''Quite incredible that deaths from 2+ weeks ago are just being released as Covid deaths now.''
What is far more incredible is that this totally unreliable number will have an enormous impact on our lives for the next decade.
Insane
It's not unreliable if the rate at which late reporting deaths are included is stable over time, and is being adjusted for appropriately. We have enough data now to do this, and if I can manage it then I'm sure the government advisors can cope.
If you listen to CMO et al. it appears that the number they look at most, for signs of progress, is hospital admissions with COVID19.
That makes sense, because it'll be the most immediate sign that whatever Government is doing is or isn't having an effect. Deaths are very much a lagging indicator. The issue has been that the levels stayed stubbornly high for a while after first principles indicated they should be starting to come down. We've now got some reasonable indicators that we're moving in the right direction.
2. Depends on what fitness you want. Cycling up hills in a high gear is better for anaerobic fitness; cycling in a low gear with less resistance is better for aerobic and hence CV fitness.
This is interesting, thanks for sharing it.
I cannot help but note that there's a paragraph on the front page of that study, headed 'Correlation is not necessarily causation' that makes the point I made.
Breakfast 'skippers' in the study were those with longstanding medical conditions. In other words, they skipped breakfast because they were at death's door, they were not at death's door because they skipped breakfast. Using the same methodology, we would also deduce that heart medication made people die of heart disease.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
Why is Chessington World of Adventures such a bad place for a testing centre? Its just off the M25, so surely that is a decent location for lots of people who live in that densely populated area south of London?
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
San Francisco is one of the least effected places in the US. The tech companies started sending people home way before most of America got into gear.
Surely you want people to be isolated from each other inside cars, not mingling?
Only isolated if just 1 person per car. And 1 person per car is hopelessly inefficient.
I would be surprised if there was much infection happening from pedestrians or cyclists passing each other in the street.
It was reported on here that joggers create a 6m trail of potential slipstream infection behind them, cyclists a 20m tail.
So prepare to be surprised.
The only people who have put me at any potential risk in the past five weeks are joggers and cyclists. Thankfuly, I am in Devon where the risk of them actually giving me Covid-19 as part of their exercise regime are slight. City centres? W-A-Y higher
I'm prepared to be surprised but I'm interested do you have a source for that?
Getting rid of the cars would certainly give the rest of us much more space to keep distance from each other.
"His team concluded that cyclists and runners have to stay much farther than 6 feet from a runner or rider in front of them to avoid inhaling droplets or having them land on their bodies. He calculated safe distances for each sport: That 65 feet is needed when riding a bike at 18 miles per hour, 33 feet while running at a 6:44 minutes-per-mile pace, or 16 feet while walking at a normal pace. “By that time, the droplets will have moved down to the ground and you won’t get them in your face,” says Blocken. What about riding or jogging side by side? “It’s no problem unless you turn your head and cough in their direction,” Blocken added."
That article also links to another pre-print study which says:
"Our study does not rule out outdoor transmission of the virus. However, among our 7,324 identified cases in China with sufficient descriptions, only one outdoor outbreak involving two cases occurred in a village in Shangqiu, Henan. A 27-year-old man had a conversation outdoors with an individual who had returned from Wuhan on 25 January and had the onset of symptoms on 1 February. "
So I'm still prepared to be surprised about "much infection happening from pedestrians or cyclists passing each other in the street".
Sounds about right to me. In any event, the point about the general public wearing masks is not that they provide infallible protection, but that even the flimsiest do something to reduce the likelihood of transmission, and that risk is much greater indoors.
The more cautious of us will be more cautious - but what's more important is everyone being at least a bit more cautious.
The people who should be told, first, to wear masks, are the joggers and cyclists busily huffing and panting their way around Britain’s parks
I'd have thought it'd make more sense to hand out masks to people entering supermarkets. This, in my experience, is where it has been most difficult to keep at least 2m away from others, and people would definitely wear them if they were a condition of entering. Mind you, I did see one idiot pulling down his home-made mask to talk to the woman behind the chemist counter in Sainsbury's while stood less than a metre in front of her!
They will have to have them in cinemas and theatres. Short of having the auditori(a?) at 1 in 9 capacity. Which I don't think would be profitable.
''Quite incredible that deaths from 2+ weeks ago are just being released as Covid deaths now.''
What is far more incredible is that this totally unreliable number will have an enormous impact on our lives for the next decade.
Insane
It's not unreliable if the rate at which late reporting deaths are included is stable over time, and is being adjusted for appropriately. We have enough data now to do this, and if I can manage it then I'm sure the government advisors can cope.
If you listen to CMO et al. it appears that the number they look at most, for signs of progress, is hospital admissions with COVID19.
That makes sense, because it'll be the most immediate sign that whatever Government is doing is or isn't having an effect. Deaths are very much a lagging indicator. The issue has been that the levels stayed stubbornly high for a while after first principles indicated they should be starting to come down. We've now got some reasonable indicators that we're moving in the right direction.
IIRC the CMO stated exactly that - they are using hospital admissions as up-to-date indicator, because the others figures would lag behind by weeks.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
Yes I agree with that, some of the tech bros that I know were stocking up on huel in February in case there was a shortage.
I think people who went into it without any preconceptions or specific agendas did a lot better than those who did.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
Yes I agree with that, some of the tech bros that I know were stocking up on huel in February in case there was a shortage.
I think people who went into it without any preconceptions or specific agendas did a lot better than those who did.
I know we are in a bad situation, but Huel.....its nowhere near bad enough for that.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
Take a chess board. Place a grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, two grains for each rice on the previous square, keep going.... The later you intervene the more squares you've got racked up ahead of cases...
The prices of shit bikes on FB Marketplace have gone crazy. Everybody must be trying to buy them. The prices on proper weapons grade kit seems to be edging down which I guess reflects economic uncertainty as less people want to drop 5+ grand on a bike.
I am spanking my Apollo Highway and the extremely nice bloke at my local bike shop (average price for bikes £X,000 - he makes them) doesn't mind fixing it for me and every other happy clappy biker every so often now as he can't get the parts for the ones he usually deals in and no one as you say is asking for a five grand bike right now. If I were to win the lottery I would commission him to build me my next bike as a thank you.
2 points:
1) There is some good evidence that skipping breakfast is an important part of dieting. An interview in this journal explains why:
While I was working at Warwick Med School, I did a journal club presentation to my lab-chums on a similar article way back in 2016. Most people were skeptical of its findings to put it mildly
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
You knew what was coming - have you always known everything before everyone, or are you only a pompous, narcissistic know-all on here?
