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.

But move the responsibility on to the vulnerable to keep themself safe

Which basically means they can no longer go for a walk. They can't let any workmen in the house (not even if their boiler breaks or they get a leak). They have to pick up their food etc from the doorstep and sterilise it all before touching it with bare hands etc. That sounds a really fun life.

Trouble with that kind of thinking is that it doesn't provide for others who simply won't or can't social distance and take precautions around the vulnerable.

My MIL got British Gas for her boiler breakdown. She told them she was shielding and was assured the repair man would wear gloves and stay away from her if she kept herself in a different room. He didn't do either - no sign of a glove, he used her bathroom twice, and then barged into her front room to tell her it was finished.

Same with food deliveries - how do you stop the delivery person sneezing over the shopping as he's getting it from the van?

EVERYONE needs to be kept on the alert and we need to keep with the messaging re hygiene, precautions etc.

There's was a bit in tbe "road map" about creating a team of people who would be more clinically "safe" due to ppe, regular testing etc who would help to "bubble" those people with all their needs. That's the theory anyway and probably a long way off.

BigChocFrenzy
More likely net emigration in the other direction - EU citizens leaving because of how the NHS/UK dealt with COVID.

I was discussing OAPs - I thought the argument was that EU nationals in the UK were younger and fitter and not a burden on the NHS?
Articles in the Times such as; "Pensioners set to swamp NHS after no-deal Brexit as 260,000 expats return from Europe for healthcare." are just more Brexit scaremongering I suppose.

I'd believe that more possible for July/August, but not in Spring/v early summer

In fact the BBC do report a brief peak and fall in the number of deaths in the UK in April 2017 due to hot weather. It tends to be much warmer on the continent, therefore I would expect excess deaths caused by hot weather in April/May to be a regular occurrence in some countries.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45549261

You seem obessed clav with finding data to prove compare the uk favourably to other countries?

I was under the impression that this board was interested in 'numbers, graphs and analysis' - I see now that it is really an anti- government/anti-UK hangout in disguise.

You don't find Ireland's high influenza report in weeks 12 and 13 unusual compared to other European countries?

"You seem obessed clav with finding data to prove compare the uk favourably to other countries?"

That was in reply to Humphriescushion.

Interesting briefing today. Anyone get the feeling that scientists are kicking back against being blamed for every decision?

Also interesting that drive through taking 2 weeks. What's the point? You only need to SI for 7 days with symptoms and whole family can end quarantine by then. That's not quick enough for trick and trace which would then surely see increase in factions?

I think test results timings must really vary by region. A friend had one last week prior to her section and had the results in less than 24 hours.

Yes, mine were back in just under 48 hours.

dh's & my results were less than 48 hours (by post) but a HCP friend tested at the the same time as us in a drive through centre waited far longer (less than a week though). The main issue we had with testing was getting through the identity verification check, I don't know how that will work for children.

No i dont fine it interesting clav , when i believe it is to just an attempt to disprove the data which shows how bad england is. But there you go.

"I would expect excess deaths caused by hot weather in April/May to be a regular occurrence in some countries"

Not that early

Again, no need to speculate: look at the data,
Look at the curves of previous years in the FT and Economist graphs - they don't show any April / May peaks for those other countries.

"I was under the impression that this board was interested in 'numbers, graphs and analysis'"

Yes, we are interested in the facts, not in desperate fantasies about spring death peaks, just to excuse a bad UK performance
There are politics threads elsewhere for fantasy

A 14-day wait for test results is rather pointless !

It may be quicker if you swab yourself and post them off, rather than go to a test centre

However, having read how deep the swabs need to go, I suspect self-swabbing leads to far more false negatives

If I were to have a test, whether swab or blood, I'd want it done by professionals

Not sure where you get anti government from this thread, but i will no longer respond to your obvious ploy to try to find excuses for englands 60,000 excess deaths since this thread has been emminently sensible and i dont want to derail it.

The UK has reported 545 more deaths from Covid-19, taking its total to 35,341.

WIth other countries death rates declining more, Reuters reports
Sweden has had more deaths per capita from Covid-19 than any other European country over the past 7 days

Sweden had 6.25 deaths per million inhabitants per day in a rolling seven day average to 19 May
It was the highest in Europe and above the UK, which had 5.75 deaths per million

Over the whole pandemic period, Sweden still has fewer deaths per capita from Covid-19 than the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium and France
but about x10 higher than its Scandi / Nordic neighbours Denmark, Norway and Finland, who all had lockdown

BigChocFrenzy
Look at the curves of previous years in the FT and Economist graphs

Just to remind you that your link from Sunday said;

"*Some of the FT’s published P-scores look unreliable as the data and graphics do not match."

they don't show any April/May peaks for those other countries

Deaths prompted by hot weather in April/May are probably a usual occurrence for some countries in Europe.

One wonders why the ONS bothers with reporting all this stuff:

"There were 108,537 deaths that occurred between 1 April to 30 June 2018 in England, 497 deaths fewer than the five-year average (2013 to 2017).The number of deaths occurring each day during Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2018 largely did not differ from the five-year average apart from a few specific exceptions."

"Between 18 and 19 April 2018, 243 more deaths were observed than the five-year average for the same period and rose well above the maximum number of deaths seen on those dates from 2013 to 2017. Following almost immediately, between 21 and 23 April 2018, 378 fewer deaths were observed than the five-year average for the same period.This sharp rise then fall in the number of deaths coincided with a period of higher than average temperature between 18 and 19 April 2018."

