Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[Lootman]

Lootman and CK are correct in saying an all-causes UK daily death rate of 1,500 should get far more media attention, as this equates to about 5 million deaths per annum giving an average UK life expectancy of 13-14 years! Methinks days and weeks are being interchanged.

Your maths is out there by a factor of 10. 1,500 deaths a day is about 500,000 deaths a year, not 5 million,

[Julian]

Oddly i have not noticed the same kind of media skew in the US which has similar Covid and vaccination stats to the UK. There the reporting is much more upbeat. There is the sense there that they have this thing beat rather than the UK view that nothing has really changed and that any day now the plague will return. Maybe we Brits just enjoy misery whilst Americans are endlessly optimistic.

You also see this reflected in policy. In the US planes and hotels are full again, bars and restaurants are open, people are going on holiday, hotels never closed. By comparison the UK is being almost ponderously slow to open up. Although it did amuse me this week seeing some people sitting outside a restaurant eating pizza in the rain.

The US also has about 5 times the per-capita covid case rate, and slightly more than that worse per-capita covid death rate.

So while the message from the media might be more positive, the facts are not.

Is that 5x based on actual tests performed or is it an estimated whole-population rate? If it’s based on number of positive tests then the true figure is probably more like 6x due to the fact that the U.K. testing rate per-capita is about 20% higher than in the US according to Statista - https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... worldwide/

We got a fair amount wrong in the U.K., especially in the early stages, but we’ve done really well fixing the testing where “world beating” is more than empty rhetoric especially wrt our genomic testing.

- Julian

[Lootman]

Oddly i have not noticed the same kind of media skew in the US which has similar Covid and vaccination stats to the UK. There the reporting is much more upbeat. There is the sense there that they have this thing beat rather than the UK view that nothing has really changed and that any day now the plague will return. Maybe we Brits just enjoy misery whilst Americans are endlessly optimistic.

You also see this reflected in policy. In the US planes and hotels are full again, bars and restaurants are open, people are going on holiday, hotels never closed. By comparison the UK is being almost ponderously slow to open up. Although it did amuse me this week seeing some people sitting outside a restaurant eating pizza in the rain.

The US also has about 5 times the per-capita covid case rate, and slightly more than that worse per-capita covid death rate.

So while the message from the media might be more positive, the facts are not.

Is that 5x based on actual tests performed or is it an estimated whole-population rate? If it’s based on number of positive tests then the true figure is probably more like 6x due to the fact that the U.K. testing rate per-capita is about 20% higher than in the US according to Statista - https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... worldwide/

We got a fair amount wrong in the U.K., especially in the early stages, but we’ve done really well fixing the testing where “world beating” is more than empty rhetoric especially wrt our genomic testing.

I don't find stats for the number of cases that interesting. Obviously if you test more people you will find more cases, but that doesn't mean the overall situation is worse. When I have looked at the Covid death rates for the UK and the US they have generally been fairly similar, although the rate varies more in the US because it is so large and most public health policies there are decided locally.

What changes everything of course is vaccinations, and the UK and the US are well ahead of other large countries. It is for that reason that there are discussions going on right now about creating a travel corridor between the UK and the US, possibly from as early as May 17th, to reflect the progress made. As planned that will mean no quarantine with a negative test.

[Julian]

...
What changes everything of course is vaccinations, and the UK and the US are well ahead of other large countries. It is for that reason that there are discussions going on right now about creating a travel corridor between the UK and the US, possibly from as early as May 17th, to reflect the progress made. As planned that will mean no quarantine with a negative test.

Travel corridors (TCs) between countries with similar Covid-19 situations does seem to be the way to go until everywhere can open up which probably won’t be for a while.

What is the US approach to Brazil, South Africa and other countries with high levels of variants of concern (VOC)? If/when the U.K. does start entering into TC agreements I hope a lot of thought is being put into how to ensure that those TCs don’t have “leaks” that expose us to more imported cases of VOC e.g. if someone from Brazil carrying the P.1 strain can easily get into the USA and transit immediately to the U.K.. Maybe the USA already has that covered, I’m genuinely unaware of what border restrictions the USA has in place right now both for entry into the USA and for transit passengers not actually going through US passport control.

- Julian

[murraypaul]

I don't find stats for the number of cases that interesting. Obviously if you test more people you will find more cases, but that doesn't mean the overall situation is worse. When I have looked at the Covid death rates for the UK and the US they have generally been fairly similar, although the rate varies more in the US because it is so large and most public health policies there are decided locally.

