COVID19

[kukushkin88]

We need to wait to have the Inquiries, but we know already that the UK outcome has been an abysmal failure.

The UK has a far bigger population but, apart from that, there are many similarities between the two countries. Yet, the death rate per 1,000 from Covid in the UK is more than twice that of Ireland. (We know the UK's figures are vastly understated, probably by at least 60%, and maybe up to 100%, but I'm not sure there's any reason to think that Ireland is any better in that regard.)

So why is Ireland's performance so much better than the UK's? Mainly because it reacted quicker and closed everything down a week before the UK. That's not it dispute.

Have a read of this: https://twitter.com/laineydoyle/status/1249127908876128259

However, it's not that Ireland's performance has outstandingly good. It has actually been terrible, one of the worst in the world. So what does that say about the UK's, to be so much worse? We don't have to wait to know whether it has been bad. In fact, we don't have to wait to know some of the reasons. However, we should wait to go through the process, unless there are aspects of the investigation that can help at this stage. However, while Irish performance may have been bad, it is getting better, with one of the highest rates of testing per thousand in the world in the last week. Why can't we match that?

Drive-through testing centre in Croke Park:

If the Irish have one of the highest rates of testing in the world isn’t that why death rate is better than UK?  The more people you test the more mild symptom cases you capture.  Or am I missing something?

The people with mild symptoms aren't going to be the ones who died.

That would affect the results if you're looking at the number who died out of those infected rather than per capita.

However.

The twitter thread that is attached can basically be summed up by: UK has a worse per capita death rate than Ireland, Ireland introduced restrictions earlier therefore the UK introduced restrictions too late.

To expand on why the important factors are important.

The first thing any country should do in an epidemic is track and trace every imported case into their country.

But this virus was around for an unknown amount of time before it was officially announced.

The UK and China are both in the top 10 of tourist destinations in the world, and Heathrow by itself has over twice as many passengers as the whole of Ireland.

Therefore it's reasonable to assume that when track and tracing started there was already a higher number of infections in the UK than there was in Ireland.

The UK also has over twice the population density as Ireland. The virus needs people to spread, the more people you have in the smaller amount of space, the more it'll spread.

This is a complicated factor because obviously you could have a desert occupying half your country and mega metropolises in the other half for example, but in general it would also be reasonable to assume that the virus spreads faster in the UK.

So the UK will have started with a higher number than Ireland and it will have spread faster.

The other thing to take into account is that epidemics start off with exponential growth so a per capita comparison (a linear comparison) doesn't particularly help. If you have double the amount to start with - you are going to have more than double the amount after a while, a per capita comparison doesn't take into account the change over time.

Finally, the big factor that is under reported is luck.

Of the first 100 people who bring a virus into a country.
0 to a 100 of them might think - I'm ill I'll go to a doctor
0 to a 100 of them might think - it's not too bad I'll manage
0 to a 100 of them might be single people with no family and not much of a social circle
0 to a 100 of them might have large families and large social circles.

The balance of answers to questions like these will vastly affect the path of the epidemic.

But in summary, the reason why the newspapers aren't leading on the difference between Ireland and the UK is because it's a terrible comparison to make and it just won't sell papers.

Morning all

Patient 31 is an interesting story regarding the ‘luck’ element of spread. The likelihood of multiple super spreaders in London/NYC/Madrid is very high.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020/03/31-south-korea-sudden-spike-coronavirus-cases-200303065953841.html

[Doobs]

There are two factors that affect the spread of Covid19

One. How dense the population is

Two. How dense the population is

There is some truth in this, but the Hong Komg and Singapore experience shows this to be pretty inaccurate. 

I wouldn't want to be in a London tower block though.

[kukushkin88]

There are two factors that affect the spread of Covid19

One. How dense the population is

Two. How dense the population is

There is some truth in this, but the Hong Komg and Singapore experience shows this to be pretty inaccurate. 

I wouldn't want to be in a London tower block though.

It's meant to be a joke, with a tweak on the punctuation to indicate that we're talking both about population density and about people who aren't very bright, not observing the lockdown.

[Pokerpops]

There are two factors that affect the spread of Covid19

One. How dense the population is

Two. How dense the population is

There is some truth in this, but the Hong Komg and Singapore experience shows this to be pretty inaccurate. 

I wouldn't want to be in a London tower block though.

It's meant to be a joke, with a tweak on the punctuation to indicate that we're talking both about population density and about people who aren't very bright, not observing the lockdown.

It’s clearly a failed attempt at humour if it needs explanatory notes.

[Tal]

1,000/1 Doobs didn't get the joke.

[kukushkin88]

We need to wait to have the Inquiries, but we know already that the UK outcome has been an abysmal failure.

