Covid-19 Virus

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Hornet4ever, Jan 30, 2020.

  1. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Thanks for the link, I'd not seen that analysis.

    I think it is too early to compare nations. The full data will not be available until at least the end of the year.

    But it is interesting to see the current death rate with the "normal" historical number of deaths for each country though.

    From the charts you can see how much further ahead Spain and France are in the virus with their number of deaths almost back to where they would expect them to be.

    The UK, amongst a number of others, are still experiencing a high number of excessive deaths and that is why we need to be far more cautious about easing restrictions.
     
  2. hornetfan

    hornetfan Academy Graduate

    This detailed article appears to contain more up-to-date data (in particular, for Italy) and is based on EuroMOMO statistics. It also reports how the Economist, the Financial Times and the New York Times endeavour to examine comparative excess mortality data for Europe.

    https://voxeu.org/article/excess-mortality-england-european-outlier-covid-19-pandemic

    The article explains:
    "Excess mortality is a count of deaths from all causes relative to what would normally have been expected. In a pandemic, deaths rise sharply, but causes are often inaccurately recorded. The death count attributed to Covid-19 may thus be significantly undercounted. Excess mortality data overcome two problems in reporting Covid-19-related deaths: miscounting from misdiagnosis or under-reporting of Covid-19-related deaths is avoided. Excess mortality data include ‘collateral damage’ from other health conditions, left untreated if the health system is overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases.

    Excess mortality data can be used to draw lessons from cross- and within-country differences and help analyse the social and economic consequences of the pandemic and relaxing lockdown restrictions..........Estimating the R0 (R0 is the virus reproduction rate, which needs to be kept below 1 to avoid exponential growth of infections) is crucial for assessing the rate and nature of relaxation of lockdowns. Excess death figures also help to avoid the measurement biases inherent in other data used to estimate R0 used in epidemiological models."
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2020
  3. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Sadly, it clearly takes a long while to become hospitalised by Covid, and then ultimately die. Deaths aren’t really particularly useful for easing lockdown. Hospital admissions, case numbers and the current R number are far more useful, which is what I believe we are basing any easing of restrictions on
     
    The undeniable truth likes this.
  4. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    I’m still of the view that total 2020 excess deaths will be the ultimate measure of the damage because it will eliminate the poor sods for whom Covid was the coup de grace and “only” robbed them of a few months.
     
    Knight GT, Otter and sydney_horn like this.
  5. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    I don't disagree but that is not the point I was making.

    The charts clearly show the UK, amongst others, are at least two weeks behind Spain, France and probably Italy, as has been the case from nearly the start.

    The R number, confirmed cases and hospital admissions all have a part to play but you can only compare those to what happened in the previous day's/weeks to establish trends in the same data.

    The number of excessive deaths is a good way to compare to what we would expect in "normal" times as a baseline and is, therefore, very useful to determine where we are in the virus timeline compared to other nations.

    We have an advantage in that we can see in the nation's ahead of us in the timeline what works and what doesn't when it comes to easing restrictions. That should have a big part to play in our decisions and their timings imho.
     
  6. So you just want to copy other countries. You must really hate this proud nation.

    iamofwatfordfc likes this.
     
    Moose, sydney_horn and Bwood_Horn like this.
  7. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    That's a very interesting approach for comparison of excess deaths data using z-scores (an approach that can be skewed by using 'noisy', aka 'normal', data although being really nit-picky I can't see why the didn't use Winsorizing to minimise the effect of data outliers):

    And that's a very worrying finding:

    Which they explain as, ahem, 'being' the fault of that there London:

    But the authors are not afraid to say what London's 'problems' were/are:

    Evidenced by:

     
    K9 Hornet likes this.
  8. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    Hurrah! Somebody who gets it. Although the ultimate aim is to prevent people dying, the primary reason for lockdown is to reduce infections and therefore the number of people that need treatment so that the NHS is not overwhelmed. The sole concentration on the number and rate of deaths is unhelpful.
     
  9. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Yes, not to mention the fact that Italy’s health system was actually overwhelmed at one point, so decisions had to be made about who to treat, and ultimately deaths would’ve occurred unrelated to Covid what were otherwise preventable. So comparing us to Italy on absolute numbers means little. The argument about total lives lost now to Covid and whether those lives could’ve been saved in the long run is a completely different issue. We won’t know the answer to that until we know if and when we’ll get a vaccine and many other questions about how the virus works.
     
  10. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Absolutely right. For current status, new cases is the go-to measure. For ultimate success, or lack of, the cumulative excess deaths is the figure.
     
  11. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Though that's imperfect too isn't it? It's reliant on the amount of testing being completed.
     
  12. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Yes but to assess trends in an individual country as long as it's measured conistently.....
     
