COVID19

[Cf]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

[TightEnd]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

It was. Vallance in March.

500,000 was a new statement last night as a fact, and afaik not mentioned previously

[Jon MW]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

[kukushkin88]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

There’s quite a bit more to the 20k figure than that. Prof Ferguson said 7 to 20k best to worst case with our lockdown, it was discussed here at length. Powis and Vallance both said 20k would be a “good outcome”.

500k is what Ferguson told SAGE as ‘do nothing’ worst case, the number which is widely reported to have influenced the belated decision to partially lockdown.

[Doobs]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

Yep, 500,000 was the first Imperial Model/Ferguson figure that was quoted before lockdown.

7,000 to 20,000 was quoted after lockdown started.  I scoffed about it at the time here.  20,000 was also quoted as a "good result".

We haven't avoided 500,000, it still looks a possible outcome from where I sit.  500,000 does seem to have morphed into a worst case figure (I am sure Johnson has called it this).  I am fairly sure it was a near central estimate albeit maybe it was thought to a bit prudent?  

The way I read all the recent talk/policies is that we are still going for "herd immunity", though the Government doesn't refer to it that way.   It is just a slower "herd imminity" without overwhelming the NHS.  I think they would have to act far more strictly to keep excess deaths below 100,000.  

[Jon MW]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

There’s quite a bit more to the 20k figure than that. Prof Ferguson said 7 to 20k best to worst case with our lockdown, it was discussed here at length. Powis and Vallance both said 20k would be a “good outcome”.

500k is what Ferguson told SAGE as ‘do nothing’ worst case, the number which is widely reported to have influenced the belated decision to partially lockdown.

There's a bit more to it than that.

When Prof Ferguson said those figures - that was a bit odd. That's what wa discussed on here before .... it was a very odd statement.

But the 20k figure came up originally in a daily briefing. It was in an answer to a question about what would be a good outcome and the answer was along the lines of if we can keep deaths below 20,000 that would be a very good outcome.

It's a matter of interpretation, but if I was told that if we can keep deaths below 20,000 it would be a good outcome - I would assume that this is not the expected value of deaths, and the expected value is higher.

Also, to be picky, 500k is what the Imperial model said the worst case scenario is - however that was modelled on the premise that no government would actually do nothing. No government ever has done nothing in response to a pandemic and no government ever would.

The government changed their strategy because it also modelled that the number of deaths if we used a modified version of the flu pandemic strategy that we have always used before it would result in 250,000  deaths.

Their were lower figures modelled than 20,000 and 500,000 was the highest figure mentioned but realistically the best and worst case scenarios shown by the modelling were more like 20,000 to 250,000.


NB: It's not clear if this modelling would actually mean all deaths or all hospital deaths - worth mentioning as confirmed cases in hospitals is the standard measure so it is possible to think it might be on that basis. But it is unclear so it could still be seen as absolutely all deaths.

[kukushkin88]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

There’s quite a bit more to the 20k figure than that. Prof Ferguson said 7 to 20k best to worst case with our lockdown, it was discussed here at length. Powis and Vallance both said 20k would be a “good outcome”.

500k is what Ferguson told SAGE as ‘do nothing’ worst case, the number which is widely reported to have influenced the belated decision to partially lockdown.

There's a bit more to it than that.

When Prof Ferguson said those figures - that was a bit odd. That's what wa discussed on here before .... it was a very odd statement.

But the 20k figure came up originally in a daily briefing. It was in an answer to a question about what would be a good outcome and the answer was along the lines of if we can keep deaths below 20,000 that would be a very good outcome.

It's a matter of interpretation, but if I was told that if we can keep deaths below 20,000 it would be a good outcome - I would assume that this is not the expected value of deaths, and the expected value is higher.

Also, to be picky, 500k is what the Imperial model said the worst case scenario is - however that was modelled on the premise that no government would actually do nothing. No government ever has done nothing in response to a pandemic and no government ever would.

The government changed their strategy because it also modelled that the number of deaths if we used a modified version of the flu pandemic strategy that we have always used before it would result in 250,000  deaths.

Their were lower figures modelled than 20,000 and 500,000 was the highest figure mentioned but realistically the best and worst case scenarios shown by the modelling were more like 20,000 to 250,000.


NB: It's not clear if this modelling would actually mean all deaths or all hospital deaths - worth mentioning as confirmed cases in hospitals is the standard measure so it is possible to think it might be on that basis. But it is unclear so it could still be seen as absolutely all deaths.

