Coronavirus

[BillyStubbsTears]

BRR.

Do we have that many deaths in one month when we have a bad year with flu?

And do we need to shut half the country down to keep it to those numbers?

I assume your point is that you don't believe the modellers who are telling us there would have been half a million deaths if we hadn't locked down?

If so, I wonder what your evidence is for that. Because currently, our deaths total is doubling every three days or so and it has been doing for a month. I'm wondering what the mechanism is that stops that apart from lockdown?

[wilts rover]

Going back a page or so I would like to take issue with BRR saying that we can't stop covid-19 without a vaccine (and a vaccine isn't about to arrive anytime soon).

That is not what studies into the Spanish Flu epidemic show. I posted the below link a week or so back but it wasn't picked up on so I have now picked out the graphs for you to see.

There was no vaccine for Spanish Flu - they didn't know what it was at the time and they still don't know what it was today. The best guesses are it was not actually flu but a type of coronavirus.

If this virus could not be halted by anything other than a vaccine then everywhere should have had an equal death rate - as people are trying to calculate for covid-19 - say 1%.

But these graphs do not show that. They show that the death rate varied from city to city and the main reason for that variation was how quickly and efficiently that city imposed social distancing and a lockdown - and how long they kept that lockdown on for.

Spanish Flu was here for about two years - then it stopped. There is no reason to expect covid-19 wont do the same (or indeed no reason to expect it will), but for people in the vunerable groups the lesson from Spanish Flu is that if the correct political decisions are taken are the correct time there is a good possibility that we will survive this even without a vaccine.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/

[Copps is Magic]

If we managed to get it down to a bad flu year with the biggest piece of social engineering in human history then we've done pretty well, but it took that to get there remember.

[Bristol Red Rover]

BRR.

Do we have that many deaths in one month when we have a bad year with flu?

And do we need to shut half the country down to keep it to those numbers?

I assume your point is that you don't believe the modellers who are telling us there would have been half a million deaths if we hadn't locked down?

If so, I wonder what your evidence is for that. Because currently, our deaths total is doubling every three days or so and it has been doing for a month. I'm wondering what the mechanism is that stops that apart from lockdown?

The vast bulk of flu cases in a year hit with about a month. Why this doesn't send the critical care side of the health system into a cris I don't know - I'm pretty sure it does stretch it, but not like corona can with the way in some it creates that acute lung problem needing ventilators as well as affecting other organs.

So, keeping that curve broad and not peaking is needed with this illness. Without that moderating of the curve care wouldn't be available and hence the deaths in the regions the modellers predicted would likely occur.

It could be that many more people than the 20 to 60k die, I have no idea, but if that is the final toll then it would seem corona is in that league, providing care is available.

Within my thinking I'm allowing for the general idea that 80% or more will have been infected by it before it ends. Good isolatuon of vulnerable over the course of the next 12 months may reduce the deaths though it's a hige ask. China may have had a much higher infection rate that we know, and their story is far from over yet, even in Wuhan.

[selby]

  There are 10255 confirmed cases in the boroughs of London an increase on the day of 910.
 Doncaster 116 an increase of 21 on the day
 Barnsley   154                      20
 Rotherham154                      25
 Sheffield   715                      113

[BillyStubbsTears]

BRR.
You are right that many annual flu epidemic a stretch the NHS to breaking point.


But did you see the Imperial College modelling?

They were estimating that, in the absence of any action to mitigate CV-19, at the height of the epidemic, there would be 20-50 times more CV-19 patients requiring ICU beds than there are ICU beds in the country.

And that would mean not only that 500k people would die of CV-19. For 3 months, anyone who had a serious heart attack or stroke, or car crash or work accident would also die. Because the hospital's would not be able to treat them.

It is simply ridiculous to compare this epidemic with seasonal flu. If we are lucky, we will have no more deaths than a bad flu season. But we'll only manage that by shutting the country down for months.

[Bristol Red Rover]

Going back a page or so I would like to take issue with BRR saying that we can't stop covid-19 without a vaccine (and a vaccine isn't about to arrive anytime soon)....

Fascinating stuff to look at and read, thanks wilts

From my understanding of Spanish Flu in the US, there were many many factors effecting the mortality that varied across the country. The level of social distincing measures was no doubt important, as was poverty, who attended the sick etc. New York actually kept schools open - for the reason of being able to pass messages about the measures via the kids who could speak English to their parents who often couldn't.

Those graphs only show the duration of the measures not the degree of measures. It's clear that some cities on that bottom line appear to have introduced SD measures after the curve sharply rose, and others towards the top introduced them earlier. So it seems the speed wasn't as important as is being made out in that article. I don't see those graphs as being evidence, not unless you cherry pick as it appears they did do with the 4 egs at the top.

The death rate was affected by more than how many people were infected eg the aspirin factor, and is the reason we're seeing different death rates in different countries now.

The second waves we see in those graphs will happen here, and possibly even in Wuhan albeit with a period of very low rates, like Baltimore or New Orleans.

