Data and Analysis Thread, started Oct 29

[PatriciaHolm]

With a link to the previous header for all the great links to data -

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4057030-Pure-data-thread-1-Daily-numbers-graphs-focused-analyses?

And with a polite plea to keep the focus on data and analysis if you please.

thanks all

@wintertravel1980

I can only think of one densely populated Western country that has managed this pandemic significantly better than anyone else. It is Germany.

UK numbers on a relative basis are not that different from Italy, Spain or France. Yes, France looked better/lower in summer but it is now going through a very tough second wave. By the way, they have also identified a major backlog of cases this week (similarly to what happened in the UK a few weeks ago). Everyone is struggling and everyone makes mistakes (often - fatal mistakes).

No, we've done terribly badly. 740 Covid-19 deaths per million of population (and that's just counting the ones within 28 days of a positive test -- there are over 60,000 where it's mentioned on the death certificate, so over 10,000 aren't being counted in that figure although we have some certainty that those deaths are linked to Covid).

Of the other European countries, only Spain and Belgium have done worse on deaths -- and both are somewhat ahead of us into their second wave.

Although Canada isn't densely populated per square kilometre, in reality most citizens live in urban areas -- they have only 281 deaths per million population

Sweden -- 601

Germany -- 142

Australia -- 35

New Zealand -- 5

I know 595 deaths looks high but same day last week was 492 and there has been an increase of 33% on average this week. So 33% increase on 492 would’ve been 654. I know it’s just one days data but hopefully the increase is slowing as a result of the tiered approach and we will soon see an actual decrease.

Also, why are we only comparing to densely-populated Western countries? We should really be holding ourselves up to the high standards of countries like Taiwan (0.3), Hong Kong (14), Singapore (5). All densely populated but with much more successful containment strategies than the ones employed by our government.

I won't mention China as there is some doubt over the reliability over their figures, but all of the other countries I mention have reliable figures and extensive testing.

They are only offering mass testing of students in high risk areas apparently (reported by BBC). And to vulnerable students.

Italy - 711
France - 646

I am afraid Italy and France might have a tougher second wave than what we are seeing in the UK.

We could have never been Australia or New Zealand. Everyone praises New Zealand for their “prompt and timely” response but they forget Jacinda Arden only announced full lockdown on March 23 (i.e. on the same date as the UK). New Zealand had a big advance of time which they were able to leverage wisely and effectively. We did not have this luxury.

I fully agree Germany handled the pandemic exceptionally well. However, they appear an outlier.

... big advantage of time....

Per capita figures for European countries:
ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-deaths-per-million-exemplars?yScale=log&time=2020-11-01..latest&country=DNK~FIN~NOR~SWE~AUT~BGR~HRV~CZE~DEU~GRC~ISL~ITA~POL~ROU~SVK~ESP~CHE~BEL~FRA~NLD~LUX~PRT~SVN~GBR

I think tiers weren't enough (and I'd respect the CMO's opinion on that).

But the data (rather than personal opinions/expert judgments) seems to suggest the tiers might have been enough (even if CMO and CSO did not believe they would work). Tim Spector who is normally pretty conservative mentioned multiple times that based on his data R in England fell to 1 on the last day of October.

We might have needed some national measures but a full lockdown (including closure of non essential shops that hardly contribute to COVID transmission) might have been an overreaction. Netherlands were able to turn the tide just by imposing restrictions on hospitality. Germany is also following a “lockdown lite” approach.

@wintertravel1980

Italy - 711 France - 646

I am afraid Italy and France might have a tougher second wave than what we are seeing in the UK.

We could have never been Australia or New Zealand. Everyone praises New Zealand for their “prompt and timely” response but they forget Jacinda Arden only announced full lockdown on March 23 (i.e. on the same date as the UK). New Zealand had a big advance of time which they were able to leverage wisely and effectively. We did not have this luxury.

I fully agree Germany handled the pandemic exceptionally well. However, they appear an outlier.

Well, at the moment they're certainly still doing better than us.

Of course we could have been an Australia or New Zealand. We knew about this from January. I advised my vulnerable mother to begin isolating from late February. It was hardly a surprise. Our government could have made altogether different choices.

British people aren't particularly unlucky or susceptible to Covid, we just have a shoddy government.

I think it will depend on whether Italy locks down again. Certainly if they do a full lockdown including schools, they may still reduce their deaths more than our UK lockdown where everyone is still going to school and university.

Stupid question alert...

I understand the concept of R- I think! If R were to as be 1 at present would that mean the number of daily new cases would continue run at the same level (ie 20,000 ish a day) as every infected person would, infect one other? It that what is happening now with the levelling of cases?

I advised my vulnerable mother to begin isolating from late February. It was hardly a surprise. Our government could have made altogether different choices.

By late February COVID was already circulating in the UK. Previously we thought the first COVID related death in the UK occurred on March 5 in South East. Now the NHS info shows us that by March 5 there had already been 5 unrelated deaths in 4 (!) different regions (East of England, Midlands, South East, North West). These numbers indicate there was broad community spread happening in the middle of February (and before that).

Of course, there are actions we could have taken earlier (e.g. we could have banned large events or we could have accelerated the lockdown by one week). However, it would have turned us into France, not New Zealand, Australia or Canada. The virus by that time had already been too wide spread.