It’s a stretch to think they meant hospital deaths only, I haven’t seen it suggested by anyone, at any stage. This is a decent summary of what was being variously said at around the time:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/uk-coronavirus-cases-slowing-key-adviser-reveals

[Jon MW]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

There’s quite a bit more to the 20k figure than that. Prof Ferguson said 7 to 20k best to worst case with our lockdown, it was discussed here at length. Powis and Vallance both said 20k would be a “good outcome”.

500k is what Ferguson told SAGE as ‘do nothing’ worst case, the number which is widely reported to have influenced the belated decision to partially lockdown.

There's a bit more to it than that.

When Prof Ferguson said those figures - that was a bit odd. That's what wa discussed on here before .... it was a very odd statement.

But the 20k figure came up originally in a daily briefing. It was in an answer to a question about what would be a good outcome and the answer was along the lines of if we can keep deaths below 20,000 that would be a very good outcome.

It's a matter of interpretation, but if I was told that if we can keep deaths below 20,000 it would be a good outcome - I would assume that this is not the expected value of deaths, and the expected value is higher.

Also, to be picky, 500k is what the Imperial model said the worst case scenario is - however that was modelled on the premise that no government would actually do nothing. No government ever has done nothing in response to a pandemic and no government ever would.

The government changed their strategy because it also modelled that the number of deaths if we used a modified version of the flu pandemic strategy that we have always used before it would result in 250,000  deaths.

Their were lower figures modelled than 20,000 and 500,000 was the highest figure mentioned but realistically the best and worst case scenarios shown by the modelling were more like 20,000 to 250,000.


NB: It's not clear if this modelling would actually mean all deaths or all hospital deaths - worth mentioning as confirmed cases in hospitals is the standard measure so it is possible to think it might be on that basis. But it is unclear so it could still be seen as absolutely all deaths.

It’s a stretch to think they meant hospital deaths only, I haven’t seen it suggested by anyone, at any stage. This is a decent summary of what was being variously said at around the time:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/uk-coronavirus-cases-slowing-key-adviser-reveals

That link reports to figures about deaths from when the official figures were the hospital deaths.

But I was pretty much just talking about the origin - the Imperial Report. That says things like, "...Our model estimates these changes by calculating backwards from the deaths observed over time to estimate transmission that occurred several weeks prior, allowing for the time lag between infection and death. ..."

The "deaths observed" would be hospital deaths.

It is still possible to extrapolate from hospital deaths to all deaths but it doesn't state this and deaths in hospital confirmed by a test is the international standard - but - it also does not state that's what the numbers mean. As I said, it's unclear.

[kukushkin88]

...

 It seems, please correct me if I’m wrong, that you are attached to an idea that there is a big element of luck in how each country is being impacted.
...

Do you really think that there isn't?

The zoonotic jump to start wih comes from a random mutation that enabled the virus to leap species.

In the time before this new disease is identified there could be 0 people from your country in the affected area, or there could be a 1000.
There could be 0 or a 1000 travellers from somewhere else who then travel to your country shortly after.
At one time of the year there could be 0 or a 1000 in these categories so you get luck as to what time of year the virus first infects people; similarly it could change from year to year.

When it is identified the first thing countries do is test, track and trace arrivals from the affected area. But some will get through - that amount is essentially random. It might be 0% it might be 5% - it all makes a difference.

Outside of that test, track and trace program the virus is spreading anyway. The people infected might have a high number of people with natural immunity, it might have a high number of introverts or a high number of family orientated extroverts, it might have a high number of young fitness fanatics or a high number of obese pensioners (etc.)

There is nothing binary about these numbers it's a matter of weighting and probability - but more than anything else it's about randomness.

There are factors that come into play on top of that - like the size of your population, it's population density and the amount of international travel and entry points your country has - but all the numbers start with randomness.

And with exponential growth - random differences to the seed values make very large differences later.

Lots of randomness for sure. It would be difficult for a country that had no lockdown in place until there were 335 (the number was massively higher of course, on the lag) fatalities to cite the randomness and the unknown nature of early spread in its defence. The overwhelming correlations across all nations that are handling this well are comprehensive contact tracing (impossible for us) or comprehensive early lockdown, we are an international outlier amongst all comparable nations (US/Sweden/Belarus are obv a stretch in terms of being comparable) for choosing against the lockdown option.

How are we an outlier compared to France, Italy and Spain?

