Well we've all been living in hope for many years so he's not wrong.
Or living on hope? Here's a rewarding (if chilling) read:
if chilling
I like to think there's a little national pride in may country left in me. That article smashed it to pieces.
That article smashed it to pieces.
Difficult to argue with its analysis though.
Sadly...
I like to think there’s a little national pride in may country left in me. That article smashed it to pieces.
I think that sums it up
The question is what are we - us ordinary folk - going to be asking for, pushing for, campaigning for in order to get things put right. Are we - all of us - going to be working towards the solutions, or are we going to be quietly accepting, looking for others to "do something" and remaining part of the problem?
Freely admit I've been guilty of the latter more than I probably realised before events in the last 5-10 years made me realise
From today's data - stable deaths with trend to increase.
Right then, it's 2 weeks since they started the additional Northern restrictions. They're up for review today.
Oldham appears to be a bit of a basket case currently but other areas seem to be improving.
Who reckons they'll ease them?
Another week to another review I reckon. I think they’ll want to get that rise flattened before September to support the schools opening rhetoric.
Blackburn is still 84/100000 with a national average of 14/100000 cases nationally so I doubt we’ll see a local change. Oldham is north of 100.
Pendle and Calderdale are still spiking as well, Blackburn is still high, wouldn't bet on it.
I'm betting they keep those areas in lockdown until schools return.
That's another 3 weeks
If only there was a plan, and people knew what they were supposed to be doing.
“The JBC set 1,000 cases a day as a warning threshold – but we don't know what action is meant to be taken on the back of it, or why they picked 1,000,” said the research professor at University College London.
“We don’t know whether the government is actually planning on changing strategy in light of ticking up numbers. Or even, what government strategy is in general.
“Mr Johnson has said opening schools a priority but he hasn't given any detail of what that means in terms of policy, nor any indication that they are trying to drive down cases before schools open in England.”
Meanwhile local TV news says police have stepped up operations only to be told by people breaking guidelines that they were following out of date guidelines that they didn’t know had been updated. Where’s our daily briefings…?
@TiRed Can you explain that graph a bit more please. Apologies if you already have in the previous 378 pages 🙂
Currently having a small Holiday in Ardèche - very quiet car journey down. Not many people in the hotel.
Awaiting the quarantine news to see what they throw at France.
Happier here than in UK as it stands.
From the Derek Lowe article:
This is just naked “vaccine nationalism”, which is really the last thing we need right now. I don’t want to see any country (including the US) beating its chest in this fashion and using the pandemic to declare the superiority of its system or its scientists.
Ring any bells about world-beating scientists, tests, apps etc ?
The article in the Atlantic (link above) doesn't pull any punches and is sobering read.
It's certainly worth reading.
It's a regression of daily deaths by day, using over-dispersed poisson (count) statistics. It tests to see whether there is any curvature and makes an adjustment for the day of the week due to reporting delays (quite a simple feature). Then it predicts six weeks in advance. The curvature suggests that we will see a leveling off and slight increase of daily deaths and the bands reflect the uncertainty. Fluctuations are unlikely to lead to a day of zero reported deaths.
There has been a revision of reporting from daily to weekly cases at the lowest (postcode) level and I haven't updated my code yet. But the hotspots are easy to see from incidence data. I look at other measures for an earlier signal.
The article in the Atlantic (link above) doesn’t pull any punches
You reckon? Seemed pretty balanced to me, sharing blame throughtout the UK establishment and even offering us the following to let us all completely off the hook:
Some government officials and experts I spoke with—including a senior adviser to the leader of one of the best-performing countries in Europe—said that Britain may have just been unlucky in the number of holidaymakers it had returning from the wrong places at the wrong times. Britain is also more densely populated than almost any other country in Europe, with its preeminent city and busiest airport. Like a Silk Road port at the time of the plague, London is a 21st-century global hub unlike anywhere else in the region. It is no coincidence that the British capital and New York have been among the two worst-affected cities in the world.
I'm a big fan of the Atlantic and this article is no exception.
Then it predicts six weeks in advance. The curvature suggests that we will see a leveling off and slight increase of daily deaths and the bands reflect
@tired was every point on the blue line predicted 6 weeks before, based on the data at that time? in hich case, impressive modeling.
why, on the future 6 weeks, do the weekend and mid week troughs get lower, and the monday and friday peaks get higher? To my laymans eye, the seven day rolling average seems to remain about flat or even slight decline? is that the case
*
@TiRed, also why does the probability of extinction increase in Mid Sept, especially since the model predicts Uk cases are rising then.
...but really, why does it increase at all?
Sorry, another question - do all the models need adjusting now that the way English deaths were reported has been updated and the total was reduced by 5,000 yesterday?
why, on the future 6 weeks, do the weekend and mid week troughs get lower, and the monday and friday peaks get higher?
Because that's the statistical trend. Now, what's behind that trend... that's more than statistics... I'd guess at different reporting measures for different care/health settings or patients... so what we're looking at is one or more trends artificially combined into one set of data... and those trends are diverging, but that divergence is only hinted at by the peaks and troughs caused by the different distribution of the reporting across the days of the week.
do all the models need adjusting now that the way English deaths were reported has been updated and the total was reduced by 5,000 yesterday
what, again?
