Quick, deploy the non-apology!
"I’m sorry if people feel that there have been failings."
After being asked twice if she would apologise to NHS staff and their families over the lack of “necessary PPE” that has been linked to NHS workers becoming infected and dying, she said:
"I’ve been very clear in what I have said and I’m sorry that people feel that way"
So - probably getting the wrong end of the stick, but to rephrase - what are the parameters that control the shape of the epidemiological model, and what would have to be adjusted to make it have a bigger peak?
Quick, deploy the non-apology!
“I’m sorry if people are upset because staff/family have died because we didn’t preload the NHS and care system with extra PPE in preparation for the epidemic that seemed unavoidable months ago. But you could just be more like me, shrug it off, assume staff will just do their job without adequate protection, because they care even if I seemingly do not.’
NHS staff as pawns in a game of chicken with a poorly understood virus. Are we allowed to be ****ing angry? Or should we just nod?
I made my own beer garden. Hope those of you with the outside room did to. Too few people in it though, will be glad to be out of isolation as soon as possible… beers were cheaper, and beer gardens don’t normally have armchairs… but still not as good as the real thing… you need people for that.
DrJ the model has three parameters, growth rate, carrying capacity (end size) and initial starting condition. Each of these have a global mean and distributions to describe country-to-country variability. The height of the peak is informed by the global curve and the posterior is estimated for each country with an assumption about country-to-country variability. Peak time is informed by starting condition as rate is largely fixed in the model.
Of note, but if I just model the U.K. data then you cannot estimate anything from the U.K. data! You have to have passed the peak as inflections provide the most parameter information. A global model means any country ahead informs on those behind.
Is it realistic to assume that the UK is still running a fortnight behind Spain and Italy?
https://twitter.com/JamesManning/status/1249002474305990657
“Three hundred thousand and thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand tests carried out. How many?
Bruneep,
Where's Diane Abbot when you need her.
Is it realistic to assume that the UK is still running a fortnight behind Spain and Italy?
Almost. Two weeks behind Italy and a week behind Spain. Roughly. We should be over the peak and solidly declining in two weeks time. How long we bump along on the peak is debatable but I’ve always said it was identified to within two weeks. Rate of decline will depend on efficiency of lock down.
The govt don’t seem to be able to share plots other than the most rudimentary data and never on a log scale! I’ve not seen a projection from them yet. BTW, they’ve seen mine.
kelvin
SubscriberQuick, deploy the non-apology!
“I’m sorry if people are upset because staff/family have died because we didn’t preload the NHS and care system with extra PPE in preparation for the epidemic that seemed unavoidable months ago. But you could just be more like me, shrug it off, assume staff will just do their job without adequate protection, because they care even if I seemingly do not.’
NHS staff as pawns in a game of chicken with a poorly understood virus. Are we allowed to be **** angry? Or should we just nod?
It’s pretty much that from family & friends who work in the NHS.
They feel like cannon fodder, but despite this they have an underlying sense of duty to carry on as they are decent people.
I'm sorry you all think i should apologise for not caring more of you will die than should, but I'm not going to.
You know, I really don't warm to her.
Was PPE actually available to stockpile in January when the government should have twigged? Every country in the world was after it, and China was shutting down.
We should have had PPE before this even started.
Where is Priti Patel from? Just wonderin’ about her accent as she seems unable to pronounce any word ending in “-ing” without dropping the “g”. Is this a regional thing I’ve not encountered yet?
I can't believe a man from Aviemore actually wrote this 🙂
TiRed - if I understand the UK graph correctly then we are roughly 20% higher on cases per day than predicted and a bit more on deaths? If so does this point to a serious lack of testing making the cases figure possibly suppressed and our curve projection a bit imperfect?
I'm of the opinion that as we don't have mass testing up to speed yet that we don't really know how many cases there are. This makes it very hard indeed to gauge whether the lockdown is working or not and also whether the NHS systems are better or worse than predicted for preventing cases turning into deaths. Please feel free to correct my thinking as I've been following your explanations as much as I can throughout but as maths was never my strong point I can sometimes end up going down the wrong rabbit hole!