Spanish Flu had three waves in the UK, many theories on why. As for it being corona, I don't know, but thought I'd read conclusive evidence of it being flu. I'll try and check that out again.

I don't at all doubt we can survive this without a vaccine, or even heavy antiviral drugs, and agree that social distancing to keep that curve down and then continued extreme social distancing for the very vulnerable is key.

[Bristol Red Rover]

BRR.
You are right that many annual flu epidemic a stretch the NHS to breaking point.


But did you see the Imperial College modelling?

They were estimating that, in the absence of any action to mitigate CV-19, at the height of the epidemic, there would be 20-50 times more CV-19 patients requiring ICU beds than there are ICU beds in the country.

And that would mean not only that 500k people would die of CV-19. For 3 months, anyone who had a serious heart attack or stroke, or car crash or work accident would also die. Because the hospital's would not be able to treat them.

It is simply ridiculous to compare this epidemic with seasonal flu. If we are lucky, we will have no more deaths than a bad flu season. But we'll only manage that by shutting the country down for months.

I totally agree this disease is not the same as the flu, and apologise all round if that's how it came across. However the eventual death toll may be in that realm. The shut down is going to have to be in place for a long time.

Another factor not taken into account in the harm from this is people forgoing more routine medical help eg not calling docs when they are ill. That will increase ill health and in some cases result in prematire death in the short and in the long term. One particularly worrying side of that is people not having various "smaller" aches and pains and lumps checked out as early as they otherwise would, and we know how that ends up in people with cancer particularly, but also many other ailments.

[SydneyRover]

It probably should have started sooner idm but most people are going through enough shit and really can’t be bothered listening to some people simply trying to score political points, when this is all over there is plenty of time to question how they handled it

Such as 'how is the mayor of London' going?

[bpoolrover]

yes  I ageee Sydney was just fed up of the haters but will not rise to it anymore

It probably should have started sooner idm but most people are going through enough shit and really can’t be bothered listening to some people simply trying to score political points, when this is all over there is plenty of time to question how they handled it

Such as 'how is the mayor of London' going?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Here's the latest graph by the way. Remember, on this one, you want the curve to go up as soon as possible. And note that the horizontal axis is a log scale, so a little bit of left-to-right difference means a BIG difference in real numbers.

It's really not looking too good for us at the moment. A few days ago, the CSA said we would be doing well to come out of this first wave with fewer than 20,000 deaths. I thought then that he was being unduly pessimistic. Now it's looking like he might have been too optimistic. We currently are in the worst situation of any country that has hit 3000 deaths (in that, our number of deaths is growing faster than any other country's did when they hit 3000).

If the deaths go up to 8-900 per day over the weekend, we are going to do well to come out of this with fewer than 30-50,000 deaths, the way that trajectory is going.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Just in case anyone is not yet convinced about the scale of the economic sacrifice necessary to get on top of CV-19, look at this video of weekly new unemployment claimants in the USA over the past 50 years. And remember. America hasn't closed down like Western Europe has, and will have a lot more deaths to go with this economic carnage.

f**k.
Me.
Sideways.


https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1245869915480813570

[SydneyRover]

And to make matters worse under questioning Mat Hancock sounds as if he's making it up about testing targets.

[wilts rover]

Spanish Flu had three waves in the UK, many theories on why. As for it being corona, I don't know, but thought I'd read conclusive evidence of it being flu. I'll try and check that out again.

Yes apologies BRR it does seem as though it is confirmed as H1N1 - should have checked before I mentioned it was still unknown.

[SydneyRover]

The worldometer has added two new columns, numbers and total numbers of tests

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[silent majority]

The geographical spread of populations vary from country to country. Dense populations in some and not in others, with a whole variety of testing regimes means that accuracies and forecasts cannot be relied upon just yet.

But, this is a great site for looking at the global picture;

https://bing.com/covid?ref=blogduwebdesign.com

If you add the filter to location it'll give you all the local stuff too.

[silent majority]

This is good though;

https://twitter.com/JimMFelton/status/1246337829300514816?s=20

[Copps is Magic]

Just to highlight the absolutle fragility of the healthcare system. Gwent hospital usually has 13 people at any one time in intensive care. They quadrupled that capacity, and now that is full, and they are still on an upwards trajectory. If its that on the edge, political decisions and social actions can have a massive influence and delays can be fatal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejlbCmRJMW4

[Metalmicky]

708 deaths today...

[Copps is Magic]

Positive news on the number of cases. The increase has dipped below 10% for the first time. Less positive news on the deaths. If the same rate of increase continues we will have 13160 deaths in the UK by the end of the next five days. The rate of increase of deaths is much higher than Italy at similar stages.

[IDM]

Surely any decline in the rate of deaths will have a couple of weeks lag at least to any reduction in rate of increase of infections.?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Surely any decline in the rate of deaths will have a couple of weeks lag at least to any reduction in rate of increase of infections.?

Yes but the worry is that we locked down two weeks after Italy, but their death rate started slowing more than two weeks ago and ours has barely changed.

