Big Numbers today

[motorbiking]

What assertions do you think you can see in my post?

Do you sometimes see pink elephants?

Thank goodness for ten years of "austerity" (cutting and neglecting public services) eh?

So unrelated then?

 

[motorbiking]

Where is France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Brazil? Why not look at similar populations, wealth, density etc.

 

[JohnD]

So unrelated then?

are you asserting that real-terms cuts in public spending have no effects on public services?

Are you asserting that public services such as healthcare, education and social services are as good for poor people as they are for rich people?

 

[ajohn]

Early and prompt actions is clearly the main thing. Some sort of lockdown. Numbers of people sets the testing that is needed. It's pretty clear now that S Korea managed with 10k a day going 15 and then 20. Their population isn't much smaller than ours. It relies on people self isolating when they should and tracking helps.

Makes me wonder why we need 100k a day but the turn round time is slow. Korea speeded it up. Not sure if that was with mass testing or just some specific device. They did it by increasing the processing temperature.

 

[motorbiking]

Low numbers today

 

[IT Minion]

View attachment 191230

Low numbers today

Weekend numbers.

 

[motorbiking]

Accounted for - still low:

Based on this - Tuesday will be around 550

 

[JohnD]

are those the numbers of "people who died in hospital and had been diagnosed?"

Which we know is an understatement. We don't really know by how much. Probably around 50% of the true figure.

I wonder how Italy would have looked if their published figures had excluded deaths in care homes.

 

[motorbiking]

They have stopped doing that - I think this is all reported deaths now. Thats how we jumped 5,000 in one go. Its worth pointing out that different countries are using different data.

e.g. died with Covid, death caused by Covid etc.

I'm personally less interested in the numbers and more interested in the trend. I also don't think poor Betty who's 93 and died in a care home from organ failure with Covid, helps the data. I'd have preferred them to stick to one source and definition.

Either way IMO I don't think its 1/2 the real number.

 

[ajohn]

They are using all sources for cv deaths now. Motorbiking would care if he was Betty but actually some one like that may not be in the figures.The doubt now on reporting is down to GP's and death certificates - not putting CV19 down when they should. These figures lag well behind anyway.

Personally I have not been too interested in daily deaths. They can take 3 days or more to reach there true total each time one is introduced. There is always a possibility of age groups / people that put themselves in situations where they can / do get infected could be running out. ie no saying what would happen if they were suddenly to all start running around again.

The better off to less well off graphs could also be misleading. Better off detached houses - less well off more cramped / concentrated living.

The slides in the daily brief give better information. This for instance is an earlier one

I think the format may have changes to % of available beds now. I've tried to find out where they are stored - no luck so far.

 

[IT Minion]

I'm more interested in excess mortality. That'll give the best quality data.

 

[SirGalahad]

I'm more interested in excess mortality. That'll give the best quality data.

We will find that out tomorrow. The Gold standard is the ONS data which is 11 days plus about 3 days old to account for the cut off.

The FT modelling indicates we have passed 50k deaths.

 

[motorbiking]

50k excess deaths? That might be true. Heart attacks alone would account for 15-20k

 

[ajohn]

I'm more interested in excess mortality. That'll give the best quality data.

The one that interest me is actual hospital entries but it's only updated weekly.

It indicates an interesting problem though. To do an Asian for want of better word entries need to be low and there needs to be a rapid early reaction. Say a lock down. We are "likely" to be in one when we get back to that level. So repeat the same ones again and again? It seems Singapore didn't. They did what is being mentioned now to get people working again. Shifts, social distancing, self isolation so in that sense no lock down at all. One of the odd things about them as population is about 5.6m was that testing per capita was very high. They also used tracking. Mobile phone and some sort of web page to report isolating.

We now have a test capacity of 5x what S Korea used - 10x times what they started with so perhaps this is what we are heading for at some point. There has been mutterings that we will have an even higher testing capacity as more labs open. I expect Mrs Fish to announce their testing is up shortly when Scotland's opens up.

The graph of hospital entries suggests we might be back to low levels given another 3 weeks of isolation. Hard to be sure, it might just level out. So maybe just some shops may be able to open from this Thursday and various businesses are expected to figure out how people can work during this period. Businesses are complaining that they want some rules but it seems some manufacture is working already. No mention of how many.

Sound like the tracking ap has several weeks of testing at least before that is really available unless it works perfectly first time.

They have just announced easier £50k loans for small businesses to allow them to remain solvent. That doesn't seem to fit in with a rapid change.

 

[IT Minion]

We now have a test capacity of 5x what S Korea used - 10x times what they started with so perhaps this is what we are heading for at some point. There has been mutterings that we will have an even higher testing capacity as more labs open. I expect Mrs Fish to announce their testing is up shortly when Scotland's opens up.

Perhaps, but we probably also have more than 10x the cases. Contact tracing when you've let things go this much would be a nightmare.