2. Depends on what fitness you want. Cycling up hills in a high gear is better for anaerobic fitness; cycling in a low gear with less resistance is better for aerobic and hence CV fitness.
This is interesting, thanks for sharing it.
I cannot help but note that there's a paragraph on the front page of that study, headed 'Correlation is not necessarily causation' that makes the point I made.
Breakfast 'skippers' in the study were those with longstanding medical conditions. In other words, they skipped breakfast because they were at death's door, they were not at death's door because they skipped breakfast. Using the same methodology, we would also deduce that heart medication made people die of heart disease.
The "Breakfast is the most Dangerous Meal" book is rather interesting and well argued scientifically.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
"lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine."
That's not the attitude I've heard from 70+ year olds in last few days. The idea that they will stay in their houses for a year or more is for the birds. Twelve weeks - yeh, we'll do it. Longer? No way. Anecdotal of course.
They won't be staying in their homes I agree but from what I am hearing they won't be rushing back to restaurants and pubs either. That has been pretty much the response from across the board from those I talk to and I'm in that demographic (just!). Most are expecting a strong second wave shortly after restrictions are lifted as we are seeing in Japan and Singapore.
Also, sadly, many people will be broke and those that aren’t will be feeling very cautious about money.
Restaurants and foreign travel might return to the days when they were the exclusive domain of the rich.
Bollocks. I reckon most of the pubs around here will be full, assuming they have beer gardens and this lovely weather continues.
There will be paper or plastic disposable pint 'glasses' for a while I guess – hopefully of the recyclable variety.
There are more people than you think that value their liberty and don't want to live their lives in a state of accelerated fear.
I'm going straight to the pub when this is over. Got a big post lockdown piss up planned, three in fact.
See you there.
At The Stag?
Good place. A risk of Liam Gallagher though. That can be a dampener.
Surely you want people to be isolated from each other inside cars, not mingling?
Only isolated if just 1 person per car. And 1 person per car is hopelessly inefficient.
I would be surprised if there was much infection happening from pedestrians or cyclists passing each other in the street.
It was reported on here that joggers create a 6m trail of potential slipstream infection behind them, cyclists a 20m tail.
So prepare to be surprised.
The only people who have put me at any potential risk in the past five weeks are joggers and cyclists. Thankfuly, I am in Devon where the risk of them actually giving me Covid-19 as part of their exercise regime are slight. City centres? W-A-Y higher
I'm prepared to be surprised but I'm interested do you have a source for that?
Getting rid of the cars would certainly give the rest of us much more space to keep distance from each other.
"His team concluded that cyclists and runners have to stay much farther than 6 feet from a runner or rider in front of them to avoid inhaling droplets or having them land on their bodies. He calculated safe distances for each sport: That 65 feet is needed when riding a bike at 18 miles per hour, 33 feet while running at a 6:44 minutes-per-mile pace, or 16 feet while walking at a normal pace. “By that time, the droplets will have moved down to the ground and you won’t get them in your face,” says Blocken. What about riding or jogging side by side? “It’s no problem unless you turn your head and cough in their direction,” Blocken added."
That article also links to another pre-print study which says:
"Our study does not rule out outdoor transmission of the virus. However, among our 7,324 identified cases in China with sufficient descriptions, only one outdoor outbreak involving two cases occurred in a village in Shangqiu, Henan. A 27-year-old man had a conversation outdoors with an individual who had returned from Wuhan on 25 January and had the onset of symptoms on 1 February. "
So I'm still prepared to be surprised about "much infection happening from pedestrians or cyclists passing each other in the street".
Can cigarette smoke spread the virus? While a smoker may be physically 6 feet or more away from you, the smoke doesn't obey social distancing.
The virus is airborne anyway, so surely the smoke is just a marker for where a non smoker would also be invisibly spreading?
I'm talking about situations where you're sitting out the back on your patio or you're gardening, and your neighbour's smoke comes wafting over the garden fence.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
Yes I agree with that, some of the tech bros that I know were stocking up on huel in February in case there was a shortage.
I think people who went into it without any preconceptions or specific agendas did a lot better than those who did.
I know we are in a bad situation, but Huel.....its nowhere near bad enough for that.
Lol they were all panicking about the idea that the huel would run out.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
You knew what was coming - have you always known everything before everyone, or are you only a pompous, narcissistic know-all on here?
I hate to admit this but the artist formally known as (just pick your name of choice) really has demonstrated seer-like qualities over Covid-19.
Having said that, he did appear to be a latter day Corporal Jones in his reaction to the early signs of the pandemic.
There's a huge range of performances by local authorise in disbursing grants:
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
A hearbreaking story from NigelB that puts into context the raft of partisanship to the handling of the pandemic that we have seen and even participated in on this site.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
Sontaku is a fantastic word.
His exploration of that is one of many fantastic bits of a really outstanding essay. You see sontaku all over the place in everyday life. His example is perfect.
Wouldn't it be better if the government just reported the final figures for each day? A lot of people must be confused by having two sets of numbers for each day. Every Tuesday they probably think things are getting worse compared to the weekend.
That chart shows we still don't have final figures for any day - they're still increasing for each day on the chart, all the way back to 6th April
I am sure not sure the democrats getting upset about Trumps immigration ban is a good idea. At the moment, basically every country has closed its borders (other than is, obvs). It looks reckless to be demanding immigration rules remain the same in these unprescented times.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
Yes I agree with that, some of the tech bros that I know were stocking up on huel in February in case there was a shortage.
I think people who went into it without any preconceptions or specific agendas did a lot better than those who did.
Assuming that's a typo for 'fuel' then, given what's happened to prices since then, stocking up in February was a monumentally bad decision
More seriously, in general (and more of a reply to @AlastairMeeks ) I think those with little bit of maths/science knowledge were able to grasp the enormity of what might happen, run the exponential curves, be shocked by the results and tweet/blog about that extensively. Those with real knowledge in the field knew well enough about exponential growth in epidemics and were therefore not surprised by it and did not feel the need to write extensively about it, instead concentrating on what could be done (and when) to avert the worst. They obviously and inevitably didn't get everything right.
That's a general point about people pointing to techies posting exponential curves a month or so back and saying 'they were right'. This particular paper looks interesting and it does look (to the casual observer - like me - reading only that paper and not aware of the context in Japan) that things were missed in Japan as they were, to greater or lesser extents, almost everywhere.
Twitter says it does not currently see evidence that the UK government has tried to manipulate coronavirus conversations using fake accounts.