Awaits contortions of every possible fact and piece of data to show that the UK is the worst country in the world except the US of course

Or this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52103747

This still does the job, opportunity to act far earlier, acted significantly later, I think meets the criteria for 'outlier'. I'm happy to involve The Donald if we think comparisons are valid and reasonable.

Okay - so you were only talking about being an outlier in terms of when measures were taken. Not in the results.


EDIT: although that is only in lockdown measures. I haven't seen anywhere that compares travel restrictions and contact tracing like we were doing from January for a while (i.e. the other measures).

This is good, I'm having trouble fully interrogating it but it seems to have most things covered. Our hands were tied by lack of capacity for nearly everything we might have done effectively but whose fault do we reckon that was?

https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker

Let's give Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro a really generous interpretation of how unlucky they were at the start, then let's see if we can identify any commonalities in flawed response that mean they end up doing badly on all measures. Let's also give them (assuming they are still in power) economic growth until the end of 2022 as an extra measure to see how it plays out.

1. Total excess deaths as % increase of 5 year average all cause mortality in Europe + agreed reasonably comparable nations
2. % economic contraction in 2020 in G20.
3. % economic growth for US and Brazil by end 2022, % +- for the UK by end 2022, should be impossible wreck the economy that hard but I don't think it is for Boris.

I propose South Korea, Brazil and Japan as being suitable additions to the list for comparative excess mortality purposes. Perhaps the top ten, not already included, tourist destinations as well?

[jakally]

Two things from today :

1. A fair chunk of the people I have heard using the word 'confusing' have at some point inferred that their biggest issue is that the statement didn't say what they wanted it to say (go & visit relatives etc...).

2. Listened to some of Keir Starmer in the HoC. Really like his approach - no anger or name calling, just sticking to the issues. Could become a fan.

The hysteria over the last 24 hours is the first time I've felt like I wanted to shut out all social media channels during this crisis. Just seemed like nothing in between blind loyalty & pre-conditioned opposition.

[Jon MW]

...

 It seems, please correct me if I’m wrong, that you are attached to an idea that there is a big element of luck in how each country is being impacted.
...

Do you really think that there isn't?

The zoonotic jump to start wih comes from a random mutation that enabled the virus to leap species.

In the time before this new disease is identified there could be 0 people from your country in the affected area, or there could be a 1000.
There could be 0 or a 1000 travellers from somewhere else who then travel to your country shortly after.
At one time of the year there could be 0 or a 1000 in these categories so you get luck as to what time of year the virus first infects people; similarly it could change from year to year.

When it is identified the first thing countries do is test, track and trace arrivals from the affected area. But some will get through - that amount is essentially random. It might be 0% it might be 5% - it all makes a difference.

Outside of that test, track and trace program the virus is spreading anyway. The people infected might have a high number of people with natural immunity, it might have a high number of introverts or a high number of family orientated extroverts, it might have a high number of young fitness fanatics or a high number of obese pensioners (etc.)

There is nothing binary about these numbers it's a matter of weighting and probability - but more than anything else it's about randomness.

There are factors that come into play on top of that - like the size of your population, it's population density and the amount of international travel and entry points your country has - but all the numbers start with randomness.

And with exponential growth - random differences to the seed values make very large differences later.

Lots of randomness for sure. It would be difficult for a country that had no lockdown in place until there were 335 (the number was massively higher of course, on the lag) fatalities to cite the randomness and the unknown nature of early spread in its defence. The overwhelming correlations across all nations that are handling this well are comprehensive contact tracing (impossible for us) or comprehensive early lockdown, we are an international outlier amongst all comparable nations (US/Sweden/Belarus are obv a stretch in terms of being comparable) for choosing against the lockdown option.

How are we an outlier compared to France, Italy and Spain?

Awaits contortions of every possible fact and piece of data to show that the UK is the worst country in the world except the US of course

Or this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52103747

This still does the job, opportunity to act far earlier, acted significantly later, I think meets the criteria for 'outlier'. I'm happy to involve The Donald if we think comparisons are valid and reasonable.

Okay - so you were only talking about being an outlier in terms of when measures were taken. Not in the results.


EDIT: although that is only in lockdown measures. I haven't seen anywhere that compares travel restrictions and contact tracing like we were doing from January for a while (i.e. the other measures).

This is good, I'm having trouble fully interrogating it but it seems to have most things covered. Our hands were tied by lack of capacity for nearly everything we might have done effectively but whose fault do we reckon that was?

https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker

Let's give Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro a really generous interpretation of how unlucky they were at the start, then let's see if we can identify any commonalities in flawed response that mean they end up doing badly on all measures. Let's also give them (assuming they are still in power) economic growth until the end of 2022 as an extra measure to see how it plays out.