The UK has a far bigger population but, apart from that, there are many similarities between the two countries. Yet, the death rate per 1,000 from Covid in the UK is more than twice that of Ireland. (We know the UK's figures are vastly understated, probably by at least 60%, and maybe up to 100%, but I'm not sure there's any reason to think that Ireland is any better in that regard.)

So why is Ireland's performance so much better than the UK's? Mainly because it reacted quicker and closed everything down a week before the UK. That's not it dispute.

Have a read of this: https://twitter.com/laineydoyle/status/1249127908876128259

However, it's not that Ireland's performance has outstandingly good. It has actually been terrible, one of the worst in the world. So what does that say about the UK's, to be so much worse? We don't have to wait to know whether it has been bad. In fact, we don't have to wait to know some of the reasons. However, we should wait to go through the process, unless there are aspects of the investigation that can help at this stage. However, while Irish performance may have been bad, it is getting better, with one of the highest rates of testing per thousand in the world in the last week. Why can't we match that?

Drive-through testing centre in Croke Park:

If the Irish have one of the highest rates of testing in the world isn’t that why death rate is better than UK?  The more people you test the more mild symptom cases you capture.  Or am I missing something?

The people with mild symptoms aren't going to be the ones who died.

That would affect the results if you're looking at the number who died out of those infected rather than per capita.

However.

The twitter thread that is attached can basically be summed up by: UK has a worse per capita death rate than Ireland, Ireland introduced restrictions earlier therefore the UK introduced restrictions too late.

To expand on why the important factors are important.

The first thing any country should do in an epidemic is track and trace every imported case into their country.

But this virus was around for an unknown amount of time before it was officially announced.

The UK and China are both in the top 10 of tourist destinations in the world, and Heathrow by itself has over twice as many passengers as the whole of Ireland.

Therefore it's reasonable to assume that when track and tracing started there was already a higher number of infections in the UK than there was in Ireland.

The UK also has over twice the population density as Ireland. The virus needs people to spread, the more people you have in the smaller amount of space, the more it'll spread.

This is a complicated factor because obviously you could have a desert occupying half your country and mega metropolises in the other half for example, but in general it would also be reasonable to assume that the virus spreads faster in the UK.

So the UK will have started with a higher number than Ireland and it will have spread faster.

The other thing to take into account is that epidemics start off with exponential growth so a per capita comparison (a linear comparison) doesn't particularly help. If you have double the amount to start with - you are going to have more than double the amount after a while, a per capita comparison doesn't take into account the change over time.

Finally, the big factor that is under reported is luck.

Of the first 100 people who bring a virus into a country.
0 to a 100 of them might think - I'm ill I'll go to a doctor
0 to a 100 of them might think - it's not too bad I'll manage
0 to a 100 of them might be single people with no family and not much of a social circle
0 to a 100 of them might have large families and large social circles.

The balance of answers to questions like these will vastly affect the path of the epidemic.

But in summary, the reason why the newspapers aren't leading on the difference between Ireland and the UK is because it's a terrible comparison to make and it just won't sell papers.

Morning all

Patient 31 is an interesting story regarding the ‘luck’ element of spread. The likelihood of multiple super spreaders in London/NYC/Madrid is very high.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020/03/31-south-korea-sudden-spike-coronavirus-cases-200303065953841.html

It does appear that NYC and London are closest to the optimal (of what we've seen so far) for C19 spread. Multiple international airports (JMW's point, I also understand John Burn-Murdoch is planning analysis on this, once he can get hold of good enough data), other international travel hubs, excellent, largely enclosed and communal transport linking airports with the city centres, excellent, largely enclosed and communal transport to all national/state hubs*.

* The Counties in NY State and Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham etc in the UK.

[Chompy]

There are two factors that affect the spread of Covid19

One. How dense the population is

Two. How dense the population is

I got it. The UK has the densest population in the world by far. We've won something, wiiiiii.

I stopped watching the coverage a few days ago. It's become all consuming. Like Christmas. It's still impossible to get away from it for a full day of course. You can watch something from a couple of weeks ago on Dave and Chris Witty's face will pop up in the ad break.

Once a day now for me now to see if anything major has happened. Bored of the armchair experts and the politician speak. Time to focus on long-term projects and Iceland trips.

[kukushkin88]

1,000/1 Doobs didn't get the joke.

I could happily have a pony at that price, putting it down to a distracted oversight, rather than anything else.

[nirvana]

Even at this early stage we can know that if you act early you will get a better outcome than acting later ceteris paribus. But all other things aren't equal as Jon points out comprehensively I think. I think we should be applying max pressure to govt to up testing rates, improve ppe supply chains, improve the flow of cash support and other practical things but save the lessons learned about intervention and restricting liberty for a later time.

