Westminstenders: How many Dead Cats Do You Get In A Thunderstorm?

[RedToothBrush]

It never rains. It only pours.

What I wouldn't give for a bit of old fashioned drizzle right now.

4 years on and we are facing a torment of calamities. Brexit, serious political instability in the USA ahead of an election that Trump will refuse to lose even if he does, trade deals with the rest of the world put on 6 week deadlines, anger within the commonwealth, a sick weak dependent PM on the back foot and ill briefed, rampant growing corruption in the Tory party, woke nut jobs out of touch with reality, councils on the brink of bankruptcy and the whole covid-19 crisis.

"stats from Berlin and Hesse had previously been used to represent the whole of Germany"

Maybe for 1 table once back in March / April - and for which newspaper ? - before the national stats were available
and it would be mentioned in the footnotes of any publication except maybe tabloids

When it is not/ no longer mentioned in a quality paper, then an approximation / extrapolation is not used.

The NYT and FT do not have any mention about extrapolation and it would be extraordinary to use this when national data has been available for several weeks.

You really need to produce evidence that this is being used now,
rather than speculation based on what - maybe - one paper once posted 2 months ago

btw, the poor UK govt performance has been written about in many articles by completely different newspapers across the world in Europe, USA, Asia
There has been much criticism of decisions made, delays and the cumbersome centralisation

Law will be changed as COVID-19 spike forces Leicester back into lockdown

We know national lockdown had to be legally enforceable, so it should not be a surprise that local lockdowns need this too

• even more challenging when neighbouring areas are open

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-law-will-be-changed-to-enforce-local-lockdown-in-leicester-health-sec-says-1201781

Hancock said that "in some cases" the coronavirus lockdown will be enforced by the police,
with legal changes brought in to ensure non-essential retail is no longer open.

Maybe for 1 table once back in March/April - and for which newspaper ? - before the national stats were available

Berlin and Hesse still used by EuroMOMO for example - week 26;
www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Leicester Mercury today:

EuroMOMO are an exception and I did not quote them anyway

Law will be changed as COVID-19 spike forces Leicester back into lockdown

Folk do recall the CPS having to scrap all prosecutions under the "changed law" a few weeks back ? Past performance would suggest these laws can be ignored too, when they are bought in.

EUROMOMO calculate P and Z numbers;
they also do age groups which need different datasets to a simple comparison of total deaths

I think only Hessen and Berlin have the age group detail required for EUROMOMO

The FT graphs show several previous years in light grey - it's not always obvious exactly how many previous years, because in most months of most years, mortality follows the multi-annual trend very closely, and the lines all overlap.

It's worth saying that even excess mortality charts are probably underestimating covid mortality in the first half of 2020 as there is evidence that mortality from other causes falls during lockdown (some of this "benefit" will be reversed later of course).

The Leicester lockdown is utterly pointless unless all decision making is localised
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53220180

All it will do is cause more tension and friction

Covid-19 intensifies elder abuse globally as hospitals prioritise young

This is what happens - and probably happened in N Italy - when a country can't cope with the number of COVID cases

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/30/covid-19-intensifies-elder-abuse-globally-as-hospitals-prioritise-young

Older patients turned away or left untreated, while domestic abuse is also rising, leading charity reports

Even for an exceptionally bad year like 2020, excess deaths for the period might be 50% higher, which averages out to about 10%.

From my link, a crude calculation (France - 66m population) the difference between a 2 year average (2017/2018) and a five year average is approximately 20,000 deaths per year.

"a crude calculation (France - 66m population) the difference between a 2 year average (2017/2018) and a five year average is approximately 20,000 deaths

The NYT plots show several different years
and the "bad" years are for winter or (for heat waves) July / August, v little in the COVID period

You need to find some respected (not far right wingnuts) epidemiologists or statisticians who say the UK stats are anything but much worse than most other comparable countries

UK public health experts - and govt ministers like Hancock -have been saying all along that excess deaths are the measure for performance

Do you think UK and world experts are wrong ?

Bloomberg: Boris Johnson's Team Is Broken by the Virus and losing faith

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/coronavirus-uk-boris-johnson-s-team-is-broken-and-losing-faith

Whilst this is all very tedious interesting, it does make me wonder what your actual point is, Clavinova. Some data has limitations therefore.... ? What? We still have the highest death rate in Europe. I don't recall you complaining back when UK figures only included deaths (1) in hospital (2) with a positive covid test.