The BBC also currently has no evidence to support the suggestion these allegedly fake accounts had anything to do with the UK government.
Surely they wouldn't be so cynical, and NHS Susan's backstory in particular is very plausible.
The problem was some inspector gadget who claimed he could find out all this, but no idea who the head of the revelant select committee was amplified by some blue check.mark journalists.
I am sure not sure the democrats getting upset about Trumps immigration ban is a good idea. At the moment, basically every country has closed its borders (other than is, obvs). It looks reckless to be demanding immigration rules remain the same in these unprescented times.
What is the point of banning immigration when Covid is rife in every state, running unchecked?
I am sure not sure the democrats getting upset about Trumps immigration ban is a good idea. At the moment, basically every country has closed its borders (other than is, obvs). It looks reckless to be demanding immigration rules remain the same in these unprescented times.
LHR -> JFK had almost 11 billion seat kilometres in 2015
I am sure not sure the democrats getting upset about Trumps immigration ban is a good idea. At the moment, basically every country has closed its borders (other than is, obvs). It looks reckless to be demanding immigration rules remain the same in these unprescented times.
It's a distraction and they've fallen for it. In practice there's no immigration already because of the various travel restrictions.
They don't have the luxury of righteous indignation, they need to keep the focus on the deaths that have already happened because of Trump's earlier failings, and the current failings - like on seizing PPE from the States - that will lead to further avoidable deaths later.
Wouldn't it be better if the government just reported the final figures for each day? A lot of people must be confused by having two sets of numbers for each day. Every Tuesday they probably think things are getting worse compared to the weekend.
That chart shows we still don't have final figures for any day - they're still increasing for each day on the chart, all the way back to 6th April
In order to show comparable figures, you can use the provided figures for the number of deaths ascribed to each date on the day after they come out of the grey "unreliable data" area.
Bearing in mind that each number still climbs afterwards - but comparing the latest figure for each day isn't comparing like with like (for example, we've had an extra 6 days of data for 06-Apr than for 12-Apr, and an extra 31 deaths have been recorded for 06-Apr in those extra 6 days).
So, with those caveats, to compare known deaths as of 6 days after the date in question, to give us the longest baseline with comparable and fairly reliable data:
It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
2. Depends on what fitness you want. Cycling up hills in a high gear is better for anaerobic fitness; cycling in a low gear with less resistance is better for aerobic and hence CV fitness.
This is interesting, thanks for sharing it.
I cannot help but note that there's a paragraph on the front page of that study, headed 'Correlation is not necessarily causation' that makes the point I made.
Breakfast 'skippers' in the study were those with longstanding medical conditions. In other words, they skipped breakfast because they were at death's door, they were not at death's door because they skipped breakfast. Using the same methodology, we would also deduce that heart medication made people die of heart disease.
The "Breakfast is the most Dangerous Meal" book is rather interesting and well argued scientifically.
I do have breakfast though!
I don't miss it on a normal day (much prefer the extra time in bed and arriving at work extra clear headed), but when I'm off or with family will often exchange lunch for brunch, so will still only have two meals but not deprived of bacon, scrambled eggs, toast etc.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
Sontaku is a fantastic word.
His exploration of that is one of many fantastic bits of a really outstanding essay. You see sontaku all over the place in everyday life. His example is perfect.
Sontaku explains the "dodgy dossier" on Iraq WMD, doesn't it?
In fact, thinking about it now, it explains most things about most things.
Wouldn't it be better if the government just reported the final figures for each day? A lot of people must be confused by having two sets of numbers for each day. Every Tuesday they probably think things are getting worse compared to the weekend.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
San Francisco is one of the least effected places in the US. The tech companies started sending people home way before most of America got into gear.
I believe California started their lockdown much earlier than most States?
,,, It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
But surely that is exactly what you would expect if the situation is getting better, even quite fast? A lot of people seem to be making a fundamental mistake (I'm not saying you are, of course), namely that patients who die do so on a specific number of days after getting infected. Of course they don't, there will be a wide spread, perhaps something like 7 to 30 days typically (I'm guessing to illustrate the point). So if we had a sharp peak in cases up to the start of lockdown, followed by a plateau from cases contracted at home after lockdown, we'd still be seeing deaths today related to the fast spread a month or so ago.
Spain takes the prize today for the stupidest lockdown relaxation measure: Form tomorrow children under 14 may accompany a parent to the supermarket or chemist or dog walk. As before no exercising is allowed for anyone! Señor Humphrey is alive and well in Madrid!
PPE Why isn't lockdown working PPE PPE Testing Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working ...
I have been asking about the lockdown not working in Spain and Italy on this site for weeks and have been told that it is.
Is it not? Cases down, deaths down - what would you count as 'working'?
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
Sontaku is a fantastic word.
His exploration of that is one of many fantastic bits of a really outstanding essay. You see sontaku all over the place in everyday life. His example is perfect.
Apparently a term that came into the Japanese public consciousness relatively recently
'The Japanese words that perfectly sum up how the country felt this year'
'Unko kanji doriru (drills): The title of a wildly popular series of books published featured a poop-shaped professor who teaches Japanese children how to write Chinese characters, or kanji.'
Wouldn't it be better if the government just reported the final figures for each day? A lot of people must be confused by having two sets of numbers for each day. Every Tuesday they probably think things are getting worse compared to the weekend.
Yes, it's a bonkers system.
The problem is you don't know when any particular day is going to be "finished". You couldn't have reported the 6th April till today for instance. The 6th April may still not be complete.
“Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive an invitation in time to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the [European] Commission has confirmed, we are eligible to participate in joint procurements during the transition period, following our departure from the EU earlier this year.
“As those four initial procurement schemes had already gone out to tender we were unable to take part in these, but we will consider participating in future procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time.”
I am sure not sure the democrats getting upset about Trumps immigration ban is a good idea. At the moment, basically every country has closed its borders (other than is, obvs). It looks reckless to be demanding immigration rules remain the same in these unprescented times.
You can only support somebody closing the borders if you know they are not enjoying it.
There's a huge range of performances by local authorise in disbursing grants:
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
,,, It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
But surely that is exactly what you would expect if the situation is getting better, even quite fast? A lot of people seem to be making a fundamental mistake (I'm not saying you are, of course), namely that patients who die do so on a specific number of days after getting infected. Of course they don't, there will be a wide spread, perhaps something like 7 to 30 days typically (I'm guessing to illustrate the point). So if we had a sharp peak in cases up to the start of lockdown, followed by a plateau from cases contracted at home after lockdown, we'd still be seeing deaths related to the fast spread a month or so ago.
