Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 14

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 14 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, LAs, English regions
Slides & data UK govt pressers
[[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavi
rus-covid-19-information-for-the-public UK stats]] list of reports added daily by PHE & DHSC
PHE Surveillance report infections & deaths released every Thursday with sep. infographic
ONS England infection surveillance report ONS UK statistics for CV related deaths, released weekly each Tuesday
Daily ECDC report UK & EEA
Worldometer UK page
Plot FT graphs compare countries deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Covidly.com world summary & graphs
Plot COVID Graphs Our World in Data additional data

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

On the Swedish doctor - I think there is a case to be made for letting people make sensible decisions for themselves and balancing liberty against deaths. It works best in low density though, which is what went wrong with Stockholm. The whole "it's not that bad" angle meanwhile undermines the case for anyone like me who knows people who've been working with very unwell patients, they certainly believe it's a nasty disease.

I was able to identify where the Swedish doctor works. He is a doctor, but still not too bright for failing to recognise that if Sweden had locked down they would not have had deaths much higher than their neighbours/ would have had fewer deaths because treatments are better/ can still get a lot more deaths because they dont have herd immuntiy/ their economy has suffered anyway as people do voluntarily what is compulsory elsewhere.

And yes, in spades, to people who have seen the impact thinking it's an unusually bad infection.

Of course everyone wants to think we'd be Sweden - and not Brazil, with their mass graves. Strangely no-one discusses Brazil and WHY we'd be like Sweden and not like Brazil.

Inhaled interferon looks like being a good treatment but as with any treatment it wont work for everyone. Bookmark this website and hope you are randomised to get the drug www.covidtrialathome.com/

I wouldn't want to be Sweden, because to me that means multiple of the deaths / million of their similar neighbours

which is imo actually acceptable at the Scandi level, but disastrous when similar countries are Italy, Spain, France

ICNARCC@ICNARC*

Please note that we will not be producing our weekly updated reports during August but will recommence in September

If we hadnt had lockdown we wouldnt have been like Sweden. We are a higher population density country with different diet and an overstretched health service. We would have had more deaths, hospitals doing nothing but Covid and the economy collapsed anyway as people dont go out spending regardless when there is death all around - and the shelves are empty anyway because the workforce is depleted.

America is a car crash- another place no-one mentions because they dont wish to face the truth.

Testing & cases

The % positive tests indicates whether a country is testing enough

• obviously having a high positive % indicates a higher number of cases not being detected

The WHO has stated that positive should be under 3%

The graph shows 7-day rolling average of confirmed cases / million pop,
with colours to indicate % positive

The orange curves for Spain, USA show they exceed the 3%

The blue curves for Sweden & France show they are within that limit

Black curves show the other Scandi countries, plus UK, Germany & Italy have v low positve %, well below that,
==> we're testing plenty - which of course means more cases are found

Strangely no-one discusses Brazil and WHY we'd be like Sweden and not like Brazil.

The thing is there is a major difference between Sweden and Brazil.

Sweden didn't lock down but it introduced sensible high impact measures from early on. For instance, it banned mass gatherings over 500 people on March 11 (i.e. way earlier than the UK). It restricted restaurants and bars to table service and it encouraged social distancing without making it a law.

Based on what we know about COVID now, it is clear we do not need a full lockdown to keep R under 1. The highest transmission drivers are mass gatherings and multi-household interactions indoors.

Brazilian government has been dismissing COVID using the old and ignorant "it's just a flu" line. This messaging is clearly insulting to all the families who lost their loved ones to the disease. However, at the end of the day, Brazil might have had no choice but to "flatten the curve" (instead of suppressing infections). The reality is lockdowns in developing countries are likely to cause many more deaths than COVID. With the average age of 31.4 years in Brazil, the consequences of COVID are likely to be less disastrous than the potential impact of shutting down the economy.

Note re graph:

All countries tested far less in March, so in the early days, the real number of cases was massively more uderestimated than now

That exaggerates the effect of the current uptick in cases in many countries
The uptick is genuine, but the size on all graphs is disproportionately high compared to the 1st wave

@BigChocFrenzy that's a very interesting graph.
And puts what we are reporting currently in some perspective

Any idea why Spain is so dramatically going upwards? Is it purely that they aren't testing enough?

