Are Scottish COVID19 rates really 5x lower than the U.K.?

[Y0uCann0tBeSer10us]

The UKSA suggests they might not be.

From the article: “On its claim that prevalence of the virus is five times lower than in England, the Scottish Government said the figure was based on “upper prevalence estimates” for Scotland published by its own statisticians, which was then compared with separate Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.

However, Jamie Jenkins, a former head of health analysis at the ONS, said the comparison was “not ideal” as different methodology had been used for both numbers.

The Scottish figure was based on an epidemiological model, while the statistics for England was based on sample testing of a small number of people, meaning a wider estimated range for infection rates.

Statisticians generally caution against making comparisons when different methodology has been used, and it remains unclear why the Scottish Government used the upper rather than central estimates in its comparisons.

Mr Jenkins said: “I think it would be better and fairer for the Scottish Government to compare their number to the same number for England using a similar epidemiological model.””

Also from the article: “The Scottish Conservatives said the latest ONS data actually suggested 0.025 per cent of people had the virus in England. On Wednesday, Ms Sturgeon claimed the figure for Scotland was 0.028 per cent.” Without comparing like for like it’s hard to know, but rates might not be that different after all.

At best this is a dodgy use of statistics, at worst a cynical attempt to deflect from failings by trying to suggest the Scottish ‘method’ is so much more successful.

www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/world/europe/coroanvirus-scotland-england.html#click=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FjiJDNTwcdP&commentsContainer

The statistics quoted in the article

Deaths per 100k population
England - 71
Scotland - 46

Similarly, confirmed infections per 100k population
England 10.8
Scotland 1.6

In recent months, the difference is even more stark - policies and rates did not begin to diverge until after the peak had arrived.

The plateau of the peak lasted an extra three weeks in England, compared to Scotland.

Current 7-day rolling averages,
new cases per 100k
England 10.8
Scotland 1.6
new confirmed deaths, per 100k
England 1.73

Scotland 0.16

I'm more concerned with death rates than infection rates, and we seem to be well down on English numbers.

The problem with statistics is that they can be made to show anything depending on how they are presented and it's therefore difficult to do a direct comparison even if you use the same calculations. England has over 10 times the population but you can't just compare Scotland and say it should have about 10th of the same rates and if it's lower assume it's better or vice versa. You need to consider population density, levels of poverty, levels of BAME and social norms that may be different as well as different times of spread, potential different strains of disease, demographic age ranges, level of underlying health issues and peoples awareness of those etc etc.

Scotland should have done better as is has the advantage rather than the disadvantage on a number of factors but there are also a lot of unknowns. it's definitely worth investigating why some countries have done better than others as I think living with covid 19 and other future pandemics will have to happen in some form, the world wont be able to keep shutting down as deaths from other causes including cancers, mental health issues and poverty will blow those from covid out of the water.

@WaxOnFeckOff how could Scotland have done better?

[quote dogperson05]@WaxOnFeckOff how could Scotland have done better? [/quote]
??

I wasn't saying it should have done better (but does Nike, the care homes scandal etc mean anything?) I was saying when comparing it with England it should have done better regardless of approach as many of the factors that affect infection levels etc are more prevalent in England.

We undoubtedly have lower death rates than England, most likely because we are more sparsely populated and locked down earlier in the cycle. From the article that @MumofHunter posted:

^Its reported death rate of 46 per 100,000 is far lower than the 71 per 100,000 in England. But it is on a par with France and higher than Northern Ireland. England has 56 million people, compared with Scotland’s 5.4 million. It is sparsely populated, without a metropolis like London, where the outbreak exploded in early March. Fortunate timing may have spared it the worst.

“Scotland was six or seven days behind London,” said Mark Woolhouse, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. “That is a very long time, if the epidemic is doubling every three or four days.” Scotland’s experience, he added, was not “particularly better or worse than other European countries.”^

That article doesn’t mention any infection rates that I can see, but there are questions over how reliable that comparison (infection rates) is with England anyway as the methods differ. If we’re talking about confirmed infections by test, Scotland has consistently been testing fewer people per 100k of population than England which will obviously find fewer positive cases. Also, as we know, the England infection rate is inflated by hotspots like Leicester, and most of England has similar infection rates to us as this map shows.

This all matters because the 5x lower rate has been repeatedly quoted by the FM to justify not ruling out quarantine from England, and it’s been suggested (again by the FM) that this supposedly massively lower infection rate is because of her policies. As the article @MumofHunter alluded to, this has been used as a political dog whistle so the numbers need to be accurate.

Was the care home crisis a uniquely Scottish thing?

Was the care home crisis a uniquely Scottish thing?

(unless I am now completely confused) Poster was asking how Scotland could have done better and not in the context of how Scotland has theoretically done better than England. I'm not aware of whether England also emptied it's hospitals of untested elderly patients into care homes in the middle of a pandemic so can't comment on that.

Certainly the Scottish handling of the virus has been miles better. Much clearer in terms of communicating what we were allowed / not allowed etc.

Sadly the care home issue not unique to Scotland. All countries in UK made the mistake. I seem to remember, though I could be wrong, the medical scientists taking the lead on this one, arguing that the best place for sick folk was at home 🤨

Much clearer in terms of communicating what we were allowed / not allowed etc.

I think at times it has but at other times it's been no better. My English colleagues don't seem to have any issue understanding, I'm at the point where i've lost the plot as to how many people I can see indoors or out and as everyone seems to be doing what they want anyway, I guess it doesn't matter. I'm not really affected too much by that as don't live local to family or main friends so don't meet them in groups anyway.

Waiting for a while before having a big get together and will check what is allowed when I need to.