That would make sense. It would, unfortunately, not give us much information on the rate of spread since the lockdown (ie: have we got it significantly below 1.0?), but the indications would be that it's downwards ("legacy" deaths from before the lockdown still being incurred - but most of the pre-lockdown infections should now have been resolved one way or the other).
I'm fairly relieved by the figures - if the infection rate was significantly above 1.0 since the lockdown, we'd expect a far higher number.
PPE Why isn't lockdown working PPE PPE Testing Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working ...
I have been asking about the lockdown not working in Spain and Italy on this site for weeks and have been told that it is.
Is it not? Cases down, deaths down - what would you count as 'working'?
That is one poster better to ignore.
Thats right I was the one who said hospitals were quiet three weeks ago and was told I was talking shit!
“Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive an invitation in time to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the [European] Commission has confirmed, we are eligible to participate in joint procurements during the transition period, following our departure from the EU earlier this year.
“As those four initial procurement schemes had already gone out to tender we were unable to take part in these, but we will consider participating in future procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time.”
Seemed to work out pretty well for them. Perhaps they had more information regarding the chance of success of the program?
PPE Why isn't lockdown working PPE PPE Testing Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working ...
I have been asking about the lockdown not working in Spain and Italy on this site for weeks and have been told that it is.
Is it not? Cases down, deaths down - what would you count as 'working'?
That is one poster better to ignore.
I think the poster in question likes to imply that our lockdown should be regarded as having similar effects to solitary confinement for everyone and thus if deaths don't stop completely and instantly, it's an obvious failure, so abandon it completely and all will be fine.
That would make sense. It would, unfortunately, not give us much information on the rate of spread since the lockdown (ie: have we got it significantly below 1.0?), but the indications would be that it's downwards ("legacy" deaths from before the lockdown still being incurred - but most of the pre-lockdown infections should now have been resolved one way or the other).
I'm fairly relieved by the figures - if the infection rate was significantly above 1.0 since the lockdown, we'd expect a far higher number.
Hospital admissions is probably a much better measure to focus on for the purpose of trying to figure out how well lockdown is working. Even those figures are problematic to some extent, but they are probably the best we've got.
PPE Why isn't lockdown working PPE PPE Testing Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working Why isn't lockdown working ...
I have been asking about the lockdown not working in Spain and Italy on this site for weeks and have been told that it is.
Is it not? Cases down, deaths down - what would you count as 'working'?
That is one poster better to ignore.
Thats right I was the one who said hospitals were quiet three weeks ago and was told I was talking shit!
No - you are the one who thinks lockdowns don't work - even though the stats show clearly that they do.
I have spend c. 10 hours over the last 2 days doing sales forecasting. Looking at live data I'd have been better using my old "spin the pen" technique and just best guessing based on instinct and experience.
Assumptions? That the current iteration of lock down is largely here until after the late May bank holiday.
There's a huge range of performances by local authorise in disbursing grants:
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
,,, It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
But surely that is exactly what you would expect if the situation is getting better, even quite fast? A lot of people seem to be making a fundamental mistake (I'm not saying you are, of course), namely that patients who die do so on a specific number of days after getting infected. Of course they don't, there will be a wide spread, perhaps something like 7 to 30 days typically (I'm guessing to illustrate the point). So if we had a sharp peak in cases up to the start of lockdown, followed by a plateau from cases contracted at home after lockdown, we'd still be seeing deaths today related to the fast spread a month or so ago.
If deaths stay high for a prolonged period I think it means that the "R" of the virus under lockdown conditions remains stubbornly closer to 1 than 0. But this does not mean the lockdown is not working - since unfettered it is around 2.7.
“Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive an invitation in time to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the [European] Commission has confirmed, we are eligible to participate in joint procurements during the transition period, following our departure from the EU earlier this year.
“As those four initial procurement schemes had already gone out to tender we were unable to take part in these, but we will consider participating in future procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time.”
Seemed to work out pretty well for them. Perhaps they had more information regarding the chance of success of the program?
I was drawing attention to the straight lie.
Meanwhile, Britain is almost out of PPE. But Europhobes no doubt are just relieved that care home workers don't have to soil themselves with EU-procured PPE. Thank goodness the government lied to ensure they wouldn't have to suffer that fate.
If you want to understand what's going wrong in Japan, this is the best place to start.
That’s a remarkable document. Thanks.
@patio11 is a must-follow on Twitter. I don't understand some of what he writes about and he's often obscure, but he's obviously a really sharp guy. As shown by this analysis.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
San Francisco is one of the least effected places in the US. The tech companies started sending people home way before most of America got into gear.
I believe California started their lockdown much earlier than most States?
There is an account of that: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-san-francisco-london-breed/609808/ ...Breed ordered businesses closed and issued a citywide shelter-in-place policy effective on March 17, at a point when San Francisco had fewer than 50 confirmed coronavirus cases. (California Governor Gavin Newsom followed with a similar statewide order a few days later.) On that date, New York City already had more than 2,000 positive cases. But New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, reluctant either to shutter schools or issue a stay-at-home directive for the nation’s largest city, didn’t take similar action for several days. By the time New York City fully shut down on March 22, more than 10,000 cases were reported across its five boroughs.
Breed’s aggressiveness was not initially popular. As she ratcheted up the city’s social-distancing mandates, prominent San Franciscans began calling one of the mayor’s political mentors, Senator Kamala Harris. “London Breed’s about to shut down the city,” they complained, Harris told me. She told them to trust Breed.
“She took incredible political heat and criticism,” Harris said, “and she had the courage to make a decision that she in her gut, based on science and the research she did, told her this was the right thing to do for her people, even when other people couldn’t see it yet.”…
The difference between proactive and reactive might be a matter of only a few days, but with a disease where numbers double, and double again, before a week is out, that can make a massive difference.
“Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive an invitation in time to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the [European] Commission has confirmed, we are eligible to participate in joint procurements during the transition period, following our departure from the EU earlier this year.
“As those four initial procurement schemes had already gone out to tender we were unable to take part in these, but we will consider participating in future procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time.”
Seemed to work out pretty well for them. Perhaps they had more information regarding the chance of success of the program?
I was drawing attention to the straight lie.
Meanwhile, Britain is almost out of PPE. But Europhobes no doubt are just relieved that care home workers don't have to soil themselves with EU-procured PPE. Thank goodness the government lied to ensure they wouldn't have to suffer that fate.
The tweet doesn't say that ministers were informed there was a deadline for applying to the program, so I don't think it is the open and shut case you suggest.