Turns out those 3.5million test kits Hancock ordered were 'sold as seen'
So after 3 weeks of hiding Patel numberwanged the press conference, I suppose she'll not be back, who's up next, 1000 yard state Raab, many homes Jenrick, no information Sharma, blown it that just leaves signal , Gove & captain BS-Hancock . I bet they can't wait for Johnson to return!
A lump of dog shite on a stick would give a more reasoned/informative/factual press conference than any of these **** muppets that we’ve had the misfortune to suffer so far
On the topic of model predictions:
It's a simple SEIR model with breakpoint in R on the date of lockdown. Seems to describe what's going on pretty well (in a range of places I've tried, including Hubei, Lombardy, and various European countries). Rather better than the MRC/IC predictions in fact.
I suppose she’ll not be back, who’s up next
I finally got my important letter from the government. I was suspicious rather than reminding me of the state of affairs a couple weeks back it would actually be a note asking me to confirm when I could do the conference.
In some ways I feel sorry for her. She couldnt exactly turn round and go "look I was trying to make all the foreign NHS staff leave the country. It was Hancock who was supposed to be sorting out the PPE and failed. Go and speak with him".
somafunk
SubscriberA lump of dog shite on a stick would give a more reasoned/informative/factual press conference than any of these **** muppets that we’ve had the misfortune to suffer so far
Beautifully put.
I'm stealing that for use elsewhere.
that we don’t really know how many cases there are. This makes it very hard indeed to gauge whether the lockdown is working or not
The model uses a parametric form that is not compatible with conventional mass action. The fact that this is a statistically much better description of the observations (in all countries) provides the evidence of lockdown efficiency.
The other prediction is precisely all that is challenging with time series forecasting. Predictions for the future are based on predictions which have uncertainty. That error is on a log scale. My method for near-casting is quite different and novel. Prediction error is about 15-20%. My parametric model has 15% interval because the dataset is global, not limited to one country.
I’ve done the same for the U.K. 164 regions. There is very strong support that a logistic equation (SIR model) is much poorer than other models.
TiRed - as always, the voice of facts; thanks for that.
Don't want to describe multiple other posts as '....a bag of bollocks' but....so many candidates.
It's Easter so, not for today.
Sorry tired if you are predicting 500 deaths per day over the next week you're seriously deluded. THat's just not compatible with what is going on with the epidemic. Well, it's theoretically possible perhaps, but extremely unlikely and there's no way you could predict it now.
Maybe I've misunderstood what the numbers on your graph mean. Very pretty anyway.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood what the numbers on your graph mean
No maybe about it
The model uses a parametric form that is not compatible with conventional mass action. The fact that this is a statistically much better description of the observations (in all countries) provides the evidence of lockdown efficiency.
So effect of lockdown is similar in all countries?
Interesting considering how different countries have handled things, (I suppose what happens next in China regards any second peak will be the one to watch)
Is it up on biorxiv yet
This article has an interesting take too (Nelson v chummy with government so pretty reliable, if u get past the fawning)
Apparently the behavioural scientists that are steering a lot of the governments thinking assumed many more people would ignore the lockdown & carry on with school & work & it's costing £bns more than expected
Explains (partly) why government messaging has been so half-arsed
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/09/boris-worried-lockdown-has-gone-far-can-end/
Don’t want to describe multiple other posts as ‘….a bag of bollocks’ but….so many candidates.
It’s Easter so, not for today.
And yet you did , self pwn? 😀
Sorry tired if you are predicting 500 deaths per day over the next week you’re seriously deluded. THat’s just not compatible with what is going
I’m not. I said I use a short-term time series model for near-casting (7-days). Only When that agrees with the parametric epidemiological model, do I THEN have any confidence in the forecast to longer times. Look at the U.K. prediction. Then look at the Italy prediction. Spot which one has converged? The U.K. prediction is up to about 1200/d next week (wiggly yellow line). It’s been about right for the past two weeks, sadly. Including the early rise catching up over the weekend. Hope that is clear?
Appreciate your efforts TiRed. How are you?
Sorry I was reading numbers off the Italy curve by mistake. Hadn’t realised you had posted a second one when I was zooming in! So you’re predicting a strong rise from your time series method?
@TiRed - thanks for your continued sharing.
