The Lemon Fool

zico wrote:
Death rate = 4,034/73,000 = 5.5% in 2 months (equating to 33% per year).

zico wrote:
We have evidence from the USA which lifted restrictions early, had an initial surge in cases, and after the inevitable lag, these increased cases are now causing an increase in deaths.

dealtn wrote:

zico wrote:
Death rate = 4,034/73,000 = 5.5% in 2 months (equating to 33% per year).

Again, I'm trying not to be picky (honestly!) but you really can't do that statistically, unless you are sure you have a linearly driven probability distribution over time, and frankly that's unlikely. You can't just multiply by 6 to make that an annual rate.

What is probably more likely is that for those surviving 28 days (the measure) there is a higher risk of dying on day 29, than day 365. In the same way that we have mortally tables that show a 90 year old more likely to die "tomorrow" than a 30 year old, you will have a mortality effect where you are more likely to die of a relapse, or complication from the possible effects of treatment/surgery closer to the date of that treatment/surgery.

Statistics, particularly in "real life" are complex.

zico wrote:The point remains that people who are being classed as "recovered" or "didn't die of Covid" have experienced a death rate over 60% higher than that of 90+ year olds

Discussion
This paper does not prove that the peak in fatal infections in England and Wales preceded lockdown
by several days. Indeed the failure to undertake the sampling that could have gathered data to directly
measure infections early in the epidemic means that it will never be possible to be certain about timings,
given the substantial biases in clinical data other than deaths and fatal disease duration. What the results
show is that, in the absence of strong assumptions, the currently most reliable data strongly suggest
that the decline in infections in England and Wales began before full lockdown, and that community
infections, unlike deaths, were probably at a low level well before lockdown was eased. Furthermore,
such a scenario would be consistent with the infection profile in Sweden, which began its decline in fatal
infections shortly after the UK, but did so on the basis of measures well short of full lockdown.
These facts may have implications for the policies to be adopted in subsequent infection waves,
particularly given the peculiar ethical issues associated with lockdown. For example, a plausible estimate
of the life loss burden from an unmitigated COVID-19 epidemic in the UK is about 2 weeks per person5
.
A plausible lower bound on the UK life loss from the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath is 7 weeks
per person6
. The economic shock from lockdown is substantially larger than 2008: Bank of England
projections suggest the largest shock for 100 or 300 years. Viewed another way, stringent suppression
measures might save 2 million UK life years, but the same UK population was on course to suffer around
200 million lost life years associated with economic deprivation and inequality before the COVID-19
crisis7
: carefully balanced policy is required to ensure that the suppression measures do not exacerbate
this by much more than one percent and lead to a net loss of life. Similarly the implied willingness to
pay to save a life year from COVID-19 appears to be an order of magnitude higher than the usual UK
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence threshold used for other diseases8
. Delayed health
interventions for serious conditions, although difficult to mitigate, represent a further life loss burden.

Itsallaguess wrote:
It means the UK is now seeing four times as many cases on average as it was in mid July.

dealtn wrote:

Itsallaguess wrote:
It means the UK is now seeing four times as many cases on average as it was in mid July.

Do we know what the number of tests per day was in July, and compared to now?

Itsallaguess wrote:I'm not sure, and there may well be an element of 'seek and ye shall find' in this increase in UK cases, but given that we've heard from Jonathan Van-Tam and Chris Whitty in the last 24-hours, both expressing serious concern over the rapid rise in UK cases in recent days, then I'd imagine they'd take that aspect into consideration before doing so, and perhaps caveat any concern with any testing-related influence, but they didn't seem to do that -

The latest "big change" in coronavirus infections across the UK is of "great concern", England's deputy chief medical officer has warned.

Prof Jonathan Van Tam said people have "relaxed too much" over the summer and "we have got to start taking this very seriously again".

If not, the UK will have "a bumpy ride over the next few months", he warned. He said that infections among younger people in EU countries had later filtered through to older age groups.

dealtn wrote:

Itsallaguess wrote:
It means the UK is now seeing four times as many cases on average as it was in mid July.

Do we know what the number of tests per day was in July, and compared to now?

vrdiver wrote:
If I remember correctly, wasn't July when we had ramped up to 100,000 tests per day? I saw a news comment yesterday saying we were now achieving 170,000 tests per day.

There was also the issue that the test stations could handle more tests, but the laboratories couldn't process them, hence the current reporting that some test stations are relatively quiet.

VRD

vrdiver wrote:

dealtn wrote:

Itsallaguess wrote:
It means the UK is now seeing four times as many cases on average as it was in mid July.

Do we know what the number of tests per day was in July, and compared to now?

If I remember correctly, wasn't July when we had ramped up to 100,000 tests per day? I saw a news comment yesterday saying we were now achieving 170,000 tests per day.

There was also the issue that the test stations could handle more tests, but the laboratories couldn't process them, hence the current reporting that some test stations are relatively quiet.

VRD