As a by the by, on the website kuku referred to the other day that showed the UK wasn't in the top 40 safest places (incredibly Belgium was but I'm not sure that totally undermines it) one of the tables also showed the UK as 4th in the world in terms of providing financial support to people and business so some things are very good about our response.

Back to intervention,  do Belgium and Sweden demonstrate that there are many factors at play in terms of deaths per capita and in absolute terms and that we don't yet know enough to draw solid conclusions. Belgium locked down more or less the same day as Ireland. The outcome is very different.

[nirvana]

Later, the US is going to be a great case study. Locked down international air travel earlier than most. Massively different status on a state by state basis at the moment and massively different demographics and response timelines state by state. There's going to be a massive mine of good data to learn from there.

[Doobs]

1,000/1 Doobs didn't get the joke.

Failed bookie Tal.  Too early and kids about.   

Very good David, sorry to let you all down.

[kukushkin88]

Even at this early stage we can know that if you act early you will get a better outcome than acting later ceteris paribus. But all other things aren't equal as Jon points out comprehensively I think. I think we should be applying max pressure to govt to up testing rates, improve ppe supply chains, improve the flow of cash support and other practical things but save the lessons learned about intervention and restricting liberty for a later time.

As a by the by, on the website kuku referred to the other day that showed the UK wasn't in the top 40 safest places (incredibly Belgium was but I'm not sure that totally undermines it) one of the tables also showed the UK as 4th in the world in terms of providing financial support to people and business so some things are very good about our response.

Back to intervention,  do Belgium and Sweden demonstrate that there are many factors at play in terms of deaths per capita and in absolute terms and that we don't yet know enough to draw solid conclusions. Belgium locked down more or less the same day as Ireland. The outcome is very different.

It is an interesting site, I was planning to revisit it today. Belgium has the problem of it’s own international travel hub and a lot of traffic from Schipol as well. Was good to see the U.K. high up on some metrics but to be there on financial support, they must be assuming best case for the roll out of what’s been promised and at best, there’s mixed messages to date on that point.

[Tal]

1,000/1 Doobs didn't get the joke.

Failed bookie Tal.  Too early and kids about.   

Very good David, sorry to let you all down.

Incred. I can get anything beat.

[nirvana]

Even at this early stage we can know that if you act early you will get a better outcome than acting later ceteris paribus. But all other things aren't equal as Jon points out comprehensively I think. I think we should be applying max pressure to govt to up testing rates, improve ppe supply chains, improve the flow of cash support and other practical things but save the lessons learned about intervention and restricting liberty for a later time.

As a by the by, on the website kuku referred to the other day that showed the UK wasn't in the top 40 safest places (incredibly Belgium was but I'm not sure that totally undermines it) one of the tables also showed the UK as 4th in the world in terms of providing financial support to people and business so some things are very good about our response.

Back to intervention,  do Belgium and Sweden demonstrate that there are many factors at play in terms of deaths per capita and in absolute terms and that we don't yet know enough to draw solid conclusions. Belgium locked down more or less the same day as Ireland. The outcome is very different.

It is an interesting site, I was planning to revisit it today. Belgium has the problem of it’s own international travel hub and a lot of traffic from Schipol as well. Was good to see the U.K. high up on some metrics but to be there on financial support, they must be assuming best case for the roll out of what’s been promised and at best, there’s mixed messages to date on that point.

So you can cite them on negatives but question their assessment when it's positive. Behave

[kukushkin88]

Even at this early stage we can know that if you act early you will get a better outcome than acting later ceteris paribus. But all other things aren't equal as Jon points out comprehensively I think. I think we should be applying max pressure to govt to up testing rates, improve ppe supply chains, improve the flow of cash support and other practical things but save the lessons learned about intervention and restricting liberty for a later time.

As a by the by, on the website kuku referred to the other day that showed the UK wasn't in the top 40 safest places (incredibly Belgium was but I'm not sure that totally undermines it) one of the tables also showed the UK as 4th in the world in terms of providing financial support to people and business so some things are very good about our response.

Back to intervention,  do Belgium and Sweden demonstrate that there are many factors at play in terms of deaths per capita and in absolute terms and that we don't yet know enough to draw solid conclusions. Belgium locked down more or less the same day as Ireland. The outcome is very different.

It is an interesting site, I was planning to revisit it today. Belgium has the problem of it’s own international travel hub and a lot of traffic from Schipol as well. Was good to see the U.K. high up on some metrics but to be there on financial support, they must be assuming best case for the roll out of what’s been promised and at best, there’s mixed messages to date on that point.

So you can cite them on negatives but question their assessment when it's positive. Behave

No, I completely agree that we need to look more at their methodology, I agree that seeing Belgium toward the top for safety is concerning. I didn't comment on any aspect of the content, other than that there was lots of it and it wasn't easy to navigate on a phone. I only linked it because "people seem to like" Brillo and I said this.