Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 21

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to thread 21 of the daily updates

Resource links:

Uk dashboard deaths, cases, hospitals, tests - 4 nations, English regions & LAs
R estimates UK & English regions
Imperial UK weekly LAs, cases / 100k, table, map, hotspots
UK School statistics Attendance
Modelling real number of UK infections February to date
NHS England Hospital activity
MSAO Map of English cases
Cases Tracker England Local Government
ONS MSAO Map English deaths
CovidMessenger live update by council district in England
Scot gov Daily data
Scotland TravellingTabby LAs, care homes, hospitals, tests, t&t
PH Wales LAs, tests, ONS deaths
NI Dashboard
Zoe Uk data
UK govt pressers Slides & data
ICNRC Intensive Care National Audit & Research reports
NHS t&t England & UK testing Weekly stats
PHE Surveillance reports & LA Local Watchlist Maps by LSOA
ONS England infection surveillance report each Friday
Datasets for ONS surveillance reports
ONS Roundup deaths, infections & economic reports
ECDC rolling 14-day incidence EEA & UK
Worldometer UK page
Our World in Data GB test positivity etc, DIY country graphs
FT DIY graphs compare deaths, cases, raw / million pop
Alama Personal COVID risk assessment
Local Mobility Reports for countries
UK Highstreet Tracker for cities & large towns Footfall, spend index, workers, visitors, economic recovery

⏭ Our STUDIES Corner ⏮

We welcome factual, data driven and analytical contributions
Please try to keep discussion focused on these
📈 📉 📊 👍

I dont follow the dashboard usually - i wonder if it does show a drop this week, and then today a sharp increase, in total number of tests done.

Where univs are doing their own testing, are these results included in pillar 2 or do they not show up?

I can't make much sense of today's figures and am the first to admit I'm not au fait with much of this at the moment at the best of times..... but what does worry me is that even with the caveats that some of this "huge scary number" is down to technical issues or lag or whatever, wouldn't it make much more sense to just say that there is an issue with today's figures and that once it's all been ironed out an accurate figure will be given tomorrow?

Guardian says that the actual figure for today is not known - but it's like that damn press conference - "we COULD" see 50,000 cases a day by x date IF blah blah blah" - all people saw was the number and it freaked people out. Similarly today, your average Jo, like me, sees the figure and thinks "Woah" that's scary....... I come on here and get reassurance and explanations that make some sense - thanks to all by the way - but lots of people might not look any further and just start panicking or baying for further restrictions.

And "whoops we can't give accurate data cos tech issues" in the current climate ain't particularly comforting either..... I'd rather have no news and then accurate news than something like this.....

Sorry, probably am being unreasonable in some way but am honestly so frustrated at not being able to get a clear and rational picture of the situation / risk / likelihood of new measures on a day to day basis at the moment......

Several experts giving their opinion do have an agenda, political / Social Darwinist or about schools / jobs / welfare state etc

Some of them are scrupulous about keeping their views private;
other are very selective in their posts about the evidence they include

I try to read a wide range, but exclude some with too obvious political bias, such as Sikora, who I just don't trust

Those I trust, for competence and objectivity:

The ONS - gold standard
Nick Stripe at ONS
RKI (German public health institute)
Van-Tamm (Deputy CMO)
LSHTM (London School of Tropical Medicine & Hygeine)
Kucharski at LSHTM
COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group
S McDonald & J Roberts with the group
Spiegelhalter (stats expert)
Burns-Murdoch (FT stats geek)
Kupferschmidt (biologist & journo)

@MRex

we can't yet assign the additional positives to the correct days They look assigned to me?

... We don't have them all !

OldQueen It looks like several days needed for the figures for the last couple of weeks to be updated
meanwhile they'll be mislaying another several thousand elsewhere
I don't think that PHE etc can stop issuing figures until they've sorted it all out

Im confused, Worldometer is saying 7070 cases today, but PHE is saying closer to 13k...why the 2 different numbers, is the 7070 the ones for today and the others from other dates?

