Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 13

[PatriciaHolm]

Taking the liberty of starting a new thread as we've just bust the old one, with much thanks to @BigChocfrenzy and I will copy her header..

Welcome to thread 13 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Slides & data UK govt pressers
UK dashboard sub-national data, local authorities
Beta Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests, partially sub-national
UK stats updated daily by PHE & DHSC
ONS UK statistics for CV related deaths, released weekly each Tuesday
PHE surveillance report infections & deaths released every Thursday with sep. infographic
NHS England stats including breakdown by Hospital Trust
FT Daily updates
HSJ Healthcare updates
Worldometer UK page
Plot FT graphs compare countries deaths, cases / million pop. / log / linear
Covidly.com filter graphs compare countries
Plot COVID Graphs Our World in Data

We welcome factual, data driven, and civil discussions from all contributors 📈📶👍

Data matters to those of us on these threads, to help us understand what is happening and maybe also adapt our personal plans if need be

However, it is essential to governments and public health authorities, who must plan and take action for a whole country or area.
Inaccurate / chaotic info leads to a poor central response to the COVID epidemic

'Flying blind': US failure to report vital coronavirus data is hobbling response

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/coronavirus-data-flying-blind-trump-us-failure

How does today compare to last few Tuesdays? 110 is high deaths?

The number for today includes 15 hospital deaths and 95 PHE non hospital deaths which primarily relate to care home settings.

The hospital number is low for a Tuesday. The daily PHE numbers are rubbish (as we do not know when the care home residents were tested positive for COVID). I would personally ignore the PHE stats until the reporting issue is sorted.

Place marking

Anyone care to comment on this from the ONS?

http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/causeoffdeath20jul.html

Re track and trace failures, I posted this on the previous thread (I think!) but it's worth a read - everyone seems quite muddled about what you're meant to do to get tested, when you get tested, etc.
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/11/rumours-and-threats-what-happened-when-covid-19-shut-our-pubs

Lark (and others) I was wondering that about the Zoë App - it doesn't ask if the test you have taken is the Antibody or Antigen test? Seems a bit of an obvious flaw.

The other thing I have noticed is it only asks for the ethnic origin of the main user, if you are logging for others & they have different herritage to you then there is no way to update their profiles?

And also as people have said, no way of altering your location, eg on holiday or if you move house? I don't know if it uses your phones location data.

I did raise my second issue re ethnicity via their feedback email address but got no reply and that was a few months ago, the problem is still there.

@peonypower

Anyone care to comment on this from the ONS?

http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/causeoffdeath20jul.html

... That's not from the ONS The author just uses some ONS data He is not a statistician, epidemiologist, doctor, scientist etc i.e. a layman

He has several articles with titles like "Winter flu/respiratory seasons have claimed more lives than Covid"

So I didn't bother to read further

FYI:

Before anyone jumps on me I am not saying that Covid is "just the flu" and therefore we can just crack on as normal. I am not against lockdown and accept it was entirely necessary.

However, I'm not sure that comparing a novel virus of any type to an endemic virus tells us very much? If there was a novel strain of flu then the impact would be the same/similar and it would indeed be "just the flu"?

The point, as I understand it, is that the novel nature of the virus (and consequently the total lack of immunity in the population) is the issue not the virus in and of itself.

If this coronavirus becomes endemic to the human population (which seems likely) then in years to come it may well be analogous to endemic flu viruses (dependent on our ability to vaccinate against and treat it.)

Sunshinegirl, from what we know to date, Covid is around 10 times more deadly than flu. See www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
which gives a big picture overview of flu burden in the US over a number of years. It suggest a mortality ratio of around 0.13%. Looking at the U.K, and assuming (based on testing to date) somewhere between 6% and 10% of the U.K. population have had Covid, and that there have been around 60,000 excess deaths, the Covid mortality rate is between 1% and 1.5% in the U.K., so around 10 times worse than flu.