1. Total excess deaths as % increase of 5 year average all cause mortality in Europe + agreed reasonably comparable nations
2. % economic contraction in 2020 in G20.
3. % economic growth for US and Brazil by end 2022, % +- for the UK by end 2022, should be impossible wreck the economy that hard but I don't think it is for Boris.

I propose South Korea, Brazil and Japan as being suitable additions to the list for comparative excess mortality purposes. Perhaps the top ten, not already included, tourist destinations as well?

How are they in any way comparable?

If you want to compare countries I'd start with G8 for economics.
Top 10 tourist destinations as a proxy for international connectivity.
And filter out countries with either significantly different populations or significantly different population density.

[kukushkin88]

He's just mentioned this figure of we've avoided 500,000 deaths again. Since when was that a thing? I thought the worst-case they were working towards was the 20,000 we've already passed?

Smells of trying to spin a failure into some sort of success.

20000 was the best case scenario.

500,000 was the modelled figure for if we did nothing

There’s quite a bit more to the 20k figure than that. Prof Ferguson said 7 to 20k best to worst case with our lockdown, it was discussed here at length. Powis and Vallance both said 20k would be a “good outcome”.

500k is what Ferguson told SAGE as ‘do nothing’ worst case, the number which is widely reported to have influenced the belated decision to partially lockdown.

There's a bit more to it than that.

When Prof Ferguson said those figures - that was a bit odd. That's what wa discussed on here before .... it was a very odd statement.

But the 20k figure came up originally in a daily briefing. It was in an answer to a question about what would be a good outcome and the answer was along the lines of if we can keep deaths below 20,000 that would be a very good outcome.

It's a matter of interpretation, but if I was told that if we can keep deaths below 20,000 it would be a good outcome - I would assume that this is not the expected value of deaths, and the expected value is higher.

Also, to be picky, 500k is what the Imperial model said the worst case scenario is - however that was modelled on the premise that no government would actually do nothing. No government ever has done nothing in response to a pandemic and no government ever would.

The government changed their strategy because it also modelled that the number of deaths if we used a modified version of the flu pandemic strategy that we have always used before it would result in 250,000  deaths.

Their were lower figures modelled than 20,000 and 500,000 was the highest figure mentioned but realistically the best and worst case scenarios shown by the modelling were more like 20,000 to 250,000.


NB: It's not clear if this modelling would actually mean all deaths or all hospital deaths - worth mentioning as confirmed cases in hospitals is the standard measure so it is possible to think it might be on that basis. But it is unclear so it could still be seen as absolutely all deaths.

It’s a stretch to think they meant hospital deaths only, I haven’t seen it suggested by anyone, at any stage. This is a decent summary of what was being variously said at around the time:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/uk-coronavirus-cases-slowing-key-adviser-reveals

That link reports to figures about deaths from when the official figures were the hospital deaths.

But I was pretty much just talking about the origin - the Imperial Report. That says things like, "...Our model estimates these changes by calculating backwards from the deaths observed over time to estimate transmission that occurred several weeks prior, allowing for the time lag between infection and death. ..."

The "deaths observed" would be hospital deaths.

It is still possible to extrapolate from hospital deaths to all deaths but it doesn't state this and deaths in hospital confirmed by a test is the international standard - but - it also does not state that's what the numbers mean. As I said, it's unclear.

When we discussed it with Doobs, at around that time, did you think we were discussing all deaths or all hospital deaths?

[Pokerpops]

ballpark figure...

given an R of 0.7-0.9 now and human nature being what it is (a proportion of the population will be out a lot more, more people will be returning to work even if behaving prudently)..what do you think is the likelihood of rowing back on lifting lockdown in a month or so, a so called second wave?

more likely than not? very likely? not likely?

Barring something that can’t reasonably be foreseen, there’ll need to be a second, probably more strict lockdown. It will be framed that it is the fault of people not following the rules, if you like Boris, you’ll agree that is where the blame should lie. It will be hard to objectively assess why it was actually needed because the data will be kept secret.

Oh for heaven’s sake man. Just let it go. The constant second guessing of policy is irritating beyond reason, as is your determination to find a metric that shows how badly we’re doing. Your echo chamber views and linking just "oushdiugdiyhoimsougfyiygi#&)#’skssyj(#*’a  

You

[Cf]

Two things from today :

1. A fair chunk of the people I have heard using the word 'confusing' have at some point inferred that their biggest issue is that the statement didn't say what they wanted it to say (go & visit relatives etc...).

