest of Europe and cases were roughly doubling every 2.5 days pre lockdown. We probably also had the infection earlier than a lot of Europe given that we are an international travel hub and have Chinatown in the centre of London and are a global financial hub.

So, a combination of bad luck (being v international) and a bad call (not locking down a week earlier) will give us excess deaths. The care home situation is also bad.

Had we locked down a week earlier, simple maths tells us that we would have been amongst the best in the World. Why? I don’t know. I don’t think we are a very touchy feely people by nature, and possibly quite cautious. Since the end of full lockdown I have seen 6 or 7 large groups of youths in the park drinking and forgetting about social distancing. When I walk past, they have all been speaking Italian or Spanish. Anecdotal, yes...but behaviour is part of epidemiological modelling, so we do need to think about it,

If the above is true, we should do better than some of our European neighbours as we come out of lockdown. Time will tell whether this is true.

Since the end of full lockdown I have seen 6 or 7 large groups of youths in the park drinking and forgetting about social distancing

It's just young men generally. In the NE they're in groups of 4/5 smoking weed.
Lone young men are doing full on mr motivator in the parks.
Women are walking dogs or children. Middle aged men all on racing bikes.

Weekly death registrations now down to typical January levels in a mild winter. Only 12,657 in week 19. Compare to week 1-4 average of 12,790.

Still lots of huns on social media claiming their PFBs can't possibly go back to school until the year 2525, probably later.

Death count in 5-9 age group remains zero.

There is no excess mortality at all up to age 50 in week 19.

I have grouped 80-84, 85-89, 90+ together as they all have same extra death count.

NONE of the age groups have excess mortality compared to a normal winter.

Essentially in risk terms, it's a mild January.

Shoots that is really good news.

Excellent, Shoots
Very reassuring

As expected there are still very high death levels in care homes, however the hospital death count are far below normal January levels as vast numbers of beds lie empty.

Note that we expect a rise of 3 or 4% in hospital/care home death figures, so the weekly hospital death count for week of 2-8 May won't quite be the lowest of the year so far.

At home deaths also will end up being higher than January levels as we we expect another 7%+ here.

Presumably a few hundred people a week are now dying at home who would otherwise have been admitted to hospital.

I do not have care home death stats for bad winters, but note that whereas 6000+ people died per week between death 28 December to 10 January and presumably far more in bad winters, this is now below 5000, but care home deaths are 50% above the January peak.

It would be necessary to see death counts for care home residents in January for place of death 'hospital' and 'care home' to see to what extent the normal January 6000+ are in fact care home residents dying in hospital.

Note that we expect a rise of 3 or 4% in hospital/care home death figures, so the weekly hospital death count for week of 2-8 May won't quite be the lowest of the year so far.

At home deaths also will end up being higher than January levels as we we expect another 7%+ here

I should clarify that this is because these are by date of occurrence, but deaths won't be fully registered (so we won't know totals) for more than a year, however, currently the latest week is at 8+ days remove from death whereas previous weeks 15+, 22+ etc. days, so the figures are not directly comparable, but we do roughly know how many deaths will be added by next week by venue of death (at home deaths, slowest to be registered, care homes most complete at this point, hospital slower than care homes but not by muc).

Thanks for the graphs Shoots. The figures do look really good but wasn't that a bank holiday week so maybe a lag in registrations?

Hmm Not sosure about the excess deaths now ..

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1282368/coronavirus-uk-scientists-deaths-october-december-china-wuhan-pandemic-ons-data-spt?fbclid=IwAR07En6ZVf5KFli0b_C-M6jSdZi2WK4ySrl3AY3HSZOHnTVFMWyXDa6Ba2I

I refuse to read health scares from the Daily Express. Is there a link to a source that's not a scaremongering rag?

Thanks for the graphs Shoots. The figures do look really good but wasn't that a bank holiday week so maybe a lag in registrations?

The latter graph is by date of death, so there wouldn't really be much effect from that, since the bank holiday was 8th May, and the graph shows deaths during the week to 8th May that were registered by 16th May.

It would affect the first graph (registrations) I guess, but there is a bank holiday ever year in the same week, and it's not clear that we are seeing the same level of late registration effect at the moment. Also note that the media are generally comparing the week of registration which isn't that helpful in that the same week would typically have reduced registrations due to bank holidays.

Essentially at this point what we would ideally be doing is comparing deaths that would not require inquests by date of death to previous years.

"^Looking at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) official death figures, Express.co.uk identified what experts have now determined to be a "spike" in fatalities in England and Wales between adults 45-85+ starting on week 45 of 2019 – November 8 – with the same figures being almost 1,000 deaths higher than the previous year and around 200-300 higher than the five-year average.
The ONS confirmed to Express.co.uk that there were 129,821 deaths registered in England between October and December 2019, 6,752 more deaths than the five-year average (2014 to 2018) for this quarter and that age-specific mortality rates significantly increased between this same timeframe for all age groups aged 75 years and over, in comparison to the year before."^

Yes I see they make a specific claim to support their tendentious, deceitful and dishonest agenda of spreading lies and depressing the collective national IQ.