I still have concerns over the tail of this. It's not as simplistic as say a Poisson distn (paucity of data, very low frequency events with large consequences). I know you're iteratively reducing the uncertainty but it still troubles me somewhat as I'm struggling to articulate why it's not quite there yet. Do you have a F**** factor.. for the ~10% population who don't behave and continue to transmit?
Hope you're back to full strength soon.
Sorry, bit of a cock up on image posting, meant to post different image. First time trying, at least it didn't post something nsfw!
Anyhow, Interesting that a month from first infection Kenya managed to get the numbers going in a downward direction, from a high of 30 a day on the 2nd April down to 5 a day for the last couple of days. Interested because other half out there at the moment looking after 93 year old dad whose quite ill [though not with covid]. Been quite worried as they don't have the medical resources out there that we do, fell slightly reassured looking at this graph though still keeping fingers crossed.
Oh for a graph like this in the UK.
Edit:
What's the best way to post an image here? posting video is easy but the forum advice is a bit baffling.
..
Good info here citing it's sources that doesn't support the current media hysteria.
Busy parks and shaming sunbathers...
https://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-politics-of-covid-19-busy-parks-and-public-blame/
Good info here citing it’s sources that doesn’t support the current media hysteria.
I've seen a few of these articles. None of them mention the people dying in hospital corridors or being buried in mass graves.
No mention of the children dying of it too or those in relatively good health, no it only mentions those with illnesses that you can survive from or have prolonged life.
Busy parks and shaming sunbathers…
You call passing the buck I call being an arrogant ****. Just follow the rules.
Most of those links have been posted here, a few by me. Although I’ve hopefully posted in the context “curious, but needs more data to mean anything”
They’ve all got flaws and until we have large scale testing including for those that have had it, they don’t really mean a whole lot.
A sample size of 176 isn’t really enough, even more so when we don’t know if some prove to be pre-symptomatic.
That’s before you get onto the way that website is trying to paint the situation.
French media seem to be reporting British news that isn't on British media unless I've missed something - nothing in the Guardian at 8:53 on the following points anyhow anyhow.
Sud Ouest published the following numbers for 2200 patients in intensive care in England, Wales and NI: 73% of those in intensuve care are men 47.8% of men survive survive compared to 55.4% women (yes I know that adds up to more than 100%, think about it). 73% of patients are obese or overweight.
Europe 1 reports that if you are blood group "O" your risk goes down 30%.
New Yorks Times reports states 80% of admissions are men.
Prof Derek Hill form Univiersity College London says men develop more serious conditions and over weight patients are higher risk.
Ouest France reports 50% of patients have high blood pressure and over 70% are overweight or obese.
On the subject of data. As we move away from the Boris Weekend infections. And that public transport, office working, social gatherings all drastically cut.
Will we have data (eventually) on how further transmissions are happening?
You’ll have the obvious routes such as food shopping. Healthcare workers.
But what about those ignoring the guidance? The Hens I think Drac refers to them as.
So effect of lockdown is similar in all countries?
It seems reasonable to assume that the the main beneficial acts (getting most people out of public transport etc) that you’re then into diminishing returns?
Banning cycling for example. Or only permitting dog walkers to take their dog out within 1km if home.
Sud Ouest published the following numbers for 2200 patients in intensive care in England, Wales and NI: 73% of those in intensuve care are men 47.8% of men survive survive compared to 55.4% women (yes I know that adds up to more than 100%). 73% of patients are obese or overweight.
The higher rates for men has been reported by UK media, although not necessarily for the UK. Spain was the example is saw.
Edit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52197594
You call passing the buck I call being an arrogant ****. Just follow the rules.
Interesting article on Denmark on the BBC. I'm assuming/hoping that the government and its advisors are watching these countries coming out of lockdown very closely to help plan for our own exit strategy
BBC News - Coronavirus: Why Denmark is taking steps to open up again
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52226763
You have to be careful with interpreting these stats
eg: 73% of patients are obese or overweight.
Something like 65% of the population is BMI 25 or over. So it's not that you're 3x more likely to have an issue if you're overweight (25:75) but more like 10-15% (73/65 = 1.12)
Not saying we shouldn't all try to be healthier mind.
Deceptively 'fit' Boris Johnson is apparently 5'9" and between 16.5 and 17 stone in weight.
Edukator those Sud Ouest stats sound very similar to an email update my wife got from an ANP group she is involved with.
