Coronavirus outbreak

[marinyork]

Some interesting, stat's in here via the download.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

One that doesn't seem to have been picked up on is that in England the total number of beds occupied on a weekly basis by Covid patients is now down to 599 (inc' 56 on mechanical ventilation) at w/e 9 Aug compared to a total number of beds occupied peak of 18970 at w/e 12 Apr with a mechanical ventilation peak of 2881 on the same date.

Doesn't seem to have been reported AFAIK.

It's interesting but coincidentally fits in with most other things.

The virus levels are reckoned to be 20-25 times rather than 30x lower than at it's peak infections in mid march, add on two to four weeks for those people to die and it's about right.

 

[PK99]

Some interesting stat's in here via the download.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

One that doesn't seem to have been picked up on is that in England the total number of beds occupied on a weekly basis by Covid patients is now down to 599 (inc' 56 on mechanical ventilation) at w/e 9 Aug compared to a total number of beds occupied peak of 18970 at w/e 12 Apr with a mechanical ventilation peak of 2881 on the same date.

Doesn't seem to have been reported AFAIK.

Perhaps not reported as it is good news. Only bad news and scare stories appear newsworthy.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Perhaps not reported as it is good news. Only bad news and scare stories appear newsworthy.

Current (as near as dammit) NHS England bed usage stat's, total and Covid specific, from the same download

The first dataset are patients on Mechanical Ventilation as of 9 August with 56 out of 2223 being Covid patients.

The second dataset are all beds occupied as of 9 August with 599 out of 94890 being Covid patients (Mechanical Ventilation numbers are included within these figures).

	Beds occupied​	Beds occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients​
England	2,223	56
East of England	230	9
London	607	12
Midlands	282	6
North East and Yorkshire	357	7
North West	301	14
South East	264	8
South West	182	-
Total beds
	Beds occupied​	Beds occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients​
England	94,840	599
East of England	9,980	59
London	15,010	107
Midlands	16,328	89
North East and Yorkshire	15,033	117
North West	14,944	136
South East	14,105	72
South West	9,440	19

 

[kingrollo]

So Matt Hancock - wants regular testing for everyone - whether they have symptoms or not - unsurprisingly there is no deadline for this. I am not joking when I say I think a vaccine will be delivered faster than this scheme.

I don't actually think the vaccine is far away now.

 

[PK99]

So Matt Hancock - wants regular testing for everyone - whether they have symptoms or not - unsurprisingly there is no deadline for this. I am not joking when I say I think a vaccine will be delivered faster than this scheme.

I don't actually think the vaccine is far away now.

The problem with high testing and low infection rates is that false positives will mean that reported infection rates will exceed real infection rates and can never fall to zero.

 

[mjr]

This get’s worse she’s also chair of NHS Improvement the body who’s job is basically to smash the place up.
If the reports are true she’s just keeping the seat warm for her husband to take over.

This isn't just cronyism... this is epic crony nepotism!

 

[mjr]

Doesn't seem to have been reported AFAIK.

Except on the BBC current status updates live blog where I first saw it.

But that doesn't fit the "scare stories only" narrative of the poohpoohers.

 

[Julia9054]

The problem with high testing and low infection rates is that false positives will mean that reported infection rates will exceed real infection rates and can never fall to zero.

The test has a high sensitivity and relatively lower specificity so more likely to have problems with false negatives than false positives

 

[PK99]

The test has a high sensitivity and relatively lower specificity so more likely to have problems with false negatives than false positives

It is complex;

From a recent article:


For example, take the current testing rates. Roughly 310,000 tests are being carried out each day at the moment and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests there is a current community infection rate of 0.05 per cent.

That means that if testing was perfect, we should be picking up 155 positive cases a day and 309,854 negative cases.

Yet with the current false negative rates, we would miss 20 per cent of the positive cases, picking up just 124. More alarmingly, we would pick up 310 false positives, giving a total of 434 reported cases, nearly three times the real positive figure.

It also means that the probability of an individual with a positive test actually being infected would be around 28.5 per cent.

The anomaly also means that even if there was no virus in the community at all, we would never fall below 310 cases a day if we were testing at current levels.