Current US covid death rate per capita is around 5-6 times higher than the UK.
Across the entire pandemic, our figures are slightly worse than the US.
We were much worse during the January spike (and the original April one), but much better since.

To try to get away from statistics, given the thread title:
Where I do agree is that looking at 'the US' as though it were one country is a bit like looking at Europe that way, it doesn't really tell you much.
Parts of the US are doing much better than others.
The 'problem' is that they can't just shutdown travel, and that approaches in the different states don't seem to match their own local risks.

[Lootman]

...What changes everything of course is vaccinations, and the UK and the US are well ahead of other large countries. It is for that reason that there are discussions going on right now about creating a travel corridor between the UK and the US, possibly from as early as May 17th, to reflect the progress made. As planned that will mean no quarantine with a negative test.

Travel corridors (TCs) between countries with similar Covid-19 situations does seem to be the way to go until everywhere can open up which probably won’t be for a while.

What is the US approach to Brazil, South Africa and other countries with high levels of variants of concern (VOC)? If/when the U.K. does start entering into TC agreements I hope a lot of thought is being put into how to ensure that those TCs don’t have “leaks” that expose us to more imported cases of VOC e.g. if someone from Brazil carrying the P.1 strain can easily get into the USA and transit immediately to the U.K.. Maybe the USA already has that covered, I’m genuinely unaware of what border restrictions the USA has in place right now both for entry into the USA and for transit passengers not actually going through US passport control.

The US currently bans entry of non-US persons from Brazil, China, Iran, South Africa, Schengen and the UK:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... tries.html

Moreover there are only about a dozen US airports that are processing international arrivals, which means international flights to other US airports are not happening, except for cargo.

Also the US does not differentiate between arriving and transit passengers, since all transit passengers have to go through US immigration and customs before taking onward flights.

[dealtn]

Yes, but absolute data sometimes (always?) needs context and the potential for exponential growth is, in my opinion, a critical differentiating context in this case.

- Julian

It would be like cutting the broadcast from a match before it was over
If your team went 12 goals down in the first half; you would want them to cover the fight back until the whistle blew

-sd

But that's easy to do with a match of a known duration, so possible to know when it's over.

How will "the media" know, or decide, when it is over with Covid? Do we carry on reporting daily Covid death numbers when it is zero, and has been for 50 days? Or do the daily numbers stop being reported in that fashion when it is below 10, and has been for several days? Or something else?

It doesn't seem unreasonable for some people to think we are at that point already. Clearly the news editors don't believe so, although there is still an inbuilt inertia I would think in making any change - much like we still get a prominent "first dose" vaccination number, when the relevance is more on the larger "second dose" number, which isn't always given the same, let alone, greater prominence.

At some point, and it's obvious at least to those editors, that we aren't there yet, the "news" will revert to a "newsworthy" angle. But if you look at the history of topics such as "US elections", "Brexit" etc. it takes a long time for the daily diet to disappear from the news agenda, even on days where there really hasn't been anything incrementally newsworthy to report. It will be the same with Covid.

[Lootman]

How will "the media" know, or decide, when it is over with Covid? Do we carry on reporting daily Covid death numbers when it is zero, and has been for 50 days? Or do the daily numbers stop being reported in that fashion when it is below 10, and has been for several days? Or something else?

The cynical answer is that the media will continue its relentless focus on Covid as long as it is selling papers and attracting eyeballs.

Earlier I blamed the media for effectively brainwashing and scaremongering large sections of the people. But in a sense maybe it is the other way around i.e. that the media is merely responding to what the people wish to consume, and that is evidently an ongoing doomfest. So, the chicken or the egg?

That might also explain the very different approach of the US media, whose content reflects the can-do attitude and optimism of the American people in much the same way as the UK media wallows in the same pit of misery and whinery that the UK populace so loves.

There have been a few days recently when Covid deaths were just 1% of total UK deaths. If not then, then when?

[murraypaul]

There have been a few days recently when Covid deaths were just 1% of total UK deaths. If not then, then when?

a) I think you'd have to be very selectively looking at statistics (which this thread isn't about) to come up with that number. The weekly ONS stats do not back it up.
b) When we know that it will be less than 1% tomorrow, next week, next month?
Rates were low in August and September as well. (Lower than they are now, depending on what measure you are looking at.)
Then they weren't low any more. They they were very high indeed.
If keeping reminding people that covid still exists keeps them acting safely, then we have more chance of getting to that state where we don't need to report them any more.
Being honest, if you had looked at the numbers and charts back in August, wouldn't you have said exactly the same things you are saying now?

[Lootman]

There have been a few days recently when Covid deaths were just 1% of total UK deaths. If not then, then when?