Taking the figures quoted for deaths per 100,000 population. It seems the NYT article linked above is using the lower, and incomplete, total number of deaths figure that only covers those that recorded a positive COVID test. This is the figure quoted daily by NS (currently 2,490) always with the caveat “under that measurement”. So it’s easy for posters here, for the travelling tabby, and for the NYT journalist of the linked article, to assume that is the actual figure - or for whatever reason to present that as the actual figure.

The National Records for Scotland (NRS) includes in the COVID deaths figure all deaths where COVID was recorded on the death certificate so is more complete/accurate, particularly in the context of very low numbers of tests carried out in Scotland compared to other parts of the U.K. By that more complete measure NRS has the total deaths figure in Scotland to 5th July of 4,173 (against the current “under that measurement” total of 2,490) With the NRS figure the number of deaths per 100,000 population comes out at 76, which is rather a lot higher than 46.

www.nrscotland.gov.uk/covid19stats

As a caveat to comparing that against the figure given for England of 71 deaths per 100,000 population (by previous poster and in the NYT article linked), it seems that the figures given by NHS England did not initially include those where there was no positive test but COVID was suspected, though these have been included in figures from 28 April onwards.

Which all really goes to prove the point made in the telegraph article quoted by the OP - there is no point in comparing data, and drawing any conclusions on who is coming out best, when different measurements and methodology are used. And honestly, it’s lower than low to make political capital out of the deaths of thousands of people, wherever in the U.K. those people are.

And I do think we all should be a bit more questioning of what we are being told - when NS announces a figure for COVID deaths “under that measurement” - we should be questioning why we are given that figure and finding out for ourselves what the total under other sorts of measurement might be.

I think discharging elderly patients to care home from hospitals was a UK-wide mistake, although (certainly a few weeks ago) a much high proportion of Scottish deaths were care home related, suggesting it might have been worse up here.

I agree that Nicola Sturgeon comes across better than Boris generally (although that’s a very low bar!), but in fairness I think that once restrictions eased the message has been equally clear/muddled across the U.K. When the message is essentially ‘stay at home’ it’s hard to get that wrong, but when you introduce shades of grey it inevitably gets more confusing. Scotland opened up later so had a longer period of ‘clear’ messaging, but at this point in time my Scottish friends seem to have just as many questions about what is ‘allowed’ as my English ones, and just as many gripes about contradictions.

"Excess deaths" seems to be the preferred measure. On that basis Scotland is no different to England. In fact we are much closer to London and the South East than the South West.

Per ONS and NRS figures. The NYT / FT etc flex the figures to fit the narrative and routinely compare apples and oranges over differing time frames. Scotland's "announced deaths" are around half the 4k or so recorded on death certificates per NRS or excess deaths of 4.8k also per NRS. (London has almost twice our population and excess deaths of around 9k, the South West has roughly the same population as Scotland but excess deaths of around 3k). Therefore Scotland looks to be in the same ballpark as the rest of the country.

With differing testing protocols and estimation methods and generally low levels of incidence, enhancing the effect of testing inconsistencies and false positives, comparisons are difficult and unlikely to be robust.

Thankfully it's easy enough to look up! Pretty clear guidelines from a Scottish Government written down on all social media. Not sure if the same exists for England. I would assume so but I can't find anything.

I think discharging elderly patients to care home from hospitals was a UK-wide mistake, although (certainly a few weeks ago) a much high proportion of Scottish deaths were care home related, suggesting it might have been worse up here.

Or that we had fewer community deaths. If this was a straight proportional figure then it could be interpreted either way.

See to be honest I think when the dust settles and all the little differences are taken into account the vast majority of countries will show similar I think.

Maybe a few notable exceptions like Germany maybe

Very interesting that the overall COVID deaths appear to be roughly the same per 100k population as the rest of the U.K. I wonder why this isn’t discussed more in the media, it seems like an obvious question to ask when NS is stating how much better Scotland is doing than England.

See to be honest I think when the dust settles and all the little differences are taken into account the vast majority of countries will show similar I think.

I agree.

You want it specifically discussed in the media that Scotland is doing roughly the same as England?

NS is stating how much better Scotland is doing than England.

Do you have w link for that? Genuinely haven't heard her say that. Awful if she has.

Nicola Sturgeon has repeatedly referred to infection and death rates in Scotland vs England, like here:

“On a day when the First Minister announced no deaths registered for the first time on a weekday since lockdown began, she said that in terms of driving down coronavirus Scotland was doing better than was the case south of the border.

Ms Sturgeon said: “England is lagging behind Scotland in suppressing this virus. Deaths are lower, and cases are lower, in Scotland than in England.””

Plus of course there is all the recent talk of Scotland’s infection rates being 5 times lower (articles above) which has drawn criticism from the statistics watchdog.

Well to be fair, while I think when we look back on this in a year or five or ten, you are probably right, but what she is saying now is correct. There is a higher incidence of infection and death in England. I don't think that's her claiming victory in a competition tbh. Just a statement of fact at this point.

I think in the context of assertions that Scotland is doing so much better than England, it should be pointed out that deaths are roughly the same, yes. Otherwise these misleading impressions go unchallenged and you get people like those on the border convinced that the English are dripping with virus and set to infect us all.

But the deaths adjusted for population are roughly the same, England doesn’t have a higher proportion of deaths.

We will have to agree to disagree on whether her announcements are political, I think she’s trying to paint the English as an incompetent/dangerous population Scotland needs to protect itself from with an eye on next year’s election and, of course, the Indy cause.

Just a statement of fact at this point. Well, true in the sense that the actual number is higher which given they have over 10 times the population...