A present for the number cruncher geeks on this site, of which I presume there should be many. The article below is a must read on the application of statistics to COVID testing.
The Stanford community antibody testing paper has launched a shitstorm about its statistical methods:
,,, It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
But surely that is exactly what you would expect if the situation is getting better, even quite fast? A lot of people seem to be making a fundamental mistake (I'm not saying you are, of course), namely that patients who die do so on a specific number of days after getting infected. Of course they don't, there will be a wide spread, perhaps something like 7 to 30 days typically (I'm guessing to illustrate the point). So if we had a sharp peak in cases up to the start of lockdown, followed by a plateau from cases contracted at home after lockdown, we'd still be seeing deaths today related to the fast spread a month or so ago.
If deaths stay high for a prolonged period I think it means that the "R" of the virus under lockdown conditions remains stubbornly closer to 1 than 0. But this does not mean the lockdown is not working - since unfettered it is around 2.7.
There is presumably data that the experts are looking at about when the dead person entered hospital. I've not seen such data in public domain, but I haven't gone looking.
I have spend c. 10 hours over the last 2 days doing sales forecasting. Looking at live data I'd have been better using my old "spin the pen" technique and just best guessing based on instinct and experience.
Assumptions? That the current iteration of lock down is largely here until after the late May bank holiday.
Mr Rochdale, experts on decision-making in novel situations would agree - instinct and intuition serve us better than numbers. Gary Klein's book, "Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making" is a good read, if you're interested.
There's a huge range of performances by local authorise in disbursing grants:
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
Back to care homes: I just checked with my wife because they admitted someone from a care home with Covid yesterday. They don't know if he'll make it, but he won't get sent back to the care home until symptom free and 2 negative tests. They also tested everyone, residents and staff, in the care home. I don't know if this is standard practice elsewhere in Germany, but it makes sense.
Back to care homes: I just checked with my wife because they admitted someone from a care home with Covid yesterday. They don't know if he'll make it, but he won't get sent back to the care home until symptom free and 2 negative tests. They also tested everyone, residents and staff, in the care home. I don't know if this is standard practice elsewhere in Germany, but it makes sense.
It does. From what I understand, my father's care home was allocated a total of two swabs. How much things have changed in the last few days, I don't know.
(Guardian) Sweden has reported its highest daily death toll since the start of its coronavirus outbreak, with 185 added to its total since yesterday.
The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the worst-affected Nordic country is now 1,765, with 15,322 total confirmed cases to date - up 545 on the day before
Quite incredible that deaths from 2+ weeks ago are just being released as Covid deaths now.
I would much rather believe the ONS figures, personally.
You are aware that the ONS numbers use the hospital deaths numbers, as part of their data set?
You are aware that the ONS doesn't just rely on the hospital deaths numbers, right?
Yes, hence "part of their data set".
If you don't trust *part* of a data set, then the larger dataset is not trustworthy either.
My point is that the NHS dataset is incomplete. The ONS dataset gives you a wider sense of what's going on.
The ONS will give us the a better picture overall, true. But their figures will be revised for months and maybe years to come. And ultimately may become a classic example of the question of what the truth is - and the answer, itself a question - "Which truth is it that you seek?"
Are "COVID19 deaths" those -
- Solely from COVID19 - Principally from COVID19 - COVID19 diagnosed - COVID19 as a contributory cause - A negative test for COVID19 (75% accurate), but clinically judged to be COVID19?
There's a huge range of performances by local authorise in disbursing grants:
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
Quite incredible that deaths from 2+ weeks ago are just being released as Covid deaths now.
I would much rather believe the ONS figures, personally.
You are aware that the ONS numbers use the hospital deaths numbers, as part of their data set?
You are aware that the ONS doesn't just rely on the hospital deaths numbers, right?
Yes, hence "part of their data set".
If you don't trust *part* of a data set, then the larger dataset is not trustworthy either.
My point is that the NHS dataset is incomplete. The ONS dataset gives you a wider sense of what's going on.
The ONS will give us the a better picture overall, true. But their figures will be revised for months and maybe years to come. And ultimately may become a classic example of the question of what the truth is - and the answer, itself a question - "Which truth is it that you seek?"
Are "COVID19 deaths" those -
- Solely from COVID19 - Principally from COVID19 - COVID19 diagnosed - COVID19 as a contributory cause - A negative test for COVID19 (75% accurate), but clinically judged to be COVID19?
You can waste a lot of time worrying about causation. In some cases there will be no single cause. In some cases the cause will never be known.
Ultimately, it's pretty futile. Looking at overall death rates is the simplest way of judging the extent of the problem that we're facing.
,,, It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
But surely that is exactly what you would expect if the situation is getting better, even quite fast? A lot of people seem to be making a fundamental mistake (I'm not saying you are, of course), namely that patients who die do so on a specific number of days after getting infected. Of course they don't, there will be a wide spread, perhaps something like 7 to 30 days typically (I'm guessing to illustrate the point). So if we had a sharp peak in cases up to the start of lockdown, followed by a plateau from cases contracted at home after lockdown, we'd still be seeing deaths today related to the fast spread a month or so ago.
If deaths stay high for a prolonged period I think it means that the "R" of the virus under lockdown conditions remains stubbornly closer to 1 than 0. But this does not mean the lockdown is not working - since unfettered it is around 2.7.
There is presumably data that the experts are looking at about when the dead person entered hospital. I've not seen such data in public domain, but I haven't gone looking.
Yes. In the absence of mass testing hospital admissions must be the key metric.
(Guardian) Sweden has reported its highest daily death toll since the start of its coronavirus outbreak, with 185 added to its total since yesterday.
The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the worst-affected Nordic country is now 1,765, with 15,322 total confirmed cases to date - up 545 on the day before
Their weekend reporting is even more of a joke than ours.
SINGAPORE - Foreign workers living in dormitories made up 1,050 of the 1,111 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday (April 21), as the total number of cases in Singapore crossed the 9,000 mark
Interesting spin, instead of "new record high" they lead with "Foreign workers"....so that's alright then....
SINGAPORE - The circuit breaker to choke off the spread of the coronavirus will be extended by another month to June 1, and existing measures will be tightened until May 4, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his fourth national address on the situation on Tuesday (April 21).
This means that more workplaces will be closed to further reduce the number of workers keeping essential services going. Some hot spots, such as popular wet markets, remain a problem, as large groups of people continue to congregate there, Mr Lee said.
While he noted that the circuit breaker measures have been working, he stressed that Singapore cannot be complacent. He said the number of unlinked cases has not come down, which suggests a "hidden reservoir" of cases in the community.