You don't think a Doctor pontificating on economics is a little outside his professional expertise?
Deceptively ‘fit’ Boris Johnson is apparently 5’9″ and between 16.5 and 17 stone in weight.
Constitution of a hardened bon viveur
Appreciate your efforts TiRed. How are you?
Feeling a lot better, thanks. Pain in the lungs is diminishing and breathlessness much decreased. I went for a short walk yesterday evening.
So you’re predicting a strong rise from your time series method?
The model captures the weekly fluctuations, it predicts that after the weekend there will be a peak in reporting - that's been seen week-on-week due to reporting delays.
As for describing the tail and effects of removal of lock-down, well the model assumes things will remain unchanged. more contacts means more transmission means longer tail. I can model this quite easily by switching the model to logistic rather than non-logistic growth. Now the model for the UK is reasonably well-qualified. I can also solve it stochastically - as one does for small numbers. Imperial's model is stochastic and individual based - there are 50 million individuals simulated. Mine is not.
It won't matter as qualitatively, the effects will be clear - relaxing lock-down will prolong the tail. Complete removal, subject to knowing the proportion infected, and welcome back to a 2-day doubling time.
BTW the odds ratio for ITU is about 4:1 male to female. You don't see those odds by chance. I believe this has to be immune system related. Women are in a state of slight immune suppression compared with men and the odds of autoimmune disease is almost exactly opposite (1:4).
So 2/3 weeks in call it 4 or 5 in Europe and the talk is turning to opening up.
Is herd immunity still a dirty word? Cause it sounds awful like the strategies are shifting.
Who'd a think it.
I also get the sense the people are getting bored...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/09/boris-worried-lockdown-has-gone-far-can-end//blockquote >Interesting article, thanks for sharing.
A more useful message might be that being a big, fat biffer puts you at increased risk of health problems. Instead we’re told that it shows the virus can hit anyone no matter how healthy or young. Hancock, on the other hand, as well as being younger than Johnson, is clearly not obese, but the media always note his age rather than his weight.
Stress, overwork and lack of sleep are pretty poisonous to the immune system as well and both Boris and Hancock will have been absolutely maxed out on all three over the last few weeks. Bruno Bruins collapsed due to the intensity of the situation and he wasn't even ill!
Good info here
I’m not even clicking that, and I advise others to behave likewise. That site is just another conspiracy theory tool for conspiracy theory tools. We need less of that right now.
TiRed - do you have a similar graph for USA? With their population size and fragmented governance it feels their numbers could get very ugly.
Stress, overwork and lack of sleep are pretty poisonous to the immune system
I had been wondering the same thing in the context of - what if people aren't a symptomatic they just haven't had a big enough trigger stress to activate. You get stressed it flares up - might explain the rumoured re-infections. Might not be the viral load that is doing the damage in the medical profession, could be the stress levels. Anyway that's random thought for the day, if the virus did behave this way it would mess with herd immunity by infection as a theory. Ultimately we still don't seem to have enough information about after.
Women are in a state of slight immune suppression compared with men and the odds of autoimmune disease is almost exactly opposite (1:4).
Can you expand on that please. Surely a suppressed immune system is bad?
IIRC the virus isn't the killer, it's the immune system response or overresponse rather.
So a lower immune system response is potentially better.
I’m not even clicking that, and I advise others to behave likewise. That site is just another conspiracy theory tool for conspiracy theory tools. We need less of that right now.
This applies to the Telegraph link too.
Can you expand on that please. Surely a suppressed immune system is bad?
When you get ill, the symptoms you get, fever, cough, snottines etc are from your bodies immune system reacting to get rid of the bug.
In the case of cornoavirus when it goes bad it's because of an inflammation over-reaction in your lungs, that makes it dangerous.
TiRed – do you have a similar graph for USA? With their population size and fragmented governance it feels their numbers could get very ugly.
Interested too. Have family in FL and been trying to keep updated on what's happening over there. If you ignore the nonsense coming from the federal govt/NY accepted obviously, they actually seem to be keeping the confirmed no of infections/hosp admissions/deaths down in many States. It could all go very wrong very quickly obviously.
TiRed – do you have a similar graph for USA?
And every other country and Unitary authority in England and Wales 🙂
Does anyone have any recent information on the strains of virus? Does Europe have all of the same strain?
