COVID19

[the sicilian]

They should have just said fuck all until it was analysed, imo.

Deano 1.25 to be picked up on the news during the next 'Freedom March' in London

I don't think they can wait until absolutely certain Marky.  If they are reasonably sure of something they need to act quickly, even if there is still a chance they may be wrong.  A couple of weeks or a month can make huge differences to the fatality rate.

And FWIW It has been analysed, just not as well as would be ideal if they had the luxury of long time scales.

Tier 4 for me from boxing day, guess visiting my ma would have been a bit reckless.

Direct quote from Sky news ' shortly to be analysed at Porton Down' that sounds like we havent checked it properly yet but we are going on sketchy reports from South Africa and having a bit of a guess...to say the media dont make up half of it as they go along is naive at best..if there is a group with a lot to answer for in all this its the media.
 its odd that anyone who has even a slight different point of view is just regarded as a foil hat wearing madman whose viewpoint is there is no virus and its all a great conspiracy by the worlds governments to control us. Its actually quite insulting and arrogant.. I dont think there is a person on this thread who thinks like that but there are those of us that see a broader picture ..we can see the actual demographic of the people covid actually kills..spouting on about infections is pointless.. concentrate on the demographics its likely to kill rather than lumping in the majority.. (around 98.6%)who wont actually die of it and dont just hyper focus on numbers and ambiguous media statements that often contradict themselves in the same release. Protect and secure the vulnerable dont let them wander down tescos .. I think the most frustrating thing is the contradictory advice which is often illogical and just seems knee jerk ..
An example is a care home I know someone is in.. they have a floor to ceiling screen.. you couldnt get anthrax through this thing.. the vistors are actually outside in the open and this thing covers the back patio doors. Yet covid has just been found in the home..why ? one of the carers brought it in..but no one is allowed to visit despite the over the top precautions taken that ensure 100% no visitor could transmit covid to a resident..yet no visits allowed.. this illogical thinking is half the problem.

this further Tier 4 until boxing day is just nonsense..they seemed panicked enough to lock the south east down inside 12 hours but now it seems we can take our time with other areas so we can get xmas in before hand.. has it become less serious since Saturday?..can these extra areas get away with having xmas day..did covid send a memo saying it was taking a few days off infecting people but was resuming boxing day? ...

 it seems the only real viable answer is the vaccine which is starting to roll......if thats the case stop pissing about and lock us down until go time and pour as much resources as required into manufacturing it as quickly as possible.. because if you are that worried about people dying thats what you would do.. as an aside a couple of people i know who are classed as high risk living in London  have received texts advising about total isolation boxing day onwards..they say that when they got htis before it heralded a national lockdown..looks like that could be on its way..although im assuming thats what Tier 4 is anyway unless we are going to make a Tier 5

[Doobs]

They should have just said fuck all until it was analysed, imo.

Deano 1.25 to be picked up on the news during the next 'Freedom March' in London

I don't think they can wait until absolutely certain Marky.  If they are reasonably sure of something they need to act quickly, even if there is still a chance they may be wrong.  A couple of weeks or a month can make huge differences to the fatality rate.

And FWIW It has been analysed, just not as well as would be ideal if they had the luxury of long time scales.

Tier 4 for me from boxing day, guess visiting my ma would have been a bit reckless.

Direct quote from Sky news ' shortly to be analysed at Porton Down' that sounds like we havent checked it properly yet but we are going on sketchy reports from South Africa and having a bit of a guess...to say the media dont make up half of it as they go along is naive at best..if there is a group with a lot to answer for in all this its the media.
 its odd that anyone who has even a slight different point of view is just regarded as a foil hat wearing madman whose viewpoint is there is no virus and its all a great conspiracy by the worlds governments to control us. Its actually quite insulting and arrogant.. I dont think there is a person on this thread who thinks like that but there are those of us that see a broader picture ..we can see the actual demographic of the people covid actually kills..spouting on about infections is pointless.. concentrate on the demographics its likely to kill rather than lumping in the majority.. (around 98.6%)who wont actually die of it and dont just hyper focus on numbers and ambiguous media statements that often contradict themselves in the same release. Protect and secure the vulnerable dont let them wander down tescos .. I think the most frustrating thing is the contradictory advice which is often illogical and just seems knee jerk ..
An example is a care home I know someone is in.. they have a floor to ceiling screen.. you couldnt get anthrax through this thing.. the vistors are actually outside in the open and this thing covers the back patio doors. Yet covid has just been found in the home..why ? one of the carers brought it in..but no one is allowed to visit despite the over the top precautions taken that ensure 100% no visitor could transmit covid to a resident..yet no visits allowed.. this illogical thinking is half the problem.