FPT. Tried to donate with a VISA card (avoiding Paypal), but seemed to need Paypal account anyway. Pity.
I thought that initially but there is a second button to pay by card and it was easy. Didn't want a PayPal account either. Have another go.
Tried again, still insisted, after I entered the card details (and a lot of private data) that I sign up for paypal. I expect I'm doing something wrong - anyway I was in two minds about funding P(artisan) B(ile).
Quite incredible that deaths from 2+ weeks ago are just being released as Covid deaths now.
I would much rather believe the ONS figures, personally.
You are aware that the ONS numbers use the hospital deaths numbers, as part of their data set?
You are aware that the ONS doesn't just rely on the hospital deaths numbers, right?
Yes, hence "part of their data set".
If you don't trust *part* of a data set, then the larger dataset is not trustworthy either.
My point is that the NHS dataset is incomplete. The ONS dataset gives you a wider sense of what's going on.
The ONS will give us the a better picture overall, true. But their figures will be revised for months and maybe years to come. And ultimately may become a classic example of the question of what the truth is - and the answer, itself a question - "Which truth is it that you seek?"
Are "COVID19 deaths" those -
- Solely from COVID19 - Principally from COVID19 - COVID19 diagnosed - COVID19 as a contributory cause - A negative test for COVID19 (75% accurate), but clinically judged to be COVID19?
You can waste a lot of time worrying about causation. In some cases there will be no single cause. In some cases the cause will never be known.
Ultimately, it's pretty futile. Looking at overall death rates is the simplest way of judging the extent of the problem that we're facing.
Science teaches that the quest for Ultimate Truth is nearly always futile. But on the journey the ONS will probably end up with numbers that are 99.95% correct. Which is the point of the rigorous search for the Ultimate Truth, really.
They are already working to categorise the numbers in the groups above.
SINGAPORE - Foreign workers living in dormitories made up 1,050 of the 1,111 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday (April 21), as the total number of cases in Singapore crossed the 9,000 mark
Interesting spin, instead of "new record high" they lead with "Foreign workers"....so that's alright then....
SINGAPORE - The circuit breaker to choke off the spread of the coronavirus will be extended by another month to June 1, and existing measures will be tightened until May 4, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his fourth national address on the situation on Tuesday (April 21).
This means that more workplaces will be closed to further reduce the number of workers keeping essential services going. Some hot spots, such as popular wet markets, remain a problem, as large groups of people continue to congregate there, Mr Lee said.
While he noted that the circuit breaker measures have been working, he stressed that Singapore cannot be complacent. He said the number of unlinked cases has not come down, which suggests a "hidden reservoir" of cases in the community.
FPT. Tried to donate with a VISA card (avoiding Paypal), but seemed to need Paypal account anyway. Pity.
I thought that initially but there is a second button to pay by card and it was easy. Didn't want a PayPal account either. Have another go.
Tried again, still insisted, after I entered the card details (and a lot of private data) that I sign up for paypal. I expect I'm doing something wrong - anyway I was in two minds about funding P(artisan) B(ile).
Back to care homes: I just checked with my wife because they admitted someone from a care home with Covid yesterday. They don't know if he'll make it, but he won't get sent back to the care home until symptom free and 2 negative tests. They also tested everyone, residents and staff, in the care home. I don't know if this is standard practice elsewhere in Germany, but it makes sense.
It does. From what I understand, my father's care home was allocated a total of two swabs. How much things have changed in the last few days, I don't know.
I think things have changed in the last few days here, since there have been several deaths in care homes in the region (NRW). It would make even more sense to test everyone regularly in care homes before cases happen, but I don't think that's happening (though it might be?). It would be a good use of testing capacity I think.
Wouldn't it be better if the government just reported the final figures for each day? A lot of people must be confused by having two sets of numbers for each day. Every Tuesday they probably think things are getting worse compared to the weekend.
That chart shows we still don't have final figures for any day - they're still increasing for each day on the chart, all the way back to 6th April
In order to show comparable figures, you can use the provided figures for the number of deaths ascribed to each date on the day after they come out of the grey "unreliable data" area.
Bearing in mind that each number still climbs afterwards - but comparing the latest figure for each day isn't comparing like with like (for example, we've had an extra 6 days of data for 06-Apr than for 12-Apr, and an extra 31 deaths have been recorded for 06-Apr in those extra 6 days).
So, with those caveats, to compare known deaths as of 6 days after the date in question, to give us the longest baseline with comparable and fairly reliable data:
It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
That absolute bellend Hague gets his beak in everywhere with his usually crap opinions, a more useless fool we have yet to see. On teh main point it is desperate if the unionist loving Herald are supporting the SNP.
SINGAPORE - Foreign workers living in dormitories made up 1,050 of the 1,111 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday (April 21), as the total number of cases in Singapore crossed the 9,000 mark
Interesting spin, instead of "new record high" they lead with "Foreign workers"....so that's alright then....
SINGAPORE - The circuit breaker to choke off the spread of the coronavirus will be extended by another month to June 1, and existing measures will be tightened until May 4, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his fourth national address on the situation on Tuesday (April 21).
This means that more workplaces will be closed to further reduce the number of workers keeping essential services going. Some hot spots, such as popular wet markets, remain a problem, as large groups of people continue to congregate there, Mr Lee said.
While he noted that the circuit breaker measures have been working, he stressed that Singapore cannot be complacent. He said the number of unlinked cases has not come down, which suggests a "hidden reservoir" of cases in the community.
The gilt does seem to be coming off the gingerbread of some of the early success stories.
As with our care homes, foreign worker dormitories were a disaster waiting to happen in Singapore - quite possibly exacerbated by the Lock Down they've introduced - instead of spending only their sleeping hours there, the foreign workers will now be spending all their waking hours too.
It's an unusual mis-step for Singapore - but I suspects, as with our elderly in care homes, foreign workers were nowhere on anyone's agenda.
There's a huge range of performances by local authorise in disbursing grants:
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
Interesting - I wonder how that relates to political control.
Very little, I suspect it has a lot to do with data quality and collection.
Top 3: NOC (Labour largest) Tory Labour
Bottom 3 Labour Labour Tory
Those in the bottom half should get a serious kicking from their local press
To be fair, it's also dependent on whether the businesses in question have applied for their grants. I happen to know that in our LA, we're desperately publicising that businesses should apply if they think they've got a case for a grant and we're still running short.
For all you aspiring gym bunnies out there, this is todays WoD, with instruction videos. I predict you will know you have done this one. Just doing the warmup is quite useful.