That means one of two things.

1) We were being more careless than them before we locked down.
2) We as a country have not been as sensible as them during the lockdown.


At the moment, we are not even close to reducing the death rate as rapidly as Italy was doing at the same point if their epidemic.

[Copps is Magic]

Surely any decline in the rate of deaths will have a couple of weeks lag at least to any reduction in rate of increase of infections.?

Yes, but not really related to what I said to be honest.

[Copps is Magic]

Surely any decline in the rate of deaths will have a couple of weeks lag at least to any reduction in rate of increase of infections.?

Yes but the worry is that we locked down two weeks after Italy, but their death rate started slowing more than two weeks ago and ours has barely changed.

That means one of two things.

1) We were being more careless than them before we locked down.
2) We as a country have not been as sensible as them during the lockdown.


At the moment, we are not even close to reducing the death rate as rapidly as Italy was doing at the same point if their epidemic.

Well, you can look at it in that perjorative sense but my intial thoughts were a) the incidence of infection is much much higher than we anticipate (for whatever reason, political, social) or b) some other environmental conditions are playing a part. Intially, age was seen to be the biggest determining factors in how well people would respond but I am reading a lot about how obseity is a major risk factor. The UK is one of the most obese countries in the world, Italy much lower.

[IDM]

Surely any decline in the rate of deaths will have a couple of weeks lag at least to any reduction in rate of increase of infections.?

Yes, but not really related to what I said to be honest.

I wasn’t disagreeing with you..

I think point 1) BST made is probably correct..

[Dutch Uncle]

Positive news on the number of cases. The increase has dipped below 10% for the first time. Less positive news on the deaths. If the same rate of increase continues we will have 13160 deaths in the UK by the end of the next five days. The rate of increase of deaths is much higher than Italy at similar stages.

By the way Copps - have you any idea whether the huge carnival celebrations in the south of the Netherlands (especially Maastricht) took place in late February this year? I see New Orleans may be suffering from letting Mardi Gras take place.

[Copps is Magic]

Positive news on the number of cases. The increase has dipped below 10% for the first time. Less positive news on the deaths. If the same rate of increase continues we will have 13160 deaths in the UK by the end of the next five days. The rate of increase of deaths is much higher than Italy at similar stages.

By the way Copps - have you any idea whether the huge carnival celebrations in the south of the Netherlands (especially Maastricht) took place in late February this year? I see New Orleans may be suffering from letting Mardi Gras take place.

Yes they did, and they have had clear consequences. It was a perfect storm here of families coming back from skiing holidays in Italy and going to carnival. The south has been much worse hit than the North (particularly the North Brabant region).

[Dutch Uncle]

Thanks Copps, that’s a pity, but I am not surprised. I lived in the area from 1975-81 and carnival could make or break a year for the horeca (HOtel/REstaurant/CAfe) industry in the area. Impossible to cancel carnival without military intervention I would think.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Surely any decline in the rate of deaths will have a couple of weeks lag at least to any reduction in rate of increase of infections.?

Yes but the worry is that we locked down two weeks after Italy, but their death rate started slowing more than two weeks ago and ours has barely changed.

That means one of two things.

1) We were being more careless than them before we locked down.
2) We as a country have not been as sensible as them during the lockdown.


At the moment, we are not even close to reducing the death rate as rapidly as Italy was doing at the same point if their epidemic.

Well, you can look at it in that perjorative sense but my intial thoughts were a) the incidence of infection is much much higher than we anticipate (for whatever reason, political, social) or b) some other environmental conditions are playing a part. Intially, age was seen to be the biggest determining factors in how well people would respond but I am reading a lot about how obseity is a major risk factor. The UK is one of the most obese countries in the world, Italy much lower.

I'm not sure I get your point Copps. I wasn't saying anything perjorative. I was merely stating a fact that our rate of increase of deaths is now significantly worse than Italy's was two weeks ago and has barely changed at all in the 12 days since we locked down. Whereas Italy's rate of increase of deaths was starting to slow significantly by this time after their lockdown.

Look at the graph below. Both Italy and UK locked down when the total number of deaths was in the mid 400s. It's clear that, around that time, the trends in the two countries were very similar. Both of us had doubling trends of around three days and both countries' trends tracked up to about 1000 total deaths. That suggests that there is nothing fundamentally different in the early death rate trend in both countries, whatever the differences in societal structure or background health. So it's hard to see why similar mitigation measures in each country shouldn't have similar effects. But since hitting 1000 deaths, the trends have diverged markedly. With the number of deaths in the mid 3000s, our doubling rate is about 3.8 days whereas Italy's was about 4.8 days. It doesn't sound like much, but if that difference remains, it means we would have 4 times more deaths than Italy over a month. And Italy is certainly on track to hit 20,000 or so overall.

Today's data is a little better than the numbers we have had for most of the past week, and may just show the start of our doubling time increasing. Let's hope so.

 

[Ldr]

BST given the thread I started last night, I suspect as a nation we are a lot more cavalier about the lockdown