this further Tier 4 until boxing day is just nonsense..they seemed panicked enough to lock the south east down inside 12 hours but now it seems we can take our time with other areas so we can get xmas in before hand.. has it become less serious since Saturday?..can these extra areas get away with having xmas day..did covid send a memo saying it was taking a few days off infecting people but was resuming boxing day? ...

 it seems the only real viable answer is the vaccine which is starting to roll......if thats the case stop pissing about and lock us down until go time and pour as much resources as required into manufacturing it as quickly as possible.. because if you are that worried about people dying thats what you would do.. as an aside a couple of people i know who are classed as high risk living in London  have received texts advising about total isolation boxing day onwards..they say that when they got htis before it heralded a national lockdown..looks like that could be on its way..although im assuming thats what Tier 4 is anyway unless we are going to make a Tier 5

I put up a link to a bulletin written by a South African actuary.  In that you could have found a link to the South African paper about their mutation.

It is here

https://www.krisp.org.za/manuscripts/MEDRXIV-2020-248640v1-de_Oliveira.pdf

So we don't really need to wait for Porton Down to know about the South African mutation, and if anybody in Government is going on sketchy reports from South Africa, and having a bit of a guess, then they aren't trying very hard. 

I couldn't really discuss the reporting of Covid on the National news, but from what I have seen, the television seems much more reliable than most UK newspapers.  But even on the television, they often seem to roll out people who are pretty clueless, which explains why people see things that seem conflictiing with each other.  The reality is that I don't get my Covid "news" from either source, as I follow more reliable sources and can do some of my own analysis.

I am pretty sure much of the country will be under pretty severe restrictions for much of the winter whilst the most vulnerable are vaccinated.  I think it is pretty hard to even know where we are now (nowcasting is a thing these days), so I wouldn't be confident in projections to April, but hopefully we will be living better by then and we won't have a virus that is significantly more harmful to younger people.

[nirvana]

Haha. Everones a fascist these days but then call the gov populist? So very odd

[neeko]

UK vaccination stats are published here

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/COVID-19-total-announced-vaccinations-24-December-2020-1.pdf

0.36m of 3.3m over 80 were vaccinated by 20th Dec

This is half a percent of the uk population, which doesn’t sound a lot but given the age skew in COVID deaths, it could cut the death rate by 20%.

(I have lost the link, but an Israeli paper showed that vaccination the oldest 0.5% of people would cut deaths by 19%, the above is not exactly that but it is a good start)

Given even a single dose if very effective about a week after inoculation the effects should be seen in death rates and pressures on the NHS after a months lag of the process of the disease though those that already have it.

This should mean that the IFR and hospitalisation scan go down while cases skyrocket.

As soon as the Oxford vaccine is approved next week, single jabs should be given to as many people as possible as quickly as possible, anyone who knows which end of a needle is pointy should be conscripted into rolling out the jabs, 2, 3 or 4m doses a week in January, March / April is too late for the winter peek.

[Doobs]

Another quick update as it is Wednesday.

Deaths were up 20% week on week on the 18 November.  That seems to be just a function of the low number the week previously, and deaths are only up about 5% a week averaging over the 7 days to that date.

On no date has the figure topped 400 a day in England and 500 a day in the UK in total (based on specimen date).  It is possible both will be slightly breached this week once the delayed reporting has worked its way through. 

