@DRJ

Thank you for posting that, unfortunately it looks like my area has yet to peak if it’s correct

In other news Piers Morgan (the hero we never knew we needed) just obliterated another Tory MP (Helen Whatley) live on TV

hes not the only right wing commentator suddenly giving a crap about social care & NHS staff

I would STRONGLY advise you to listen to this. Unless you’re Care Minister Helen Whately. https://t.co/mA8V5l0oeH

— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) April 15, 2020

That WHatley MP probably thought she was going to get an easy ride from hate-brewer at least

Some of the numbers being put out about under-reporting of deaths from covid seem crazy

I suspect that in other countries it could be similar, but 1000s of deaths possibly caused by the virus may end up being ignored

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/uk-coronavirus-death-toll-coroners

In another late-to-the-party post, I’m not sure if Captain Tom’s walk has made the forum. Chapeau to him and his charity effort that, er, went viral:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/tomswalkforthenhs

£5.6mil at time of post.

This is awesome, but it doesn’t half wind me up that this is required in what is a supposedly one of the richest countries in the world.

I think there’s quite a large group of people dying as a side effect of CV19. ie, people that don’t have CV that may have (in a different time) gone to hospital and survived, but didn’t go, and ended up dying.

There’s a jump in average deaths at this time of year of about 2.5K if you strip out known CV-19 related deaths.

chickenpox/smallpox

cowpox not chickenpox. Huge difference. A global epidemic of smallpox would spread faster than COVID19. The chickenpox virus, varicella, does not confer immunity to smallpox. The previous SARS-COV-1 virus of 2003 probably confers protection against SARS-COV-2. But it was not very transmissible and relatively few people caught it. The MERS corona virus most likely does not confer immunity.

https://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/faq/en/

Some definite exceptions but by and large most of us are just trying to understand the basics

+1

£5.6mil at time of post.

Very impressive, but that is 1.5% of tomorrow’s spending on the NHS, just for some perspective. Yes you read that correctly.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/jacinda-ardern-and-ministers-take-20-pay-cut-in-solidarity-with-those-hit-by-covid-19

meanwhile Johnson trousers another wad of cash from the Torygraph and MPs get ten grand to spend on paperclips.

n other news Piers Morgan (the hero we never knew we needed) just obliterated another Tory MP (Helen Whatley) live on TV

Why does Helen Whateley go on TV? She is ALWAYS obliterated, even by the most benign of interviewers. She could go on Blue Peter and still look like a totally incompetent fool. I can’t imagine the suffering that her family go through watching her.

Some of the numbers being put out about under-reporting of deaths from covid seem crazy

I suspect that in other countries it could be similar, but 1000s of deaths possibly caused by the virus may end up being ignored

Definitely an issue everywhere. Deaths in the community follow the standard process and haven’t up to now been added to the hospital deaths by most countries. Getting a lot of focus now, New York, for example, are now reporting them and added over 3k deaths to their stats recently.

@Flaperon

but it’s a bit more complicated than ordering a taxi for 200.

Quite.

The message from FCO in India was ‘no more flights for foreseeable’ and any in future are from Delhi – impossible to reach for anyone outwith the state of New Delhi and surrounds.

It’s taken two solid weeks of negotiation by FCO to get today’s convoy across one state line and permission for the bus drivers to leave home and return home. Even then it’s taken 3.5hrs and rumor of a large bribe or three to police on the ground….

Hey ho, I’ve just got message to say they can see the airport – one last police checkpoint.

Can we just back up here and get more details of the Hobson’s Choice nightclub?

Could do with a laugh!

That was only it’s approximate name – I also want to hear the full assessment!

Here you go morecash

https://wood2.woodyland.org/pictures/parties/broken-hobsons_choice-banbury-21122002/page.shtml

😱🤣🕺

(Note, I’m not in any of these pictures)
(Another note, I’ve no idea whose photos these are, just came up from a Google search)

Louise?

She’s having lunch.

No joke, SWMBO is a Louise.

Get…out….of……there………

National Records Office Scotland (NRS) figures aren’t showing quite the mortality rate difference by sex as those other figures earlier this week.

Also, looks like these figures are increasing the “hospital only” count by around 65%. Assuming it’s similar across the rest of the UK then we’re not far off 20,000 already.

I assume you’re talking about this?

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/covid19/covid-deaths-report-week-15.pdf

If so the link’s ^^^^^^ there for everyone else.

Explanation of the distinction with other numbers for those (like me) who didn’t know:

This number is different from the count of deaths published daily on the gov.scot
website, because the latter is based on deaths of those who have tested positive
for COVID-19. The NRS figures published here include all deaths where COVID19 (included suspected cases) was mentioned on the death certificate.

I don’t have time to read it all but:

Of all deaths to date involving COVID-19, 56.5% were male (544) and 43.5% were female (418).