Rates were low in August and September as well. (Lower than they are now, depending on what measure you are looking at.) Then they weren't low any more. They they were very high indeed.

Being honest, if you had looked at the numbers and charts back in August, wouldn't you have said exactly the same things you are saying now?

Being honest, no, I would not, because there was no vaccines back then. The big difference between last August and now is that now we have much more community immunity.

So back then you were merely seeing the temporary effect of a lockdown upon a population with little other protection. Lockdowns do not really do anything other than defer the spread (which is still the strategy in many places).

Now we have millions with immunity through vaccination PLUS millions more who caught the virus since then and so also have some immunity. Also throw in the fact that many of the most vulnerable and susceptible have already been killed off, and the threat now is far lower than last August.

[Steveam]

An interesting article by Tim Harford (The Undercover Economist/Cautionary Tales).
https://timharford.com/2021/04/what-hav ... -of-covid/

Best wishes,

Steve

[XFool]

An interesting article by Tim Harford (The Undercover Economist/Cautionary Tales).
https://timharford.com/2021/04/what-hav ... -of-covid/

"An infamous working paper, “Report 9”, published just over a year ago by the Covid-19 Response Team at Imperial College, predicted: “In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour . . . 81% of the GB and US populations would be infected.” If so, more than 500,000 people would die in the UK alone.

I have read several explanations of why this report was so badly mistaken."

Me too! Regrettably, I expect to read more such "explanations" in the future.

"That is odd — I re-read it this week and it doesn’t seem mistaken at all. The researchers got the big picture right: Covid-19 was highly infectious, killed about 1 per cent of the people infected in the UK and thus could kill a huge number of people if not stopped. Most of those who died would be elderly."

Yeah. But let's not allow facts to get in the way of political baggage...

[Lootman]

An interesting article by Tim Harford (The Undercover Economist/Cautionary Tales).
https://timharford.com/2021/04/what-hav ... -of-covid/

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." – H.L. Mencken.

[Steveam]

I wonder, Lootman, whether you bothered to read the linked article before commenting on it. Your quote, which is a vast insult to many well intentioned people, does not relate to the article.

Best wishes,

Steve

[XFool]

...In my opinion it's a 'motes & beams' situation.

Those who bring their political baggage (and therefore bias) to a practical, real world issue have the problem of explaining why others disagree with their opinions. This can always be accomplished by accusing everyone else of "bias".

[Arborbridge]

How will "the media" know, or decide, when it is over with Covid? Do we carry on reporting daily Covid death numbers when it is zero, and has been for 50 days? Or do the daily numbers stop being reported in that fashion when it is below 10, and has been for several days? Or something else?

The cynical answer is that the media will continue its relentless focus on Covid as long as it is selling papers and attracting eyeballs.

Earlier I blamed the media for effectively brainwashing and scaremongering large sections of the people. But in a sense maybe it is the other way around i.e. that the media is merely responding to what the people wish to consume, and that is evidently an ongoing doomfest. So, the chicken or the egg?

That might also explain the very different approach of the US media, whose content reflects the can-do attitude and optimism of the American people in much the same way as the UK media wallows in the same pit of misery and whinery that the UK populace so loves.

There have been a few days recently when Covid deaths were just 1% of total UK deaths. If not then, then when?

Misery, whinery? Surely you are on a different planet? We've been cautious, hopeful stoic perhaps, but I've seen very little moaning about what we are doing. Indeed, it is said that the government has a high approval rating for its actions with wish that they had gone faster and harder concerning restrictions. As for can-do attitude - we have it too. We have been remarkably eficient in organising the vaccine roll out, often with "can-do" volunteers offering their services, as I know from our superb local clinic where everyone has rallied round. And what could be more optimistic and hopeful than seeing people still enthusiastic about going out, exercising, shopping etc etc.
You won't hold us down just by saying in your opinion we are full of misery or whining - the average person is not, he/she is just getting on with life.

And the media doesn't usually have a relentless focus on anything - it likes a nine day wonder. If it has in this case, it is (as you mention) because people are still interested.

Arb.

[murraypaul]

From the BBC: Happiness reached highest level since summer 2020 - ONS
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-567695 ... type=share



ONS link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 6april2021

Another promising section from the survey:

This week, 94% of adults (the same as last week) reported positive vaccine sentiment; they had now either received at least one dose of a coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine or would be likely (very or fairly likely) to have a vaccine if offered. This includes adults who have accepted and are waiting to receive a vaccine.