I promise not to post another one even if you ignore the technical bits :-), and get back to gardening. Me: 8 miles bike and 30 minutes yoga.
(Lumme, I wasn't expecting it to insert all the videos)
Warm up: 5 rounds 1:00 side plank, each side 30 glute bridges 20 bird-dogs 10 lunges with twist
Here's the paper setting out the details of the government sponsored analysis of the rapid antibody kits which didn't come up to snuff. Disappointingly, the manufacturers are not identified.
Evaluation of antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 using ELISA and lateral flow immunoassays https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066407v1.full.pdf ...Results: ELISA detected SARS-CoV-2 IgM or IgG in 34/40 individuals with an RT-PCR-confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection (sensitivity 85%, 95%CI 70-94%), vs 0/50 pre-pandemic controls (specificity 100% [95%CI 93-100%]). IgG levels were detected in 31/31 RT-PCR- positive individuals tested ≥10 days after symptom onset (sensitivity 100%, 95%CI 89-100%). IgG titres rose during the 3 weeks post symptom onset and began to fall by 8 weeks, but remained above the detection threshold. Point estimates for the sensitivity of LFIA devices ranged from 55-70% versus RT-PCR and 65-85% versus ELISA, with specificity 95-100% and 93-100% respectively. Within the limits of the study size, the performance of most LFIA devices was similar. Conclusions: The performance of current LFIA devices is inadequate for most individual patient applications. ELISA can be calibrated to be specific for detecting and quantifying SARS- CoV-2 IgM and IgG and is highly sensitive for IgG from 10 days following symptoms onset....
Comments
I cannot help but note that there's a paragraph on the front page of that study, headed 'Correlation is not necessarily causation' that makes the point I made.
Breakfast 'skippers' in the study were those with longstanding medical conditions. In other words, they skipped breakfast because they were at death's door, they were not at death's door because they skipped breakfast. Using the same methodology, we would also deduce that heart medication made people die of heart disease.
I think it was you that pointed out that the tech industry were way ahead of almost everyone else including the so-called experts in spotting the dangers of Covid-19 that come from exponential growth. This seems to be another example.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8238753/Matt-Hancocks-100-000-day-testing-pledge-come-bite-warn-Downing-Street-sources.html
I think people who went into it without any preconceptions or specific agendas did a lot better than those who did.
The later you intervene the more squares you've got racked up ahead of cases...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2081573-is-breakfast-really-the-most-important-meal-of-the-day/
I do have breakfast though!
We have smokers living to either side of us!
Having said that, he did appear to be a latter day Corporal Jones in his reaction to the early signs of the pandemic.
If you don't trust *part* of a data set, then the larger dataset is not trustworthy either.
Redcar & Cleveland have disbursed 93% of there allocation to 98% of intended recipients, while Luton Borough Council have only handed out 10% of the money to 11% of their target.
The largest grant has been allocated to Cornwall (£281 million, 72% disbursed) while Birmingham City Council next (£231 million) has only handed out 16% of their money. The smallest, the Scilly Isles (£4.2 million) have handed out 78%. The largest average grant is Tendring (£26,000, 19% disbursed), the smallest is North Tyneside (£6,800, 72% disbursed), while the average is £12,800
On average 50% of the money has been disbursed to 51% of the intended recipient.
I hope local journalists are all over this like a rash.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/880286/200420_local_authority_grant_payments.csv/preview
Thankyou Nigel.
The BBC also currently has no evidence to support the suggestion these allegedly fake accounts had anything to do with the UK government.
"Hey hey Boris J. How many ... ?"
More seriously, in general (and more of a reply to @AlastairMeeks ) I think those with little bit of maths/science knowledge were able to grasp the enormity of what might happen, run the exponential curves, be shocked by the results and tweet/blog about that extensively. Those with real knowledge in the field knew well enough about exponential growth in epidemics and were therefore not surprised by it and did not feel the need to write extensively about it, instead concentrating on what could be done (and when) to avert the worst. They obviously and inevitably didn't get everything right.
That's a general point about people pointing to techies posting exponential curves a month or so back and saying 'they were right'. This particular paper looks interesting and it does look (to the casual observer - like me - reading only that paper and not aware of the context in Japan) that things were missed in Japan as they were, to greater or lesser extents, almost everywhere.
They don't have the luxury of righteous indignation, they need to keep the focus on the deaths that have already happened because of Trump's earlier failings, and the current failings - like on seizing PPE from the States - that will lead to further avoidable deaths later.
Bearing in mind that each number still climbs afterwards - but comparing the latest figure for each day isn't comparing like with like (for example, we've had an extra 6 days of data for 06-Apr than for 12-Apr, and an extra 31 deaths have been recorded for 06-Apr in those extra 6 days).
So, with those caveats, to compare known deaths as of 6 days after the date in question, to give us the longest baseline with comparable and fairly reliable data:
It does look, at first glance, to be trending slightly downwards since hitting the plateau. To be honest, taking into account daily fluctuation, I'd suggest the "peak" (and, yes, it's not very sharp as peaks go) might, on average, be a day or two prior to the 8th of April (with the 8th just being unlucky in terms of fluctuation).
Not a very steep decline since the putative peak, but better than any sort of climb, much less the rapid climbing we saw before. And we can hope the decline could still accelerate (subject to daily variation)
In fact, thinking about it now, it explains most things about most things.
What a word!
Form tomorrow children under 14 may accompany a parent to the supermarket or chemist or dog walk. As before no exercising is allowed for anyone! Señor Humphrey is alive and well in Madrid!
'The Japanese words that perfectly sum up how the country felt this year'
https://tinyurl.com/ydeydjdk
Other stuff was happening in 2017.
'Unko kanji doriru (drills): The title of a wildly popular series of books published featured a poop-shaped professor who teaches Japanese children how to write Chinese characters, or kanji.'
https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1252611531570806784?s=20
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/27/no-10-blames-mix-up-communications-missing-deadline-get-extra/
“Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive an invitation in time to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As the [European] Commission has confirmed, we are eligible to participate in joint procurements during the transition period, following our departure from the EU earlier this year.
“As those four initial procurement schemes had already gone out to tender we were unable to take part in these, but we will consider participating in future procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time.”
It would, unfortunately, not give us much information on the rate of spread since the lockdown (ie: have we got it significantly below 1.0?), but the indications would be that it's downwards ("legacy" deaths from before the lockdown still being incurred - but most of the pre-lockdown infections should now have been resolved one way or the other).