TiRed - of the 3 graphs you've posted, the one for the UK shows by far the most scatter of data and by far the least resemblance to the epidemiological curve. I wonder if those 2 observations are related, and if planning in the UK is hampered by having collected a very poor data set?
Al your other graphs have looked cautiously optimistic and plausible, TiRed. The US one looks far too optimistic with a peak far too early, time wil tell. Some states we're continuing life pretty much as normal until very recently so I find the rapid turnaround difficult to believe.
Thanks - interesting. With the states locking down after us I was interested to see if you expected the rest of their major metropolitan areas to kick off.
It’s a global model. So some countries will have converged better than others. That’s why I have a near-casting model to check. Italy has converged. The others have not, so forecasting should be viewed cautiously. To my knowledge, no other model projections have this QC. For the U.K. and US, believe only the near-cast with confidence. For another week or so, anyway.
I have been following this thread for sometime now, specifically Tired's contributions, and I thank you for the work you have done and sharing it with us.
Being from Northern Ireland I would be interested in your graphs and predictions for Ireland as a whole and Northern Ireland separately if you have these.
Myself and my wife have also had mild symptoms, tight chested and coughs and I have a great deal of sympathy for people who are suffering more severely as I can imagine the panic setting in as people struggle to breath.
I have found that gentle zwift sessions helps the chest, probably placebo but need to burn off all the choccy eggs:)
FFS the Daily Fail
he's not the messiah he's a very naughty boy !!!!
Meanwhile, somewhere near Edinburgh:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-52260459
~
Look forward to seeing your mansucript as I can't quite figure out what's happening from brief descriptions 🙂
Interesting report from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre.
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/c31dd38d-d77b-ea11-9124-00505601089b
Data:
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/e7821f3c-2f7b-ea11-9124-00505601089b
This table is interesting:
The table above is the demographics of a large group of icu patients with Covid compared to patients with normal viral pneumonia in the UK. My take aways were (and as a punter, i'd love to hear some of the thoughts of the better informed!)
- Men are much more likely to get it bad than women
- If you're fat you're screwed
- Something weird is going on with the ethnicity - why isn't it impacting all ethnicities equally (in proportion to the % in population)? I guess it might be socio-economic, but the differences seem quite large even for that?? esp compared with normal virual pneumonia
- The media habit of saying "they had underlying health conditions", is a bit misleading - they're hardly at deaths door if they don't need any assistance normally.
That table is interesting, for ethnicity, I would caution as contacts and attack rate may be different due to contacts. The male to female odds ratio is as I said. And of note, look at the sample size of ITU patients with confirmed COVID19 is a relatively short period of time - 4K cases.
And yes ARDS, which is the killer, is an exaggerated immune reponse to the pathogen in the lung. Caused by massive systemic immune reaction that leads to white cells attacking the lungs, micro clotting in the organs and eventual body shut down. I can’t see past immunology here. Age and comorbidities will also be a factor, ethnicity, perhaps. But you don’t miss and odds ratio of 4, even in simple observational data!
"– If you’re fat you’re screwed"
Nope. You're more screwed, but people over 25 BMI were, IIRC, over 65% of the population anyway. Quite sad that I'm contributing to that 🙁 I'd speculate that those with higher BMI would be more likely to have related health complications.
On the ethnicity, the explanation I've seen is the split between rural and urban living.
Enough of my speculation, my appreciation goes to TiRed and his excellent work.
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson_MP/status/1249314764880314368
happy easter the saviour has risen and returned.
Blessed are the meek
Thanks for posting those links Ewan.
Meh.....shrug.......I gave him as much thought and consideration as the pheasants that end up flattened on the roads, that man and his government have over 10,000 deaths on their hands due to their incompetence at governance and lack of planning despite being warned in January regarding the pandemic.
Zero thoughts given to him,
The ethnicity data is not as stark when matched to local population...might be socio economic
Data underlying Figure 6
Percentage of patients
Column 1 - covid 19
Column 2 - Viral pneumonia
Column 3 - Matched to local population
White - 66 - 88 - 76
Mixed - 01 - 01 - 03
Asian - 14 - 06 - 13
Black - 12 - 03 - 07
Other - 06 - 02 - 02