The 600 death figure from yesterday is likely just a reflection of reporting delays, and I think we have likely passed the date with the highest number of deaths from this wave.  We also had a couple of days in the previous week with less than 20k cases and looking at the reported numbers from the last couple of days it seems likely that the cases are falling siginifcantly.   I'd be much happier if they waited a couple of weeks longer for the cases to decrease further before opening restaurants and pubs, but can't complain about outdoor sports and letting people spectate in smaller numbers.

FWIW I got randomly selected and my negative result took about 72 hours exactly from courier pick up.  I'd say that kind of delay seems consistent with what I see in the case reporting (most around 2 or 3 days after test). 

 

Another update as of yesterday.

I think the numbers are pretty alarming given lockdown has ended already, but guess the fact most of us are in tier 2 or 3 means that things haven't changed much (ie the lockdown/not lockdown states are much closer to each other than they were in March).

Wednesday's number was 15% below last week, but every day between 17 November and 24 November had a higher number of deaths than the same date in the week before.  So I think it is very possible that this was a bit of an outlier and there was zero significant evidence that deaths had begun to fall.  When the first lockdown ended English deaths were down to 31 a day at the effective end (3 July).  This time the number of deaths at lockdown end is likely to be between 300 and 400 a day (I can't say the exact number, as only a small proportion of deaths are reported in the first couple of days).   

The cases figures are more promising with a handful of dates where we have dropped below 15k cases in the UK.  But Monday's number of 17k isn't a whole lot below the 31.5k we hit at peak 4 weeks previously, and we had a couple of days below 20k in that week.  So cases were defintely down since the peak, but were not down by a hugely significant amount (maybe 30% or so).     

I saw someone yesterday suggesting that we were well on the way to wave 3, as we had ended this lockdown too early.  I think a better way of looking at it is that wave 2 isn't really going to end anytime soon and the reality is we bump along at 300 deaths a day until the vaccination rate in the elderly and medical workers becomes significant.  Given that we, and every other Country?) has failed to keep cases/deaths steady over this year, this "plan" seems like some gamble and we may not have reached a wave 2/3 peak yet after all.
 
To balance this, the rest of Europe looks like it is dragging its feet on vaccine approval, so the UK Government may actually be doing something right here.  Assuming that we don't mind the tiny microchips Bill Gates is putting in our arms...

I have just expanded my spreadsheet for the week. 

I was originally looking how we were going vs the projections and we are well below all of them now.  This shouldn't be much of a surprise as the projections didn't assume we had a lockdown.  I probably won't mention them again other than to say that I have been concentrating on England only for deaths because that was in the original Spectator comparison.

Deaths by date of death (England).  Deaths were definitely down in the week leading up to last Wednesday.  Deaths were above 400  for the last time on 25 November.  This was the 4th time this has happened during "wave 2".  Since then they have fallen to nearer 300 a day. 

Cases by specimen date (UK).  The downward trend I mentioned last week seems to have ended with all dates beween 30 Novemnber and 4 December staying above 15K.  There is no obvious significant uptick in cases yet, but if you look at the fitted curve on those numbers it is currently sloping upwards again.

Hospital Admissions.  I haven't mentioned these much, but the Covid 19 response group pointed out yesterday that these have started increasing again and they hacve stated that they think R is above 1 again.  https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary/status/1336360909443375104  . 

There are some interesting regional comparisons there, with admissions falling noticeably in the North West and North East; these areas have effectively had the longest lockdowns (some was tier 3 and not "lockdown", but they amount to much the same thing).  By comparison the areas with the softest restrictions seem to be all significantly rising again.

Overall the picture isn't very optimistic, and gven the expected weakening of restrictions going into Christmas looks like it could lead to some unpleasant numbers by the beginning off January.  You'd have to be pretty set in your ways to still believe that these restrictions don't have any effect, and you'd have to be pretty optimistic to think restrictions will be ending on 9 February. 

The roll out of the vaccine is very much needed right now.