2. Listened to some of Keir Starmer in the HoC. Really like his approach - no anger or name calling, just sticking to the issues. Could become a fan.

The hysteria over the last 24 hours is the first time I've felt like I wanted to shut out all social media channels during this crisis. Just seemed like nothing in between blind loyalty & pre-conditioned opposition.

You'll notice he didn't really answer any of Starmer's questions.

[kukushkin88]

...

 It seems, please correct me if I’m wrong, that you are attached to an idea that there is a big element of luck in how each country is being impacted.
...

Do you really think that there isn't?

The zoonotic jump to start wih comes from a random mutation that enabled the virus to leap species.

In the time before this new disease is identified there could be 0 people from your country in the affected area, or there could be a 1000.
There could be 0 or a 1000 travellers from somewhere else who then travel to your country shortly after.
At one time of the year there could be 0 or a 1000 in these categories so you get luck as to what time of year the virus first infects people; similarly it could change from year to year.

When it is identified the first thing countries do is test, track and trace arrivals from the affected area. But some will get through - that amount is essentially random. It might be 0% it might be 5% - it all makes a difference.

Outside of that test, track and trace program the virus is spreading anyway. The people infected might have a high number of people with natural immunity, it might have a high number of introverts or a high number of family orientated extroverts, it might have a high number of young fitness fanatics or a high number of obese pensioners (etc.)

There is nothing binary about these numbers it's a matter of weighting and probability - but more than anything else it's about randomness.

There are factors that come into play on top of that - like the size of your population, it's population density and the amount of international travel and entry points your country has - but all the numbers start with randomness.

And with exponential growth - random differences to the seed values make very large differences later.

Lots of randomness for sure. It would be difficult for a country that had no lockdown in place until there were 335 (the number was massively higher of course, on the lag) fatalities to cite the randomness and the unknown nature of early spread in its defence. The overwhelming correlations across all nations that are handling this well are comprehensive contact tracing (impossible for us) or comprehensive early lockdown, we are an international outlier amongst all comparable nations (US/Sweden/Belarus are obv a stretch in terms of being comparable) for choosing against the lockdown option.

How are we an outlier compared to France, Italy and Spain?

Awaits contortions of every possible fact and piece of data to show that the UK is the worst country in the world except the US of course

Or this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52103747

This still does the job, opportunity to act far earlier, acted significantly later, I think meets the criteria for 'outlier'. I'm happy to involve The Donald if we think comparisons are valid and reasonable.

Okay - so you were only talking about being an outlier in terms of when measures were taken. Not in the results.


EDIT: although that is only in lockdown measures. I haven't seen anywhere that compares travel restrictions and contact tracing like we were doing from January for a while (i.e. the other measures).

This is good, I'm having trouble fully interrogating it but it seems to have most things covered. Our hands were tied by lack of capacity for nearly everything we might have done effectively but whose fault do we reckon that was?

https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker

Let's give Boris, Trump and Bolsonaro a really generous interpretation of how unlucky they were at the start, then let's see if we can identify any commonalities in flawed response that mean they end up doing badly on all measures. Let's also give them (assuming they are still in power) economic growth until the end of 2022 as an extra measure to see how it plays out.

1. Total excess deaths as % increase of 5 year average all cause mortality in Europe + agreed reasonably comparable nations
2. % economic contraction in 2020 in G20.
3. % economic growth for US and Brazil by end 2022, % +- for the UK by end 2022, should be impossible wreck the economy that hard but I don't think it is for Boris.

I propose South Korea, Brazil and Japan as being suitable additions to the list for comparative excess mortality purposes. Perhaps the top ten, not already included, tourist destinations as well?

How are they in any way comparable?

If you want to compare countries I'd start with G8 for economics.
Top 10 tourist destinations as a proxy for international connectivity.
And filter out countries with either significantly different populations or significantly different population density.

All I’m trying to do is get the best possible list, South Korea seems fine imo. I’m happy for you to select all the additional countries though.

Is there a specific reason why we can’t extend to G20 for economics.
I think G20 for the economy and all of Europe for the % increase in all mortality, is a good starting point. Adjusting for population size (still debatable if that’s appropriate) is easy. The evidence is not entirely clear on pop density but NYC/London clearly have that in common.