Winter is not Week 45 - Week 52.

Winter would be Week 45 to Week 12 or something like that. It spans two calendar years.

You don't get to cut things off on December 27, because there's a huge spike in deaths around Christmas/New Year, because there's a massive fall in registrations which will vary from year since Christmas falls on a different day, so you won't even get the same effect.

In addition, it's pretty much self-evident that if winter kills off the weak (mostly old), then if winter doesn't happen or is very mild then you'd expect more deaths the next year, as the weak from last year can't make it through another winter.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2018to2019provisionaland2017to2018final

So we have:

2013-14: 17,000 excess deaths
2014-15: 44,000
2015-16: 25,000
2016-17: 34,000
2017-18: 49,000
2018-19: 23,000

then 2019-20

The ONS considers winter to be December - March, whereas the Daily Express have cherry picked November in order to push their agenda of lies and fraud.

For 2017-18 there were 227,553 deaths from Week 45 (the Express's arbitrary cherry-picked start point) through 11 (this week had 5 covid-19 deaths, i.e. they were not yet contributing to any relevant degree to death totals).

For 2019-20 for the same weeks there were only 212,921.

So deaths were 6.5% below the same period 2 years earlier.

Considering the period week 12-19, we have 131,647 deaths in 2020 compared to just 85,255 in 2018, an increase of 54%

That's because THERE WAS NO COVID-19 IN THE UK IN 2019

Forgive my possible ignorance to some of this, a really interesting thread though. Would we expect therefore to see a dip in excess deaths next winter?

NONE of the age groups have excess mortality compared to a normal winter

Fantastic news. Please help me understand the need for on going lockdown and social distancing for all.

It's clear COVID-19 is a disease of the elderly and medically vulnerable.

Is there a case for limiting the stay at home ruling to just those over 70 or vulnerable and letting the healthy working population restart the economy?

You get spikes in winter when there is a week of cold weather. Its normal.

There isn't anything in the excess mortality for the end of last year / start of this which is abnormal. Yes there a couple of spikes. But there is nothing abnormal.

That doesn't necessarily mean that covid-19 didn't come to the UK earlier than the first case we know about.

Its estimated that were at least 10,000 cases in New York before they were noticed.

If people aren't dying or severely ill they won't be noticed. Even if they are, early cases may be attributed to something else.

We won't notice deaths that haven't been attrituted to Covid-19 straight away on the data either. It takes a while for there to be enough deaths, for it to show a seasonal excess. This year this might also be masked by an unseasonably warm winter so there were less deaths from normal flu and other causes of death associated with cold weather. So again it would take longer for an excess of deaths to appear.

HOWEVER this still means the Express are talking out of their arses. They have THE worst track record on medical reporting and make the Mail look they've researched and have PhDs. NEVER read the Express for ANYTHING. Its the socially acceptable version of the Daily and Sunday Sport (minus the tits).

The older you are the more likely you are to

1. die
2. die of/with Covid-19

www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc825/fig3/wrapper/index.html

Who knew???

A legal requirement for just the 70+ to stay home would be outrageous discrimination,
because this group does not increase risk to the rest of the population - the only acceptable ground imo for imposing a lockdown.

The government should just give facts & advice, then let those at higher risk - including the younger shielded - decide for themselves if they choose to accept the risk.

As I'm aged over 60, I take particular care of my brain health.
One of the measures I take is to avoid reading twisted sensationalism, which is all the Express produces

Would we expect therefore to see a dip in excess deaths next winter?

If we've had a lot of excess deaths then at some point we will start to see the opposite to that. It either will be a sudden drop in the normal number of deaths next year or a slightly lower level of deaths sustained over a few years compared to the last five.

If its people who have died who typically didn't have long to live and all died in April instead of more gradually over the course of six months you would see one pattern or if they were simply more vulnerable to a flu like illness you might see a slightly different pattern.

But yes, if you have an excess in one place you would expect to see some kind of deficit compared to the 5 year pattern in one form or another.

The dip in excess deaths next winter would be wrt those who died would have done so within a year anyway.
So the dip may be significant, but not as large as the increase during the COVID period

Also, that's assuming we don't get another wave of COVID in care homes the next winter

• will there be more effective measures in place to protect care homes ?

Just seen this in another forum. Sorry if its already been linked.
www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/?fbclid=IwAR1lqRr1MpTQejHur-c0DkDejWG4xHYhF3bg24g8h1IcQlLuk8EhLYAL-yc

Beach that's an interesting question. There is definitely going to have been very vulnerable people who may have only survived a year or 2 had their lives cut short from Covid. This category don't seem to stand a chance. However there are a number of over 65's who survived it even after ICU and I think it's fair to hypothesise many of these would also be vulnerable to natural death and seasonal flu.
But it's also fair to consider number of winter deaths could decrease because of those who would have likely died this winter have died prematurely of CV.

But........ we also have to seriously consider Covid will rise arise with seasonal flu and there could be a second peak in winter - especially as schools will have returned by then, most workplaces and restaurants may be open internally.

And yes re the express. EVERY winter the minute the met office mentions cold weather they announce a front page headline of another big freeze.