  13. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    Is there any news about the contact tracing app trialled on the Isle of Wight? Wasn't the plan to extend it to the wider nation after a couple of weeks.
     
  14. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    No one has been able to make contact with the island since they all installed the app.
     
    CYHSYF, wfcmoog, hornmeister and 4 others like this.
  15. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    The advice to stay home and save lives, while going out and using the app was too much for simple Island folk and they lapsed into apathy.
     
  16. Good old British Common Sense, much better than forrin common sense.
     
    Happy bunny likes this.
  17. hornetgags

    hornetgags McMuff's lovechild

    Yes. It's going to be scrapped as it's descended into xenomorph warfare.

    alien.gif
     
  18. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    I've heard it works alongside 5G to identify and infect. There's no-one left alive on the IoW now.
     
    wfcmoog likes this.
  19. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    I've never been but understood it was something of a land of the living dead anyway?
     
    Knight GT likes this.
  20. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

  21. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    You’re mixing it up with the Isle of Man, I think.
     
    CYHSYF likes this.
  22. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

  23. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    Robbie Savage was on BBC earlier asking when grassroots football will return.

    Must fancy a game !
     
  24. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    A syringe full of pure 5G no doubt.
     
  25. Maninblack

    Maninblack Reservist

    Governmet ministers are currently socially distancing themselves from their own backbones in response to the Dominic Cummings situation.
     
  26. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    Surely you don't expect Dom to have to follow the same rules as us common people?
     
    davisp2 likes this.
  27. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    The "...but 100,000 die of flu' every year..." 'argument' keeps cropping up with what appears to be a greater frequency. BBC R4 did two shows on looking at the 1918 outbreaks (three of them) - the 2nd show they do some comparisons with WWC:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j2ty
     
  28. HappyHornet24

    HappyHornet24 Crapster Staff Member

    Just spoke to a couple of friends whose kids are due to go back to school on June 1st. It sounds very complicated - they’ve been sent a 19 page document outlining how it will work. “Pods“ or “bubbles“ of 15 children who will have all lessons together; working on laptops, rather than in books; packed lunches which have to be eaten in the classroom; mini pods of 5 children who can be together in the playground. My friends’ children are both in year 6 so are old enough to understand what’s going on and why, but I don’t know quite how 4 year olds will be able to do this.
     
  29. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    My partner reckons that her group of year 6’s hourly hand was will take up at least 15 minutes seeing as she’s been given a classroom with no sink or toilet.
     
  30. I've just seen the Cummings thing on TV.

    Let me see if I've got this right - 20 or 30 journalists, camera crew and paps can completely disregard the 2 metre rule whenever they feel like it, and huddle together around Cummings. That's ok. Driving to Durham isn't.

    It's hypocrisy of the highest order. If anything what they are doing is a higher risk. If one of them has the virus now 30 of them plus their families have it.

    Cummings should face discipline yes. So should 20 or 30 journalists.

    I despair of the modern media, the industry is an absolute disgrace. Investigative journalism went down the pan a long time ago, questions on the daily briefings are just the same thing repeated over and over, Sky TV no longer even offer a pretence to be neutral on any subject, the whole thing has become who can find the 'gotcha' first and plaster it all over social media. They have become the scum of the human race.
     
  31. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Yes, they should be required to distance. They can’t be crowding around his car window or each other. They may believe their reptilian DNA protects them, but there are rules for a reason.

    However, this is actually an investigative story. Pippa Crerar of the Mirror explained that they have been working on it for two weeks compiling evidence. Old fashioned stuff. And it’s a big story, old fashioned arrogance of the rulers.

    The other reason they shouldn’t get so close is they may drown out the sound of Cummings’ neighbours heckling him, which is a joy to hear.
     
  32. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Interviewee on BBC just now claiming that 4 Labour MPs had much clearer and very public violations of the rules yet they didn't resign and Starmer didn't sack them, so why should Cummings resign or be sacked ?
     
  33. If they have done it once, so brazenly, on camera, without a care in the world then they will have done it dozens perhaps hundreds of times over the last months. What makes this industry think time and time again it's above the law? How much of the spread around London is down to them? Why have the police allowed it?
     
  34. HappyHornet24

    HappyHornet24 Crapster Staff Member

    I agree that I do not think the media has covered itself in glory at all in its coverage of this pandemic. And I say that as someone who, pre kids, was a journalist (albeit financial journalism so a somewhat different field).
     
  35. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Because it’s completely legal?

    The 2m rule isn’t enshrined in law. It’s government guidance which cannot be enforced by the police. And the actual law says a gathering of more than two people in a public place is allowed, “where the gathering is essential for work purposes.” Whether we like them or not, the journalists will say the gathering was essential for work purposes in the absence of a pool arrangement and given the high profile nature of the story. I can’t see any court disagreeing.
     

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