This week, as the vaccination programme now progresses to younger age groups, we have looked at how vaccination sentiment by age has changed since early December:

9 in 10 (90%) people aged 30 to 49 years reported positive vaccine sentiment, the same as last week after having slightly fallen from a recent high of 93% in the period 24 to 28 March; this proportion was 74% at the start of the vaccination programme in December 2020.

Almost 9 in 10 (88%) people aged 16 to 29 years reported positive vaccine sentiment – the proportion has been relatively stable in recent weeks; this proportion was 63% at the start of the vaccination programme in December 2020 (Figure 6).

[88V8]

.... the media doesn't usually have a relentless focus on anything - it likes a nine day wonder. If it has in this case, it is (as you mention) because people are still interested.

It's just as well they are still interested, otherwise with the 'unlocking' we'd soon have the R rate above 1 again.
I hope the Beeb keep plugging away.

V8

[dealtn]

.... the media doesn't usually have a relentless focus on anything - it likes a nine day wonder. If it has in this case, it is (as you mention) because people are still interested.

It's just as well they are still interested, otherwise with the 'unlocking' we'd soon have the R rate above 1 again.
I hope the Beeb keep plugging away.

V8

I don't think either you, or I, know when or how the R number will rise and exceed 1 now, given the vaccination roll-out to be honest.

However there is an argument a better way for the public to notice any need for behaviour change would be for Covid to drop out of the news, and then to return if it becomes newsworthy again. The parts of the public that seem to concern you are maybe suffering from "Covid in the News" fatigue. The only reality check and reason they might notice it again, and respond, would be genuine stories about it getting worse again etc. More of the same where today doesn't look that different to yesterday, isn't sufficiently newsworthy to be noticed by them, and responded to.

[Julian]

.... the media doesn't usually have a relentless focus on anything - it likes a nine day wonder. If it has in this case, it is (as you mention) because people are still interested.

It's just as well they are still interested, otherwise with the 'unlocking' we'd soon have the R rate above 1 again.
I hope the Beeb keep plugging away.

V8

Agreed. I wonder if some of the reason for this staying so prominently in the headlines is the mainstream media feeling some sense of social responsibility in terms of delivering the message that we aren't at the finish line yet and there is still a genuine risk that things could take a turn for the worse again. Of course not everyone believes that narrative to varying degrees, from the "we have the vaccines now, problem solved" to the (in my view) totally irrational "I don't believe in the Covid, it's all a hoax" brigade. I do believe the "it's not necessarily over yet" narrative with the emphasis on "not necessarily". The current round of vaccinations might do the trick, or any troublesome emergence of a variant of concern might be slowed enough by general public caution and good contact tracing such that a booster program possibly starting in September arrives in time and is effective enough to head off that problem before it takes us back to lockdown levels. I do however see a few gaps there that if we're not careful we could fall through and after almost 13 months now of very disrupted lifestyles I would hate to fall through such a gap for the want of only a few extra weeks of patience.

The other reason for keeping reporting these very low numbers is that in theory they might be the single most important piece of news out there right now for pretty much everyone in this country because, following the "data not dates" mantra from the government, these numbers are the one thing that will affect how we live our lives in the next few months and whether the May and June unlocks happen on schedule. The trouble here however, and I don't think it's really the media's fault, is that these numbers are being presented each day without context because while we have been told that HMG will "follow the data" to determine (confirm, delay or I think least likely accelerate) the unlock dates, while the government has at least given some info on what data it is looking at (cases, hospitalisations etc) it has not actually given any thresholds or guidance on exactly what it is looking for in that data. The cynic in me wonders whether the government itself has definite metrics.

In fairness for some of its criteria such as variants of concern it must be tricky or impossible to define numerical criteria to be met. Would one create some sort of threat score for each variant based on a weighted total of growth, prevalence, antibody neutralisation ratios etc? Almost certainly not, I throw out that example to illustrate how impractical it probably is to assign objective numerical thresholds for that aspect of the data rather than as a serious suggestion. For other criteria such as hospital admissions however I can see how numerical criteria can be defined, they might still be complicated maybe involving first or even second order derivatives, but since one is dealing with hard data it should be possible. If there aren't specific go/no-go numerical tests for some of the more quantifiable data sets then that makes me very suspicious of the "data not dates" mantra and if such numerical thresholds are defined then are they published anywhere?

If any threshold guidance is available even if for only some of the data categories then I really wish that the mainstream media could find a way to present it so that we could see these daily numbers in the context of the government targets for the various unlock stages because that's what matters most to me right now, that and not blowing it all in a rush of impatience and carelessness over this coming summer.

- Julian