@Jenasaurus Worldometer have gone back and redistributed the extra announced cases to the actual days they occurred, which they have done throughout when there is a 'blip' like this.
I'm wondering if the extra cases are from the Universities that have their own testing facilities? Mind you those cases have been so high profile I doubt they just forgot those!
I did think the recent case figures were a bit too good to be true. I still don't think it's out of control though.

@Jenasaurus they do explain it (not particularly clearly) in their notes

I don’t think that the extra numbers are solely university testing, the extra numbers look to be for most places (eg I’ve looked in the shires and counties in North West and they are all double usual value, despite not having universities).

More or less this week will be - interesting...

Just to catch up from last night sun, I do trust Zoe Hyde. I think her truths can be inconvenient but I think they are based on her pulling together a range of data that we don't often see. Munro recycles the same data over and over again.

Did anyone notice the thing in the press yesterday about having/not having a test at 8 days and actually understand it? It made my head hurt! It seemed to be a hidden change to prevent people seeking tests.

Here is a link:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/03/uk-covid-testing-cutoff-quietly-extended-to-eight-days-after-first-signs

There’s another issue with the data on the dashboard as there appears to be a point in September when the tests processed exceeds the tests available

@Piggywaspushed - I think they’ve changed the guidance from ‘have a test in the first 5 days’ to ‘have a test in the first 8 days’.

I think the concern is that unless the accuracy of the test after 5 days has been found to be better than thought ( so actually you still pick up a high proportion of positives after 5 days) then allowing a longer period for people to test might increase the amount of people getting a false result ( false negative in particular).

I haven’t looked at the accuracy data for post 5 days of the tests which is what would need to be done to see if the concern is justified ( although you’d have to assume there was a reason for the 5 day cut off)...

Yes, that's what I inferred. It's more to do with making it look better if you can't get a test in the first five days because of scarcity but can on day 6. It's quite clear about not getting a postal one after the first few days, too.

I'd also like to see the research on if the accuracy has improved or that they were wrong to write off post-day 5 results initially.

The map for the Liverpool City Region is getting worse and worse, and is markedly different to outbreaks in other cities (many of which have student hotspots, most of the dark blue spots on this photo are not student locations).

Our household has had info from the ONS to have regular testing.
I'm keen to be part of the information gathering.
Anyone done this?

My household is on the ONS Covid survey. It takes about 10 minutes a week and the vouchers are coming in very handy to pay for DS's things for Uni halls (and for Christmas shopping)

The map for the Liverpool City Region is getting worse and worse, and is markedly different to outbreaks in other cities - many of which have student hotspots, most of the dark blue spots on this photo are not student locations

How different is it to other cities that had their cases increase before university return? ie distribution correlated to deprivation?

We had a Liverpool poster consistently saying for weeks that nobody was sticking to the guidelines, actually arguing that they shouldn't; local press was equally clear on that. Before the big Greater Manchester outbreak there were many reports about parties and other non-compliance. Many other areas issues have been limited to young people holding parties, then lots of young people are infected. Now, as soon as there's an outbreak, everyone talks about deprivation. I think there's a link with higher risks that infections can take off, but we shouldn't sweep under the carpet that it's known people were deliberately ignoring guidelines.

ONS showed the largest rise in the least deprived quintile aged under 35 and white

but we shouldn't sweep under the carpet that it's known people were deliberately ignoring guidelines.

Ditto Newcastle.

@GetAMoveOnTroodon
There’s another issue with the data on the dashboard as there appears to be a point in September when the tests processed exceeds the tests available

The capacity is linked to lab processing rather than tests and we know there was a backlog of the tests; a little overtime to meet targets can lead to overshoot, just as the theoretical capacity might not be met because someone's unwell / an ingredient is unavailable that day / general process delays occur.

The map for the Liverpool City Region is getting worse and worse, and is markedly different to outbreaks in other cities (many of which have student hotspots, most of the dark blue spots on this photo are not student locations).

I'm in Liverpool and it's horrible at the moment because everybody knows/has had contact with several people who are positive.... unless you can stay at home there's really no getting away from it. Yet step outside your front door and there's people behaving as if they've never heard of a virus.

God knows what the knock on effect on the hospitals will be.