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 📈 📉 📊 👍

Or indeed your scientific journals. Link to a twitter thread and journal article with a different interpretation of the South Korean data. I've seen Alasdair munro being accused of having an agenda on other threads but think he makes a good point about not judging research in isolation.

mobile.twitter.com/apsmunro/status/1292852036720091136

I'm still in the juries out on how easily children spread covid (especially older children) but think in most of the UK that community cases are low enough that children need to go back full time and that schools should be open at the expense of adult leisure

Can I recommend you also look at Zoe Hyde on Twitter? She is an actual epidemiologist with an interest in child health who does threads pulling together all the evidence.

Munro is the poster boy of UsFor Them.

I reckon people on this thread would really like Zoe Hyde : she is very thoughtful and detailed and never steps away from the research. The danger with Munro is that he goes with his won silly, clickbait headlines and ideologises it. He is also not an epidemiologist so all the research is met analysis and probably no more than what lot so f people on this thread could do.

But,anyway, as I said, look at Zoe Hyde for a fuller picture. She unturfs research that we haven't seen in the UK.

I think the issue with 'following science' is your layperson thinks science is factual. I have rapidly learnt over these moths that scientist like an academic debate and can produce conflicting evidence to prove their point, neither of which are necessarily totally wrong!

Thanks for the link to her, she's got a lot of good info.

I wish we'd had good contact tracing from the off.

@Piggywaspushed I'd like to know this about supermarket workers also. I'm grateful that they've worked day in day out but it does seem strange to see them close together, chatting without PPE.

I treated myself to a trip to an M&S food hall last week. There were six staff all crowded together over a mobile phone, pointing and laughing loudly as they flicked through something (photos it seemed). Someone actually asked them if they shouldn't be SD, and one replied that they couldn't as they had to work together "like police having to share a car" !

@Piggywaspushed

I think the issue with 'following science' is your layperson thinks science is factual. I have rapidly learnt over these moths that scientist like an academic debate and can produce conflicting evidence to prove their point, neither of which are necessarily totally wrong!

I think that was my point, two different groups of scientists can intepret the data set in two (very) different ways. I'm not saying either way is right or wrong in this case as there are limitations in both.

I was going to link directly to the paper as I know some people have a real issue with munro but I liked his conclusions in this case and thought they illustrated the point. I do read Zoe Hyde on twitter along with a vast range of others to try to get a big picture. The problem with all tweets though (hyde included) is the word limit means conclusions are truncated and sometimes without context.

Anyone got a link to Zoe Hyde. All I can find is an artist.

mobile.twitter.com/drzoehyde?lang=en

Thank you

Funnily enough chaotic I have found M and S to be like this too, and far fewer of their staff wear masks.

I think maybe they are just a bit fatalistic about the whole thing?

Our M&S are all masked up. I wonder in some cases whether the workers know or believe they all had covid during lockdown, so they are less cautious as a result.

I think so. I do worry about the lady at my Sainsbury's who returned form shielding because she had no choice financially and I haven't seen her for a couple of weeks.

I live in an 'area of concern' so my MP was going around a working class , high Asian population area (it is where he is from to be fair) yesterday to go into shops and talk about masks and so on. He was in the wrong place. he should have been hob nobbing in M and S!

Maybe they shifted her to a role away from the public? (Hopefully...)

We worried about one of our dustmen when he was off sick with covid; his colleague said he was very poorly (I have a little boy who befriended them all). He's very fat and late 50s, yet 3 weeks later he was back at work. Risk factors are just risks, sometimes people are less affected than you would think (or more, in the case of some young healthy people).

I reckon people on this thread would really like Zoe Hyde : she is very thoughtful and detailed and never steps away from the research.

I also read Zoe Hyde's twitter but I am not sure she is completely unbiased. For instance, in her discussion of pre-existing immunity she highlights two idiosyncratic examples (the choir practice in Washington and the family cluster in Beijing) without mentioning numerous other cases of household transmissions that might in fact support the opposite view.

No, I don't think any of them are but she is less obviously ideological.

On supermarkets (sorry, this is one of the topics where I have got a strong view)...

The ONS age adjusted death stats show that supermarket workers and security guards have got one of the riskiest jobs in the country. When people "clapped for carers", they usually thought about young, lovely, charismatic nurses some of whom tragically lost their lives during the peak of COVID pandemic.

However the raw ONS data shows that on a relative basis NHS nurses were not at a higher risk of dying from COVID in comparison to the general population. The real heroes of pandemics have been care home staff, supermarket personnel and minicab drivers.

I feel that supermarket employees have "earned" the right to make their working environment more bearable (e.g. by not wearing masks for 8 hours a day) even if it makes a few customers unhappy.

I can't read Twitter for serious topics because the format encourages over-simplification. There are some known facts, unknown disputed facts and a level of pragmatism needed to balance conflicting needs. If anyone even starts by just saying "schools" or "children"' without distinguishing between primary and secondary ages, then you can assume they have bias.

(Not implying that in her case, as I said, I can't take teitter seriously enough to try to read it. Just making a general comment.)

I read the Zoe Hyde Twitter thread about schools and it is balanced and worth a read. I thought that she was measured. I do also think that the rate of community transmission is critical, it has to be low enough - however this can change fairly fast in a location.

I do think twitter has a place in facts and figures - it can highlight and pull together research and data in a way that doesn’t anywhere else - it is rough and ready for sure and we have to be aware that many people are doing ‘soundbites’ - but it is where I discovered the most convincing arguments for an early lockdown for example back in March. @MRex I agree it is important to ‘filter’ in our own heads and double check twitter - but if you follow credible people they tend to put out credible and visual data. It’s a fast way in.

@wintertravel1980 yes I was surprised at Security Workers but they are doing a very risky job. There are some good data graphs on risky jobs.

@Chaotic45 I also couldnt’ agree more - M&S is one of the worst! Staff close chatting and you can hardly get passed them as they are in the aisles! I found Tesco much better.

I get what you are saying winter but have they not also earned the right to be fully and properly protected and advised by their employers? Sure, it is miserable to socially distance from your colleagues but if it keeps them safer, that's important. The masks to me are maybe more about setting an example (although I have issues about any keyworker somehow being told they have to be heroes/martyrs/set an example/m,orally more courageous blah blah)

My understanding is they can take a break from wearing them mask by swapping from shop floor to behind the screens more regularly than normal and, at M and S, they are getting more frequent breaks to go and wash hands and take a breather so they aren't wearing them for 8 hours solid at all.

@Littlebelina I do think Munro is untrustworthy as I like this thread, it is all about proving his point no matter what, rather than open minded look at the evidence and data.

I find it so refreshing to have this thread looking at data in such a critical but open way. I am grateful to everyone who started it. I recognize some posters from when I posted in early March warning about numbers and advising an early lockdown (And I was under a different user name).

I like should be ‘Unlike’

Remember the risk of the job in those stats is just correlation, the risk of the job has not been causally identified, there's just correlation. Security guards are also more likely to be male, unfit, older, drinkers (so also found in pubs pre-lockdown) all of those things also increase the risk we don't know enough to say there is a causal link yet.