He's referring to deaths more than 28 days after Coronavirus diagnosis no longer being included in Coronavirus deaths figures. Not relevant when looking at excess deaths though... not sure why Tired has stopped using those.
Ah yes, forgot TiRed was using excess deaths, ignore me, usually the best option anyway.
Ah yes, forgot TiRed was using excess deaths, ignore me, usually the best option anyway.
Can't be. Firstly (AFAIK) excess deaths don't fluctuate with weekends and secondly excess deaths have been below zero for 6 weeks or so. For the last 6 weeks CV has been preventing deaths. (Albeit by moving them forwards.)
...but agree Excess deaths is probably the best number to use, apart from laggy ONS reporting based on actual death certs. (And excess deaths are the only sane way to compare different nations for obvious reasons).
That data is ONS reported COVID19 deaths (not excess deaths). It will probably be updated based on the reclassification of 28d, which I don't personally agree with, but standardisation is OK either way.
What I did was model observed deaths by day of the week using log-linear, quartic and cubic regressions for all weeks from 15 onwards (with an extra factor for day of the week). Then selected the model with the best overall goodness of fit - this was quartic from Week 22 onwards - which is what is plotted. You can see that the data has a periodicity, but the fluctuations increase with time (hint: it's plotted on a log scale). Forward projection just increases the magnitude of fluctuations due to the quartic nature of the overall trend- it's a simple model. I really wanted to understand whether we could report ZERO deaths because, as per Scotland, the media will get excited.
When ONS update their data, the extinction probability may change.
Excess deaths are back to historic ten-year range. Forget the noise about being BELOW. they are as expected at the moment. A few age groups and regions have a little excess. Nothing of concern though at the moment. Excess deaths is insensitive to changes because of the reporting lag by ONS. That's why the daily PHE data is used on a daily basis.
Ratio of All deaths to ten year baseline by NHS region shows everything looks pretty much back to baseline.
Apps back.
Baroness Dido Harding - who heads up the wider Test and Trace initiative - had earlier voiced concern about implementing the automated contact-tracing feature because of fears many people who had been falsely flagged might be told to go into quarantine.
The app has several other functions, including:
An alert system that informs users of the coronavirus risk level close to their home, with the area defined by the first part of their postcode
A QR barcode scanner, so users can check in when they visit a venue and be told if others there later tested positive
A symptom-checking tool, which allows users to book a free test and get the results via the app
A countdown function that comes into effect if they are told to self-isolate, so users can keep track of how long to stay at home
I love it - an app that helps people with counting - can it also help them spell their name?
'Defined by the first part of the postcode', that's the whole county so that will be useful.
Another success story from the woman who was CEO when TalkTalk had a massive data breach.
Who knew such a complex app was possible in such a short timeframe? Perhaps the NZ government, who had something similar up and running in the middle of May.
‘Defined by the first part of the postcode’, that’s the whole county so that will be useful.
Depends if they mean the first two letters, or they've really upped their game and gone for the numbers as well. World. Beating.
It depends on what the first part of the postcode actually means
If you take M2 7PB:
- the "M" is the Postal Area (Manchester)
- "M2" is the Postal District
- "M2 7" is the Postal Sector
- add the unit "PB" to get a full postcode
Even data at Postal District level is very useful for urban areas as it's quite a small area. Admittedly if you look at IV27 it's huge but the population is very low.
Even data at Postal District level is very useful for urban areas as it’s quite a small area. Admittedly if you look at IV27 it’s huge but the population is very low.
It is totally dependent on the infection rate data they are using to inform it. Ideally you'd want to know about positive tests in your area as they happen, not once the official data gets dribbled out a week or so later.
It will be first postcode district. they've moved reporting to the Middle Super Output Area (MSOA). MSOAs are small areas with around 7,200 average population.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases
You'd assume the definition of the first part of the postcode is the 3/4 digits.
Although wouldn't surprise me based on how they've acted upon the latest "local lockdown".
A question for people who've had a swab test administered by someone else ie a health care worker - do you think you couid have done it yourself? I gather that it involves sticking the swab pretty far into your head and I wonder if you woukd have done it properly if you'd done it yourself?
(Reason I ask is I may need a test for travel and not sure if I should go the cheaper DIY route)
@DrJ Nope, a nurse wasn't convinced it was a good throat swab when I was at SGH recently because I was struggling to not gag and keep my tongue out of the way, the nose swab went fine but I'm not sure I'd fancy doing it myself competently.
I've not had it done by a professional but I don't really feel like I did a self-administered one very well.
I rubbed the back of my throat and it was seriously grim - huge gag response. By contrast I can put things into my nose a long way (horizontal not vertical) without issue.
Sputum testing is coming...
I went to do a drive through test assuming someone else would swab. Was suprised when I was handed the test and instructions to do it myself.
I've self administered the test 3 times now (all negative) - back of the throat is grim but gets easier. Nose was no problem. I know people who are OK with the throat but not the nose.
Roll on a decent pin prick or spit test!
Don't panic everyone, the world-beating scientific experts of SAGE have told us that the number of infections is still going steadily down:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk
I guess that means yesterday's 2-month high of 1441 cases (more than 4 times the low of 352 a few weeks back) just proves that we are now super-efficient at finding all the infected people!
Yay us. Quarantinis all round!