…seems to contradict the graphs which show about twice as many male deaths as female. Can someone point out what I missed?

Yep, that’s the one. Also showing a large increase in deaths not seemingly related to Coronavirus. This seems to match the findings from England and Wales. .

Care workers…

Badge or PPE? Badge or PPE…? It’s a tough one.

I see Matt Hancock is at it again

why does he need to lie soooo often

couldnt he just for once admit that he promised something he couldnt deliver??

just once?

Matt Hancock says tells @Laura_K_Hughes she's wrong to say he's missed deadline of 25k tests by mid-April, as deadline was actually the end of April (and then increased to 100k)
But his press release on March 18 said capacity for 25k tests "ready within 4 weeks"

— Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) April 15, 2020

A badge that already exists, the man is a muppet

Home

One thing talked about by Whitty in the presser was pinning down the R number, which they believe is between 0.5 & 1 now.

Whats the R number? The mortality rate?

Transmission/contagion rate

R1 means each infected person infects 1 other
R10 they infect 10.

R is about 0.5 – unless the recent data over the easter weekend are extremely dodgy and biased (no evidence of this however). Definitely under 1.

At the moment we are on top of a peak. That means that the case reproductive number, R, is about 1 or thereabouts. This number is the product of three things, contact rate x probability of transmission x duration of infection.

It has come down form perhaps 2-4 because of the first. The social distancing has reduced contacts to the extent that transmission is not being sustained. Relax back to where we were and guess what happens…

Epidemics normally run their course because they run out of new contacts that haven’t had it already. That is called herd immunity. This epidemic has a long long way to go to reach that level. Vaccines bring it nearer because it reduces the pool of people who can still be infected.

There is no exit strategy that does not involve more infections blowing up. It’s just a case of managing them in the context of healthcare and isolation. In fact, given the stark social and economic choices, there probably isn’t a strategy at all! Test and test, confirm that some fraction have had it, then limit mixing.

It will be a long road. Just because we have contained transmission for now does not mean we can sustain it.

[TL:DR] social distancing has reduced the chain reaction of transmission. But how do you break the chain completely? No the government don’t know either.

Of course it’s not 1. If it was, it would mean that the daily death rate would still be going up as a result of the rapid rise in cases prior to 22 March. If you know what a SEIR model is and how it works you could work this out in a couple of minutes.

BTW your previous forecasts are now about a week old. Are you going to re-plot them with the actual observations on top to show how well they did? ROFL.

😂🤣😂🤣😂

No, it would mean that the rate of change was zero. Hint the slope of the log-cumulative cases curve is (R-1)/recovery rate. So at the peak of the INCIDENCE curve, R=1. When the incidence declines R < 1.

My U.K. predictions from 08-04-2020 were a 7-day incidence of 554 (95%CI 482-636). What was today’s incidence? 778. I keep every prediction made for that past three weeks. The running prediction error is currently about 15%. I’m not laughing, sadly.

BTW the data is poorly described by SEIR models since the notion of mass action mixing is violated. Parameters are largely inestimable during the ascending phase since they appear as a ratio. I’ve fitted both those and other models and the SEIR models are statistically very very inferior. This was one of the issues with the first use of models to describe the U.K. epidemic. They have the wrong answer.

Surely every death now recorded was infected 15 days ago.
Every new hospital admission was infected 10 days ago.

Most new admissions are from the transmission vectors still available post lock down. Transport, shopping, key workers, hospital/care homes, intra household. Plus maybe the odd twunt party.

Surely every death now recorded was infected 15 days ago.

Technically, they are a convolution of a distribution of times, some will be sooner and other further in the past, likewise the deaths have a lag to cases. The model-estimated lags between cases and deaths for various models (including mine) puts that lag only at about 5 days. Basically, present as a (verified hospital) case and it looks like about 5 days to death – which tallies with the mean ITU stays being recorded in the publication earlier this week. Time from incubation to case presentation is largely unknown – hence the challenge of SEIR models. The original data from China on which the models were based did not tally with the clinical experience from Italy.

Latest ITV CV podcast:

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-19/coronavirus-what-you-need-to-know-itv-news-podcast-with-information-advice-and-analysis-on-the-pandemic/
“Why do some people die from coronavirus….”

They’re talking to Dr Alison Pittard who tells us that blood clotting in all organs may be the problem in the serious cases as opposed to pure lung inflammation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disseminated_intravascular_coagulation

Sadly the clotting is one consequence of the inflammatory response. It leads to multiple organ failure.

27 European countries likely to adopt Apple/Google contact tracing API

Losing your Mum, in your first few days of life:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/our-beloved-marymo-yesu-maame

So sad, but at least the babe survived.

If that clotting is an issue, I feel less worried about my FiL (71, T2Diabetic, takes warfarin after a heart valve replacement 10 yrs ago.)