I'm fairly relieved by the figures - if the infection rate was significantly above 1.0 since the lockdown, we'd expect a far higher number.
I may be being unfair, of course.
Assumptions? That the current iteration of lock down is largely here until after the late May bank holiday.
Meanwhile, Britain is almost out of PPE. But Europhobes no doubt are just relieved that care home workers don't have to soil themselves with EU-procured PPE. Thank goodness the government lied to ensure they wouldn't have to suffer that fate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-san-francisco-london-breed/609808/
...Breed ordered businesses closed and issued a citywide shelter-in-place policy effective on March 17, at a point when San Francisco had fewer than 50 confirmed coronavirus cases. (California Governor Gavin Newsom followed with a similar statewide order a few days later.) On that date, New York City already had more than 2,000 positive cases. But New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, reluctant either to shutter schools or issue a stay-at-home directive for the nation’s largest city, didn’t take similar action for several days. By the time New York City fully shut down on March 22, more than 10,000 cases were reported across its five boroughs.
Breed’s aggressiveness was not initially popular. As she ratcheted up the city’s social-distancing mandates, prominent San Franciscans began calling one of the mayor’s political mentors, Senator Kamala Harris. “London Breed’s about to shut down the city,” they complained, Harris told me. She told them to trust Breed.
“She took incredible political heat and criticism,” Harris said, “and she had the courage to make a decision that she in her gut, based on science and the research she did, told her this was the right thing to do for her people, even when other people couldn’t see it yet.”…
The difference between proactive and reactive might be a matter of only a few days, but with a disease where numbers double, and double again, before a week is out, that can make a massive difference.
The Stanford community antibody testing paper has launched a shitstorm about its statistical methods:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/20/feud-over-stanford-coronavirus-study-the-authors-owe-us-all-an-apology/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-mercnews&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com
NOC (Labour largest)
Tory
Labour
Bottom 3
Labour
Labour
Tory
Those in the bottom half should get a serious kicking from their local press
From what I understand, my father's care home was allocated a total of two swabs.
How much things have changed in the last few days, I don't know.
Has Hancock gone yet?
The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the worst-affected Nordic country is now 1,765, with 15,322 total confirmed cases to date - up 545 on the day before
Are "COVID19 deaths" those -
- Solely from COVID19
- Principally from COVID19
- COVID19 diagnosed
- COVID19 as a contributory cause
- A negative test for COVID19 (75% accurate), but clinically judged to be COVID19?
https://twitter.com/kevverage/status/1252589202853814277?s=20
https://twitter.com/AddUpTheNumbers/status/1252596185174589442?s=20
Ultimately, it's pretty futile. Looking at overall death rates is the simplest way of judging the extent of the problem that we're facing.
Interesting spin, instead of "new record high" they lead with "Foreign workers"....so that's alright then....
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/1111-new-coronavirus-cases-take-singapore-tally-past-9000-mark
SINGAPORE - The circuit breaker to choke off the spread of the coronavirus will be extended by another month to June 1, and existing measures will be tightened until May 4, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his fourth national address on the situation on Tuesday (April 21).
This means that more workplaces will be closed to further reduce the number of workers keeping essential services going. Some hot spots, such as popular wet markets, remain a problem, as large groups of people continue to congregate there, Mr Lee said.
While he noted that the circuit breaker measures have been working, he stressed that Singapore cannot be complacent. He said the number of unlinked cases has not come down, which suggests a "hidden reservoir" of cases in the community.
https://www.straitstimes.com/politics/prime-minister-lee-hsien-loong-to-address-nation-on-covid-19-situation-at-5pm
Tests
PPE
Care Homes
Turkey
Tests
Tests
Tests
PPE
PPE
Resigning?
Why not.
They are already working to categorise the numbers in the groups above.
It's an unusual mis-step for Singapore - but I suspects, as with our elderly in care homes, foreign workers were nowhere on anyone's agenda.
I happen to know that in our LA, we're desperately publicising that businesses should apply if they think they've got a case for a grant and we're still running short.
I promise not to post another one even if you ignore the technical bits :-), and get back to gardening. Me: 8 miles bike and 30 minutes yoga.
(Lumme, I wasn't expecting it to insert all the videos)
Warm up: 5 rounds
1:00 side plank, each side
30 glute bridges
20 bird-dogs
10 lunges with twist
Side plank: https://youtu.be/z-jbdbWKA2k
Glute bridges: https://youtu.be/tl6xvm4-Qk0
Bird dog: https://youtu.be/k2azbhhuKuM
Lower body injury: Swap lunges for push ups
Strength: Bulgarian Split squats - complete 5 sets of 8 per leg bulgarian split squats 👏👏
Bulgarian split squat: https://youtu.be/-4LVK1crLSw
Lower body injury: Swap for 5 x 8 reps shoulder press per arm, single object.
Metcon: Complete 5 rounds of 10 single arm devil press, followed by 10 box jumps. Fast sprint style workout! Go HAM
Devil press: https://youtu.be/hc6dfJHRcD0
Box jump: https://youtu.be/52r_Ul5k03g
Lower body injury: 10 devil press + 10 v ups
Upper body injury: instead of snatching dumbbell, pull to your shoulder (clean).
Just starting to roll some of this out. Still not testing asymptomatic front line NHS workers yet?
Disappointingly, the manufacturers are not identified.
Evaluation of antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 using ELISA and lateral flow immunoassays
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066407v1.full.pdf
...Results: ELISA detected SARS-CoV-2 IgM or IgG in 34/40 individuals with an RT-PCR-confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection (sensitivity 85%, 95%CI 70-94%), vs 0/50 pre-pandemic controls (specificity 100% [95%CI 93-100%]). IgG levels were detected in 31/31 RT-PCR- positive individuals tested ≥10 days after symptom onset (sensitivity 100%, 95%CI 89-100%). IgG titres rose during the 3 weeks post symptom onset and began to fall by 8 weeks, but remained above the detection threshold. Point estimates for the sensitivity of LFIA devices ranged from 55-70% versus RT-PCR and 65-85% versus ELISA, with specificity 95-100% and 93-100% respectively. Within the limits of the study size, the performance of most LFIA devices was similar.
Conclusions: The performance of current LFIA devices is inadequate for most individual patient applications. ELISA can be calibrated to be specific for detecting and quantifying SARS- CoV-2 IgM and IgG and is highly sensitive for IgG from 10 days following symptoms onset....
I am tempted to ask why his boss is well enough to talk to Trump but not to his peasants via video, but that is also unfair so I won't!