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
📈 📉 📊 👍

Looking at England deaths by date of death, not date reported, gives us

Week Sept 25 - Oct 1 = 265
Week Sept 18 - 24 = 205

A 30% increase in the week. There will still be some backdating there probably, but not as dramatic as 70%.

@Choux

Deaths this week total 362, up from last week's 211

That's up 70% in a week. If that growth rate continues next week will be 615 and then 1,045 the week after...

.... We cannot extrapolate 2 data points like that

Cases are doubling maybe every 12 days

@BigChocFrenzy
EU medical (non legal) standard protocol is that we make API calls every so often (10 sec to 2x a day...) and if the connection is lost, eg db has changed on the other side, returns obv false data like nills, access revoked etc we throw a huge error into admins face right away and escalate up the chain. So, no, it should not be a thing to not notice it. And it should not be on the shoulder of a human to notice a system failure. Ever.
It has been 12 years since I worked with this "protocol".

There was one case -full hospital admin and logistics system- where we actually even sent sms msgs to multiple ppl at the first system failure. For things like doctor referred patient to have a blood test down the hall. If the referral took more than 40 sec to arrive at the other terminal a beep would go to the sysadmin to check the server loads and load balancing. Because we measured that if the patient is not an absolute invalid it will take about 1.2 minutes to get there. the +40 secs were for the nurse to react (see the blink and put down her tea).

The never had access means that they are providing asynchronous data stream. It is a plausible scenario because of 2 things: minute based data is not needed, plus it is much cheaper to implement.*
The problem with this is that it is highly prone to error and unreliable. It can be made robust to lessen the likeliness off errors. In financial systems there was (surely still is?) a legal requirement that asynchronous data exchange can only happen in a set format and in specified intervals or times. Any deviation and the intake system should reject it and alarm bells should sound up the food chain. This, coupled with field validations (eg a bank could not report 0 in the daily cash in or cash out fields) actually made it reliable.
*How the output is generated is also really important. Human entering data into excel is the worst form possible. System spitting into fixed format is much better, but without validation it is still pretty crap.

A few months ago I designed a full track and trace system. Both offline and online. Including data points, measurements, KPIs, alert points,... the whole thing.
Because I got made redundant, and my brain was bored and it was a challenge.
Now, if I (and I'm no genius, just experienced) can do this in less than a week, all alone, without any sounding board or technical help, then I would expect people who are paid millions of pounds to do their job or at least employ ppl who can do their jobs at an expert level.

Instead gov paid friends&family millions and didn't even have the decency to spend 10% of it on actually really good experts. This enrages me more than the actual stealing act itself. Fine, steal. But only steal what is left over after doing the job perfectly. There is more than enough....

7 day average of England hospital admissions is up 17% week on week, against a 7 day average of (revised!) cases by specimen date increase of 46% (to Oct 1).

Ireland has gone to Level 5, the highest of restrictions

On 21 September, the 4 UK CMOs jointly recommended all 4 nations move from Level 3 to Level 4, the 2nd highest, which has been done

I'm now going to look up medical EU software legal requirements, let me know if anyone is interested in links. well, now will be after some sleep :)

@BigChocFrenzy

Ireland has gone to Level 5, the highest of restrictions

On 21 September, the 4 UK CMOs jointly recommended all 4 nations move from Level 3 to Level 4, the 2nd highest, which has been done

I think technically the NPHET have just advised that atm - it needs to be ratified in cabinet tomorrow to actually happen.

@TheSunIsStillShining

I'm now going to look up medical EU software legal requirements, let me know if anyone is interested in links. well, now will be after some sleep :)

... That's very interesting about medical software

I was in tech R&D where it was never life & death when we couldn't access databases, just cost a bit of time & extra work
it's a relief to hear medical systems have such high standards and automatic warnings

So it now looks as if either the system for public health is not up to medical specs and / or insufficiently debugged and tested ?

"I think technically the NPHET have just advised that atm - it needs to be ratified in cabinet tomorrow to actually happen."

Cabinet on 5 October to ratify CMOs recommendation from 21 September
Don't they know there's a war pandemic on ?

The Beeb announced it was happening on the same day (but is not as reliable as it once was)

https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-52634739

@BigChocFrenzy

Ireland has gone to Level 5, the highest of restrictions

On 21 September, the 4 UK CMOs jointly recommended all 4 nations move from Level 3 to Level 4, the 2nd highest, which has been done

No, Ireland has not gone to level 5. It has been reported that our CMO has advised the government that we go to level 5

[quote BigChocFrenzy]"I think technically the NPHET have just advised that atm - it needs to be ratified in cabinet tomorrow to actually happen."