I was about to say that was the year we had the heatwave wasn't it? I'm sure we were on a amber alert so they did predict that rise before it happened.

Does anyone know where or if they exist the excess death toll for other European countries? I agree this is a good comparison rather than covid only due to discrepancies in testing between countries, median age, health systems and social care as well as reporting.
I think we know in UK that some of ours came from nhs being purely covid for the past 2 months and all routine operations cancelled unless an absolute emergency. Plus people not wanting to attend a and e.

That data seems to point to the fact Sweden didn't lock down as fully as other countries that their deaths are still rising whereas other countries are on a downward trajectory?

Maybe there was an extra-terrestrial invasion in spring,
just to make the UK total deaths look worse than other countries

There's about as much evidence as for thousands of people in each of those countries dying in previous years,
to mak the UK performance look less disastrous

Since you are obsessed with the footnote in that paper, let's look at the whole paper again

Measuring excess mortality: the case of England during the Covid-19 Pandemic
INET Oxford Working Paper No. 2020-11

https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/6-May-20-Muellbauer-Aron-Excess-mortality-in-England-vs.-Europe-and-the-COVID-pandemic.pdf

EuroMOMO produces the most systematic comparative tracking of excess mortality in Europe.

Of the 24 countries or regions covered, England had the highest peak weekly excess mortality in total,
and also for the most vulnerable age group (the over-65s),
and, strikingly, for the 15-64 age group.
< striking, because they are such an important group >

For the last group, which should be less at risk,
the relative record for England is nearly 3 times worse than the next worst- ranked country, Spain
(German data suggest mortality well within the normal range).
......
Generally, there was a collective failure in preparedness across the public health system,

especially for testing capability and adequate supplies and distribution logistics of personal protection equipment for health workers.

Their followup paper, with more detail:

Measuring excess mortality: England is the European outlier in the Covid-19 pandemic

https://voxeu.org/article/excess-mortality-england-european-outlier-covid-19-pandemic

"According to EuroMOMO, which tracks excess mortality for 24 European states, England had the highest peak weekly excess mortality in total, for the over-65s, and, most strikingly, for the 15-64 age group. "
....
England eclipses all 24 countries covered by EuroMOMO in excess mortality scores
....
The ONS records 21,182 registered deaths for the comparable week compared to a normal number of 9787 (averaging the previous five years).6
.....
This gives excess registered deaths of 11,395, and a P-score of 1.164.

For the same week, the ONS registered 8335 deaths as Covid-19-related, accounting for 73% of excess deaths.
Data on actual deaths, reported by The Economist, give a peak P-score of 1.134.

England’s peak rate of excess deaths for the most vulnerable age group, the over-65s, is also the highest ....
.....
Italy initially dominated the headlines for Covid-19-related deaths but ranked fourth for peak excess mortality figures for the over-65s, below Spain and Belgium.
In contrast, Germany, throughout the nine weeks in Figure 1 showed excess mortality well within the -2, +2 normal range.7

As a spot-check, P-scores were calculated from actual deaths and normal deaths, reported by The Economist.
Peak P and Z scores are compared in Table 3.
Within Europe, the rankings almost coincide.8

Do you think part of our poor performance might be partly to do with the multiple seed points of our epidemic?
In Italy the epidemic was largely concentrated in North Italy with much less disease in the South. This meant that whilst there were awful scenes in Bergamo for example, parts of the South had few deaths. Similarly in Spain Madrid was the major centre. Our situation seems different in that we have a pretty thick disease progression across the whole country apart from, perhaps, the South West, (and Northern Ireland) mostly seeded from European holidays in February half term. I mean the deaths in Northern Ireland are much lower, not because they have done so much better in managing PPE or intensive care, but because they have had fewer infections.

I do wonder how we have done SO much worse than other countries - could the multiple seed points and fairly uniform coverage in England of disease be a partial explanation? Do we have a comparison of infection rates in entire countries elsewhere?

The modeller James Annan has investigated what would happen
if lockdown dates had been just 1 week different:

1. UK 1 week earlier
   ==> deaths 11k instead of 43 k (as of the date of his calculation)

2. Germany 1 week later:
   ==> deaths 34k instead of 9k

We can also examine South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand to see the effect of locking down promptly,
before cases or deaths start to rocket

So the key factor in national performance looks to be the date of lockdown,
a decision that is entirely the responsibility of national governments.

https://bskiesresearch.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/the-human-cost-of-delaying-lockdown/
https://bskiesresearch.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/why-cant-the-germans-be-more-like-us/

I mean infection spread across the country - not rate per million (as that could reflect Armageddon in the capital and almost nothing in the countryside).

SInce this is not about finger-pointing,
but about how to avoid a high death toll in the future, from a 2nd wave, or from a future maybe even more dangerous Epidemic X,

the key factor - for high R0 and densely populated European countries - seems to be locking down early

Subsidiary factors are having systems in place that could be rapidly built up for mass testing and contact tracing,
which includes mass manufacturing of test kits, PPE

...and I mean do the multiple seed points at the same time have a disproportionate affect on the lockdown time - it seems that way to me as effectively disease had a chance to spread from (say) 4 or 500 unidentified index cases ....

I'm not sure why England / GB, which is an island, with limited points of entry, by sea or air,
would have more points of spread than countries with several land borders

e.g. Germany has about 9 land borders with other countries, thousands of km of roads and lanes, many more rail links to other countries.

I must admit that back in early March, I was expecting the Uk would have the "island advantage" over its neighbours and do significantly better than they did