Economist Baghot: Boris Johnson loses his grip

https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/06/20/boris-johnson-loses-his-grip

The prime minister’s poor management of the covid crisis is undermining his ability to govern
.....
Mr Johnson’s poor handling of the crisis has wrecked the government’s most important asset, its sense of authority.

The government may already have lost the public: ratings for “being in charge of the situation” have been negative since May.

It is beginning to lose its own party, too.
Tory mps have a litany of complaints about government policies.
.......
Habitual critics of Mr Johnson ask:
what did you expect?

Others are “worse than despondent”, says one.
“Despondent implies that you think that there might be a way out.”

Honeysuckle - I was just about to post the same about the tediousness of Clavinova's stats. What is achieved by nitpicking over what Germany does or doesn't do, apart from trying to prove true Brexit credentials?

I live in the UK - I want to know what my own Government is doing. I would like to be reassured that they are making the best use of the knowledge available, not being driven by political ideology.

It doesn't comfort me either that the UK is making a mess but the USA is making an even bigger mess.

At the moment I am much more concerned about Brexit than COVID in the UK.
If Johnson gets away with his no deal wet dreams
the shops will empty and stay empty at the end of the year

"back when UK figures only included deaths (1) in hospital"

Many people still think that deaths peaked at below 900.
In fact the peak was 64% higher

Funnily enough, care home deaths were only added later, once the total was below this

The official govt figures through the worst of the crisis period seriously underplayed the real situation:

22 consecutive days of over 1,000 deaths peaking at 1445 on 8 April

How bad could it get?

I manage my mental health by thinking of worst and best-case scenarios, then aiming for a mid-way point.

Best case: we get a vaccine in the next few months and deaths do not exceed 1 million. The world recovers gradually in the next two years. A green recovery gathers pace with pedestrianised cities, flexible working and electric cars becoming normal by 2030. Africa and Asia is spared the worst of the crisis.

Worst case scenario: there are delays to the vaccine roll-out and coronavirus becomes a regular reoccurrence, alongside seasonal flu and malaria in a number of countries. It takes 5 years to bring the pandemic under control and up to 10 to stamp it out. 700 million dead (1% of the global population). The pandemic shreds healthcare systems across the globe, most notably India, USA and Brazil. It takes a decade to recover from the economic fallout with a number of countries falling under autocratic rule, worsened by lack of healthcare, rising temperatures and access to food and water. Regional wars break out but thankfully, no nuclear exchanges. Children who come of age during this era are referred to as the Depressed Generation with fewer prospects and interrupted education.

The point, as always, is obfuscation by wordclouds of ink. Or, if you like, fur-flurries of squirrels.

Honeysuckle - I was just about to post the same about the tediousness of Clavinova's stats. What is achieved by nitpicking over what Germany does or doesn't do, apart from trying to prove true Brexit credentials?

It's just another facet of the "but Corbyn ..." school of debate.

listening Even No Deal Brexit is minor compared to COVID, at least an order of magnitude less serious

e.g. Germany previous est. 0.7% loss of GDP due to Brexit, but now est. 6.5% loss due to COVID and Brexit effect is just statistical noise.

• and Brexit won't kill thousands of Germans

Brexit does not damage the world outside the UK and EU;
being in a deep global recession / depression is much more serious wrt trade

TBH I am bored of Covid taking over these threads yet again.
It has its own board.
It has its own stats threads
The minutiae of numbers can go over there

The fact that David Frost has been put into Mark Sedwill's post should be the concern for this thread
IMHO

stuart mcdonald @ActuaryByDay

Over the last five weeks, non-COVID deaths have been around 95% of the 5yr average.
That’s about the same as they were before the pandemic.

So I’m not seeing any evidence supporting the idea that many of those who died during the COVID peak would otherwise have died around now.
......
non-COVID deaths are about 5% lower than average, just as they were between Jan and mid March.

TBH I am bored of Covid taking over these threads yet again.

It's a reflection of where Brexit sits in the global scale of things.

Bear in mind when Brexit was a thing, how many MNetters got fed up of it in non-Brexit forums like AIBU.