And looked at another way, based on the US 2017/2018 flu season, it would have taken 2/3rds of the U.K. population becoming infected to produce the same number of fatalities.

The mortality rate is being calculated based on an entirely susceptible population at this stage. Spanish flu as I understand it had a 3% mortality rate. It is still in existence now but mortality rates have not remained at 3%. Probably as a result of a reasonable amount of immunity in the population, vaccination and improvements in treatment.

All I am suggesting is that comparing a novel virus to an endemic virus doesn't really tell you much. It remains to be seen what the mortality rate for Covid will be when/if it becomes endemic.

the netherlands report a doubling of cotona cases since last week.

www.rivm.nl/nieuws/aantal-besmettingen-COVID-19-neemt-toe

"I'm not sure that comparing a novel virus of any type to an endemic virus tells us very much"

imo we need to counter the persistent "it's just flu" lobby and articles posted with the facts why it's not,
or the myths and conspiracies spread even more,
but otherwise I agree, it's not very useful to compare

Yes, as soon as we get a vaccine, then that's a game-changer for any disease, however serious
together with treatments that can stop nearly all (it'll never be 100%) of the unvaccinated becoming seriously ill or having serious longterm effects

At that stage, it may sound harsh, but once there is a vaccine available, I'd only wish to take specific measures to protect those who can't vaccinate
We should no longer lock down or keep SD etc for those who choose not to

"It remains to be seen what the mortality rate for Covid will be when/if it becomes endemic."

With a regular vaccination program, the mortality rate shouldn't be a significant problem, not enough to require any other significant measures

However, we are not at that stage yet, so we have to deal with the current situation and the current mortality rate

I completely agree. We have to deal with the actual situation that we have.

I just worry sometimes that people view COVID as some sort of insurmountable threat to humanity that means nothing will ever approach normal ever again. In my view that is just as unhelpful as those who think it's a bad cold and lockdown was unnecessary.

At the moment, with an entirely susceptible population, no vaccine and limited treatment options the mortality rate is reasonably high. We only had the blunt tool of lockdown available to us.

As those factors change (and they will fairly quickly) things will shift fairly dramatically in my view. This year might be optimistic (although not impossible) but I think it's fairly realistic to expect that by the end of 2021 we will have a pretty good handle on the situation and COVID won't be the main focus of most people's lives.

Sunshinegirl, I sincerely hope you are right. Like BigChoc, I can only see some kind of normal returning once a vaccine has been produced which is at least moderately effective at preventing disease and/or reducing its severity.

I think the signs are fairly hopeful on the vaccine front @AprilLady?

I see no particular reason to be pessimistic on the issue of vaccines for this virus, what has been achieved so far is extraordinary.

I agree Sunshinegirl, we have to stay positive and hope that very soon science will come to the rescue. I can’t live with thinking this is forever...! I think you’re totally right that once this becomes endemic it changes things- not all of a sudden but gradually of course. We have to learn to live with it, and there are so many reasons to be hopeful, treatments and vaccines etc. It’s amazing to see how much is happening around the world to sort this out!

Just to say thanks to all you sane and rational data experts. I have really struggled mentally throughout this period and at times fallen within the "insurmountable threat to humanity" category mentioned by @Sunshinegirl82 above. But reading your posts about the statistics and relative risks has really helped me to stay calm (most of the time!). Thank you all

More good news in the NHS English hospital data. For the 7 days to 16 July, average daily deaths were 14 a day, with less than 10 deaths recorded on a couple of days.

@AprilLady

Sunshinegirl, I sincerely hope you are right. Like BigChoc, I can only see some kind of normal returning once a vaccine has been produced which is at least moderately effective at preventing disease and/or reducing its severity.

We can have 90% of normal back, so long as we stick to SD and infections remain low, however long a vaccine takes

560 new cases today. Just slightly up on a week ago

Ahhhh.... here you are, thought I had lost you all. Thanks for keeping going.