@wintertravel1980

I advised my vulnerable mother to begin isolating from late February. It was hardly a surprise. Our government could have made altogether different choices.

By late February COVID was already circulating in the UK. Previously we thought the first COVID related death in the UK occurred on March 5 in South East. Now the NHS info shows us that by March 5 there had already been 5 unrelated deaths in 4 (!) different regions (East of England, Midlands, South East, North West). These numbers indicate there was broad community spread happening in the middle of February (and before that).

Of course, there are actions we could have taken earlier (e.g. we could have banned large events or we could have accelerated the lockdown by one week). However, it would have turned us into France, not New Zealand, Australia or Canada. The virus by that time had already been too wide spread.

I completely disagree. If track and trace had been effective in the early stages, as an island, we would have been in a significantly better position than France -- it shares a border with Italy, where the European outbreaks started first.

I can't imagine we could have done quite as well as Germany without their extremely effective health system, but certainly we could have done a lot better than we did in preventing spread.

You can see clearly from the death statistics and how they differ between Canada and the USA that this is not first and foremost about geographical spread but about an effective response from governments.

@wintertravel1980

data shows that in the MSOA where I live cases were shooting up. Then came the 2 weeks half term break and by end of last week numbers halved.
Mid-week (now) numbers are on the rise again. Nothing else has changed in this area. People's behaviour is exactly the same as before nov 5, our tiny high street has all but 2 shops open (our local yarn shop closed forever in july. I'm heartbroken and the other is the bookshop :( ). So numbers have had to change because of the kids not being in. (well, logic dictates anyway)

Canada has a much better funded and effective health system than the US.

Canada does not have NYC which was hit particularly hard during the pandemic.

I agree the effectiveness of government response is a major factor but I do not think we could have done “Jacinda Arden” back in early March. We are an island but we are too closely connected with the rest of the world and our level of community spread by then was already too high.

I guess we are just agreeing to disagree on this point.

This is cool:

maps.wandsworth.gov.uk/map/Aurora.svc/run?script=%5CAurora%5Cpublic_census.AuroraScript%24&nocache=c7e1f1cc-750d-b5a0-e689-834fbd664ccd&resize=always&x=522613.249&y=176811.327&scale=16384

you can put in other postcodes and then show on the map population type density (over 70/80/...), deprivation index, learning stuff....

Higher number of younger deaths recently than I expected (40s etc): www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

Higher number of younger deaths recently than I expected (40s etc)

It looks to match the ratio of deaths in the early days of march/april, but it's worse than the later weeks in May/June - my hypothesis for this is the failure to defend care homes during April/May, so the virus continued to spread among the elderly when it wasn't in the general population.

A much higher proportion of the covid deaths are also happening in hospital, not care homes, even compared to later in May/June when there was much lower occupancy levels in the hospitals. So either care homes are better protected, or patients are moving from care homes into hospital in a way they didn't before.

TheSunIsStillShining You have no pubs/restaurants in your area?

@Bp14 Yes you have understood R correctly. If R was 1 exactly we'd see roughly the same number of people catching Covid each day, rates would be neither rising or falling because each person would on average infect one new person. And across the UK as a whole that does indeed seem to be what we're seeing currently.

If you look at the local data though you can see rates falling (so R under 1) in many of the places where they were previously highest - such as Manchester and Liverpool, which does suggest that the tier 3 restrictions were sufficient to bring cases down. Cases are rising fastest (r well above 1) in many areas that previously had the lowest levels, which suggests that tier 1 restrictions were not sufficient to keep cases down. I think we could have stuck with the tiered system, but most areas would probably have ended up in tier 3 eventually. I don't think it's easy to see from the data whether tier 2 would have been sustainable. We'll need to find something that is though, for the next few months until the proportion of people vaccinated is sufficient to dampen the spread.

@wintertravel1980

I agree to an extent. I think there are many (many!) things we can criticise the government for with respect to its response but I'm not sure we were ever likely to benefit from our island status in the way that NZ did.

I think the principal reason for that is our almost complete reliance on imports by road. I think lots of people would be surprised by just how much of our food is imported from Europe by road (also a major Brexit problem as an aside..) Thousands of lorries coming in daily. It would have been impossible to effectively quarantine the drivers. NZ are so remote that it's a completely different ballgame.

@TheSunIsStillShining

If the rise were solely down to schools I would have thought we would be seeing significant rises in the younger age ranges and I'm not sure that we are to be honest? This chart from RP131 on Twitter shows today's positive's by age compared to last week. It's up and down in various age ranges across the regions. I can't see that school age children are on the up more than any other age range particularly?

@Firefliess I’m not sure the vaccine would dampen spread though. As I understand it the vaccine stops vaccinated people having symptoms and therefore keeps them safe but doesn’t stop them catching and spreading the virus. If that is true it won’t have any effect on R but will prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.

Sunshine,

Children have somewhat different symptoms from the 'big 3' and many are asymptomatic. It may therefore be that spread VIA schools (at the school gates; via childcare; via asymptomatic children taking infection home) is more visible than infection IN schools?

@cantkeepawayforever

If that is the case then hopefully the mass testing will start to pick it up. The data doesn't show it at the moment as far as I can see.