I didn't do an update last week, but the cases never did go below 300 a day on any day in England and we have had a couple of days above 400 in December.  When the lag works through, we are likely to see several days above 400 cases from the last week or so, plus a higher number than the earlier wave 2 peak in mid November.  As I mentioned last time, I wasn't expecting the cases to drop much, and though there have been days where the number dropped near to 300 deaths a day wave 2 never really ended, so wave 3 never really started.  Wales has had it worse and have already past their previous wave 2 peak even before the lag has worked through.

Hospital admissions have gone past their previous wave 2 peak and heading inexorably towards wave 1 levels.  See https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary/status/1341483186124169217.  I know people always hear that this is an old people's disease, but there is a real split of ages amongst the hospital admissions with a good chunk in thier 50s and below.

On the cases by specimen date, I was talking a couple of weeks ago about how we were struggling to get below 15k cases a day in ther UK; that has long gone, and nearly every day in the last week has seen over 30k cases a day. 

I am not going ot cover the new variant again, but think things would be looking bad even without it.

Make the most of your little freedoms you have now.  But the darkest hour is before the dawn and all that, so hopefully things will start looking up really soon with the vaccine rollout.

Merry christmas all.  Hope HMRC are sending you money and not the comedy bill they just sent me.   

[Doobs]

This is interesting

https://mobile.twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1343219107521564674

and

https://mobile.twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1343228890907598854

It is a thread looking at why Covid deaths are now above excess deaths and why he thinks excess deaths over the year is the best measure.

Interesting estimate that the proportion of people who died during wave 1 that would have died by now anyway is around 25%.

This doesn't mean that we are only saving 2 years of life on average because there are also going to be significant numbers of people who lost more than 10 years of life. 

[Doobs]

It is likely we already have more Covid patients in hospital than at the first wave peak.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

That shows that it is a few hundred below the peak, but there are reporting delays at Christmas so we are a few days late.

There are likely to be various people on both sides taking advantage of the reporting delays over the next few days.  Some will be deliberate, most just ignorant.  Just to get in early; cases and deaths are going to be lower than reality for a couple of days as Christmas and the bank holidays cause delays in reporting.  So any downward sloping graphs are going to be inaccurate. 

Going into the new year we are going to see some catching up as the delays feed through.  So the death figues are going to be higher than reality, and though we seem certain to hit new wave 2 peaks, it is better to wait for the deaths by date of death to feed through. 

These delays happen every year simply because there are fewer places to register deaths.  They clearly have some better reporting in place right now, but deaths by date reported are still going to be significantly diferent from deaths by date of death for a week or two.

[Marky147]

Had to click out of those Twitter threads before I went into a rabbithole deeper than Tikay's pockets!

Funny watching them argue backwards and forwards using 'their' evidence, on both sides.

Glad I'm so lazy, other than prodding a few on John Campbell's channel occasionally.

[Doobs]

Had to click out of those Twitter threads before I went into a rabbithole deeper than Tikay's pockets!

Funny watching them argue backwards and forwards using 'their' evidence, on both sides.

Glad I'm so lazy, other than prodding a few on John Campbell's channel occasionally.

Hugh Osmond has been arguing with him.   Completely misunderstanding what he has been told as per normal.  I notice he has changed his twitter handle to say "10 years of working with actuaries".  Presumably you an actuary too Marky given we have been chatting shit for 10 years?

[ripple11]

Maybe, maybe not......

In West London, a work colleague and her family of 6 all picked up Covid in late March (had the symptoms but no tests at that time)...caught from someone staying with them , whose symptoms were mild but lost his sense of smell.

Roll on to yesterday and some of her family has it again! (new variant running through London?)..this time with positive NHS tests. Luckily mild symptoms so far.

So 9 months apart...can you get this bloody Covid/variant again?

[Marky147]

Had to click out of those Twitter threads before I went into a rabbithole deeper than Tikay's pockets!

Funny watching them argue backwards and forwards using 'their' evidence, on both sides.

Glad I'm so lazy, other than prodding a few on John Campbell's channel occasionally.