Cabinet on 5 October to ratify CMOs recommendation from 21 September
Don't they know there's a war pandemic on ?

The Beeb announced it was happening on the same day (but is not as reliable as it once was)

[[https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-52634739]][/quote]
The 21st Sept announcement wasn't relevant to Ireland, just to the 4 Nations of the UK.
The move to Level 5 in Ireland (which is different to the UK level 5...) was recommended today, but will need to be actual ratified tomorrow.

@BigChocFrenzy
My educated guess is that they cut corners at the beginning because of speed and then never went back to fixing them. Patches on patches.. you know how it works.
The difference is that medical and financial software does have standards that they need to adhere to. What I am curious about is if these are "self-inflicted" (sorry) industry standards or legally binding ones.* And if they are EU and if EU does that still apply to us?
I have a feeling that we will be falling out of a lot of treaties and standards boards with brexit. Main concern is medical, financial and police software, databases. imo.
The ones I had to adhere to were half EU, half hungarian authority ones. Plus another set from the swiss umbrella insurance company setting up and running the hospital. Shitloads of paperwork to read through, but it was reassuring to be honest.
Financial ones were EU law based as I remember.

We joke a lot about -in general- that the software we develop not being life or death altering. One of my last huge projects was an AI platform for oncology (diagnosis and automated treatment plan generation) where we were told at the beginning that what we actually were doing will mean life and death to someone if we fuck up. It really hit home to all the team.
I wish whoever did this piece of *** would have told their employees this.

Sorry, I just read the headline about Ireland level 5

"The move to Level 5 in Ireland (which is different to the UK level 5...) was recommended today, but will need to be actual ratified tomorrow."

That is timing I would expect - either accept or refuse CMO advice the next day

What is surprising is the 21 September recommendation by the 4 UK CMOS only being decided in Cabinet tomorrow

Has there been a lot of political debate on this behind the scenes ?
Looking at level 4, the chart says "SD continues" which doesn't sound a very dramatic change, but maybe more behind that

What is surprising is the 21 September recommendation by the 4 UK CMOS only being decided in Cabinet tomorrow

It's not! The cabinet comment was just relevant to Ireland.

UK moved up a level without anyone really noticing tbh ;-). Ireland's move will have significant impact if it happens, as most of the country is only at 2 or 3 at the moment.

The recommendation for Ireland's level 5 is after 364 new cases, following 605 yesterday which was the highest since the 1st wave

Even after multiplying that by 13, to scale up for greater Uk population size, that seems quite low to trigger level 5, unless there is some other factor causing concern

==> Anyone know their doubling time or R ?

@PatriciaHolm

What is surprising is the 21 September recommendation by the 4 UK CMOS only being decided in Cabinet tomorrow

It's not! The cabinet comment was just relevant to Ireland.

UK moved up a level without anyone really noticing tbh ;-). Ireland's move will have significant impact if it happens, as most of the country is only at 2 or 3 at the moment.

... Ah sorry, I thought your post meant the UK cabinet !

(My default is to think UK)

Yes I think we ended up going in circles there for a moment ;-)

I think it's bedtime

https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/casesinireland/epidemiologyofcovid-19inireland/COVID-19Dailyyepidemiologyreportt(NPHET)_20201002%20-%20website.pdf

I'll take a closer look tomorrow, but this is lots of detail on the Irish Numbers.

Covid: Care homes policies violated human rights, says Amnesty report

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54408723

Sending thousands of older untested patients into care homes in England at the start of the coronavirus lockdown was a violation of their human rights,
Amnesty International has said.
.....
Amnesty said it received reports of residents being denied GP and hospital NHS services during the pandemic,
"violating their right to health and potentially their right to life, as well as their right to non-discrimination".

@PatriciaHolm

https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/casesinireland/epidemiologyofcovid-19inireland/COVID-19Dailyyepidemiologyreportt(NPHET)_20201002%20-%20website.pdf

I'll take a closer look tomorrow, but this is lots of detail on the Irish Numbers.

... Thanks, I'll examine tomorrow

The care homes debacle are only one example of why the emergency Coronavirus legislation removed liability for negligence:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-bill-summary-of-impacts/coronavirus-bill-summary-of-impacts

This indemnity clause allows the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (in relation to the NHS for England) and the Welsh Ministers (in relation to the NHS for Wales) to provide indemnity for clinical negligence liabilities of healthcare professionals and others arising from NHS activities carried out as part of the response to a coronavirus outbreak.

The clause will provide indemnity for clinical negligence liabilities arising from NHS activities connected to the diagnosis, care and treatment of those who have been diagnosed as having coronavirus disease or who are suspected, or who are at risk, of having the disease.

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