I know Mrex, I've been googling to try to understand that clearer. It was about 5 mins after 7 am on today, R4.

I found a clinical trial but not the results.

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04331470

(I feel personally a bit happy that I'm on an inhaler containing formoterol!)

We don't need a full lockdown now, but back in March, noone knew what worked

Densely populated European countries like Italy had an emergency,
hence lockdown - which is basically nearly all possible measures at once
because there was no time to try them out one at a time

For developing countries, lockdown makes little sense as they can't support their population doing this
Also some African countries have average age < 20, so COVID is nowhere near the risk it is to aging Western countries

Emerging economies like Brazil have mean age in the 30s, so also less serious
They tend to have the finances to support some measures
Lockdown was not necessary,
but there are several other measures that would likely have prevented the huge number of excess deaths

Total denial was a wilfully stupid & irresponsible policy from Bolsonaro

The USA can't have one policy fits all, as it is basically a continent,
with some v sparsely populated states hardly affected,
while densely populated states have been seriously affected,
especially in their 2nd wave / reignition of 1st wave when their governors were following the Trump denial playbook

Sweden's approach might have worked because they managed to keep their prevalence rates under control.

UK let infections balloon in early March by continuing to allow large scale events. It was indeed the "science based" decision (SAGE discussed the issue multiple times and concluded that mass gatherings should not materially impact transmission rates) but it turned out completely wrong. The flu based science did not work for COVID.

Spain is concerning because they have both a rising number of cases and a high % positive,
meaning they are missing far more cases than countries like the UK, Germany or Italy

I wouldn't want to be Sweden, because to me that means multiple of the deaths / million of their similar neighbours I agree I find it distasteful for Sweden to be cited as somewhere that didn’t lockdown but was ‘OK’ - this is a thread about facts and figures, and those figures show that they had 5,763 deaths, compared to Norway which had 256. It makes me very sad to think that over 5,000 more people died and people are citing Sweden as a success. That is 570 deaths per million population, the 8th highest in the world according to world o meter, compared to Norway which is 47 deaths per million. Brazil is 473 deaths per million.

Also, Sweden saw some of the public take action themselves to socially distance, many older and vulnerable people just stayed away from others, while younger people went about their business. So there was no call for ‘everyone’ to take care of each other, I think that is morally wrong.

Sweden made 2 serious mistakes in the early days, which there was already plenty of evidence to avoid:

. not protecting the elderly
. not testing much, or track & trace

They've since corrected these,
but most European countries now have learned what worked and what went wrong

Looking at possible reasons for Spain's sharp increase:

Having millions of tourists visit from so many countries ?

Yes what is happening in Spain?

It is like back in March, they were behind Italy and yet so quickly their numbers rocketed in Madrid. Is the public just completely ignoring social distancing quickly? I don’t know it would be good to find out.

Sorry, where is this test positivity graph please, I can't find it?

They have allowed bars to reopen in Spain, with not a lot of distancing. I reckon that's a bigger factor than simply having lots of tourists - most of whom are from countries with lower rates than Spain

Did the government cite the high positivity rate as a reason for requiring travellers to quarantine does anyone know?

@MRex

Sorry, where is this test positivity graph please, I can't find it?

.... Arrgh, Safari didn't show my graph, but it's in the App Again on Safari:

@Firefliess

They have allowed bars to reopen in Spain, with not a lot of distancing. I reckon that's a bigger factor than simply having lots of tourists - most of whom are from countries with lower rates than Spain

Did the government cite the high positivity rate as a reason for requiring travellers to quarantine does anyone know?

.. Yes, maybe it's more what accompanies tourists - Spain reopened bars, clubs and restaurants with little SD sometimes

We saw from MN that some people don't want a quiet beach holiday and complain if they've nowhere to go out and drink, dance etc

I wonder if it's less about the numbers coming in, in and of itself, and more about their behaviour when they get there?

Perhaps people just wanting to relax and enjoy their holiday and not worry so much about observing guidelines?

Cross post!