Hugh Osmond has been arguing with him.   Completely misunderstanding what he has been told as per normal.  I notice he has changed his twitter handle to say "10 years of working with actuaries".  Presumably you an actuary too Marky given we have been chatting shit for 10 years?

Must be, what a touch. I better update my CV!

Might be in trouble if anyone wants me to start working with any numbers, other than those on the menu at the Chinese takeaway

[Doobs]

Maybe, maybe not......

In West London, a work colleague and her family of 6 all picked up Covid in late March (had the symptoms but no tests at that time)...caught from someone staying with them , whose symptoms were mild but lost his sense of smell.

Roll on to yesterday and some of her family has it again! (new variant running through London?)..this time with positive NHS tests. Luckily mild symptoms so far.

So 9 months apart...can you get this bloody Covid/variant again?

Reinfections are still relatively rare on the data I have seen, for example:

https://mobile.twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1343547659081154566

There have definitely been a few exceptions though.  I can't really tell you if it is much more likely with the new variant, so can't really say what is happening here.  It is probably still more likely that they didn't have Covid first time if only the guest had the loss of smell.  I have family in Kent, and they have all got it despite them being clean freaks (the kids didn't used to be allowed into half the downstairs for many years such was their obsession with cleanliness). 

[Doobs]

Had to click out of those Twitter threads before I went into a rabbithole deeper than Tikay's pockets!

Funny watching them argue backwards and forwards using 'their' evidence, on both sides.

Glad I'm so lazy, other than prodding a few on John Campbell's channel occasionally.

I am going to try and explain why both High Osmond and Stuart McDonald can both be right, but I think only one of them is misleading people.

If you go here https://www.spss-tutorials.com/skewness/, the first chart shows right skewness.  If you look at that example on that page the median is likely around 10 (50% of results are less than this number), but the average score is nearer 20 because the numbers above 10 are much further from 10 than the ones below.  This isn't a chart of life expectancy amongst Covid vctims, but that chart is going to have very much the same shape, with a  chunk of Covid victims being in the "about to die anyway" camp going right up to others who were unlikely to die in 20 years or so.

Hugh Osmond claims that median life expectancy in care homes is 15 months, and that may well be right (I haven't checked), but that could be equivalent of an average life expectancy of 2 years in care homes.  You can see from the chart linked that medians are always going to be lower than averages where we get data that is skewed like this.

Stuart McDonald has estimated that 25% of Covid victims that died near the first peak (mid April). So in 8 months or so, 25% of these people would have died anyway.  I estimate that would be equivalent to a median of maybe 2.5 years for life expectancy lost (ie 50% of victims would have died anyway within 2.5 years). 

The above numbers are entirely consistent with High Osmond's median life expectancy from care homes, as though care home Covid deaths are a high proportion of Covid deaths, there are lots of Covid deaths that are not in care homes.   If the median of life expectancy lost is 2.5 years from Covid victims, it is entirely plausible that the average life expectancy lost is then in the order of 5 years.  This is because the life expectancy of those who die outside care homes are going to be even more skewed, ranging from those near death to those who had long lives ahead (within care homes the vast majority of Covid victims will be ageing and will have been near death without Covid, but this isn't true in the general population of Covid victims).

So saying that median life expectancy in care homes is 15 months can be consistant with an average life expectancy lost of 5 years from all Covid victims. 

The problem is that many people reading High Osmond's 15 months figure are going to assume it is something akin to the average life expectancy lost through Covid.  It isn't a good proxy at all and the real number is much more likely to be somewhere around 5 years than 15 months.

For those who haven't reached the TLDR stage there is more about comorbidities here https://www.theactuary.com/features/2020/05/07/co-morbidity-question.  Note that was written in May, but I couldn't find a more up to date one before I made dinner

[Marky147]

Like another Ivor, but doesn't grift on Patreon, and just chirps from his castle?

[Doobs]

Like another Ivor, but doesn't grift on Patreon, and just chirps from his castle?

I think Hugh Osmond is probably not really understanding, Ivor Cummins and the "stats" guy are much more deliberate in their misinformation.