Prof Carl Henegehan, director of evidence-based medicine, Oxford University, said: “It does matter when your prevalence is very low. At this point if you have a positive test you are more likely not to be infected than to actually have the virus. Your chance of being infected is less than 30 per cent.

 

[midlife]

It is complex;

From a recent article:


For example, take the current testing rates. Roughly 310,000 tests are being carried out each day at the moment and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests there is a current community infection rate of 0.05 per cent.

That means that if testing was perfect, we should be picking up 155 positive cases a day and 309,854 negative cases.

Yet with the current false negative rates, we would miss 20 per cent of the positive cases, picking up just 124. More alarmingly, we would pick up 310 false positives, giving a total of 434 reported cases, nearly three times the real positive figure.

It also means that the probability of an individual with a positive test actually being infected would be around 28.5 per cent.

The anomaly also means that even if there was no virus in the community at all, we would never fall below 310 cases a day if we were testing at current levels.

Prof Carl Henegehan, director of evidence-based medicine, Oxford University, said: “It does matter when your prevalence is very low. At this point if you have a positive test you are more likely not to be infected than to actually have the virus. Your chance of being infected is less than 30 per cent.

But the 310000 tests carried out each day are mainly for people with symptoms or who have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive so it’s a skewed non-random sample. In this case the 0.05% community infection rate dies not apply ? Hence the circa 1000 positive results a day out of that 310000?

 

[mjr]

From a recent article:

In the Telegraph. It always makes me suspicious when people don't say where things are from. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/12/statistical-quirk-means-coronavirus-pandemic-may-never-officially/

Prof Carl Henegehan, director of evidence-based medicine, Oxford University, said: “It does matter when your prevalence is very low. At this point if you have a positive test you are more likely not to be infected than to actually have the virus. Your chance of being infected is less than 30 per cent.

Remember him? He seems to be a Professor Trump, whose past hits include calling lockdown deadlier than coronavirus, claiming coronavirus peaked before lockdown and predicting zero covid deaths by the end of June 2020.

 

[mjr]

= 372,000 arrivals at the UK border per day averaged over a year

Congratulations, you are putting up a perfect example of Confirmation Bias - selecting data to support a predetermined view

So, in order to avoid confirmation bias by only citing certain data when assessing UK-DE comparisons, how many arrivals are there at the German border per day?

Even if you apply an error margin of 50% to these numbers, it should be clear that NZ is in a VERY different position to the UK.

Folks can make comparisons between the actions of the 2 leaders concerned, but I don't believe there are any stats to backup those comparisons.

There is one simple stat which does back it up: NZ has exactly the same length of land borders with other countries as GB: zero. If UK's political leaders had decided to impose quarantine at the GB border, it could have, but they chose the profits of airport shareholders over health.

[This is completely separate from any comparisons with Germany.]

Indeed. Neither of them really stack up exactly once you look at the detail, which was the point I was making.

 

[mjr]

It seems even Australia isn't quite authoritarian enough for the idea of forced medical treatment to fly:

"Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backtracked on comments he made saying that he planned to make coronavirus vaccinations as mandatory as possible." — https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/19/vaccine-should-be-as-mandatory-as-possible-australian-pm-says.html

 

[srw]

Remember him? He seems to be a Professor Trump, whose past hits include calling lockdown deadlier than coronavirus, claiming coronavirus peaked before lockdown and predicting zero covid deaths by the end of June 2020.

Without checking the sums in detail, what he's saying is very plausible. MD in Private Eye (who is very sensible) is saying much the same thing - if you want to know precisely who has the disease then testing loads of people at random with even a pretty good test when the incidence rate is very low isn't all that helpful.

On the other hand the ONS (who are a shining light of independence - long may they continue) don't want to know precisely who has the disease. They want to do statistics, and want to know how many people have the disease. It makes a lot of sense for them to ramp up their testing because a larger sample size will give them better data, nationally and regionally.

If Hancock had been a little bit smarter he would have used that as his line - "The infection rate is so low that we need to test a shitload more people to work out quite how small it is."

 

[mjr]

Please let that be the peak of the second wave just gone...

Then we can get ready for the third wave"