Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

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Does anyone know why the ONS figures have not been added on to the “official” death toll? Didn’t the ONS release some figures recently? What about the fact we know they’re not adding community and care home deaths in, but care England said there could be as many as 7,500 cases.. will that ever be looked at and added? What’s the procedure for this?

I don’t understand why we are told the death toll is..
When the ONS has said it’s not accurate and I’m sure it’s given updated figures?
 
lunarainbows said:
Does anyone know why the ONS figures have not been added on to the “official” death toll? Didn’t the ONS release some figures recently? What about the fact we know they’re not adding community and care home deaths in, but care England said there could be as many as 7,500 cases.. will that ever be looked at and added? What’s the procedure for this?

I don’t understand why we are told the death toll is..
When the ONS has said it’s not accurate and I’m sure it’s given updated figures?
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The UK figures quoted are hospital deaths so they are not the ONS figures which look at death certs. There are corrected hospital figures which correct for the day of death rather than the day that the report was made.
 
@Adrian yes I know, that’s what I mean. The UK figures are not the accurate figures, then. So why is it that number which is used by our politicians, on news channels and media, by scientists analysing different countries response and deaths? It’s not accurate and we know it’s not.

so what is the procedure to actually update these figures so they represent the true deaths? Because it doesn’t look like there is a procedure to do this, unless I’ve missed something.

Edit: just had a look and only some news articles say these are hospital deaths only. But many don’t.
 
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Arnie Pye said:
Based on the worldometers info, I can't work out why the USA figures for Deaths per Million are half those of the UK (US 118 vs UK 237). Can anyone give some plausible reasons for this?
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Another factor may be that the UK has a population density about eight times that of USA. We are closer together. Probably a higher percentage of us has caught the virus but of course nobody knows.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
The London and east of England curves were on BBC News. There is a site that gives the cases for all individual county/borough areas that comes up on Google user Coronavirus cases by region. But it does not show curves, just the latest total.
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lunarainbows said:
If you scroll down on this, there’s case numbers by area: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...w-many-cases-are-there-in-my-area#maincontent

I would really Like to see even more localised areas than that, and ways it spreads, but as discussed above, that’s not available..
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many thanks that's very useful. For others... The telegraph has a tracker, but I don't know how good it is because you have to log in & I haven't the energy
 
JemPD said:
many thanks that's very useful. For others... The telegraph has a tracker, but I don't know how good it is because you have to log in & I haven't the energy
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the telegraph tracker is letting me see the page. It doesn’t have any extra information than the guardian one. They just say the number of cases in your area, like the guardian one does.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
I am not in favour of releasing genuinely confidential information. However, what I think we desperately need now is a day to day analysis of the most likely source of infection of the 5000 cases being identified each day. If the general public is going to systematically adhere to necessary distancing we need to be clear what really looks to be necessary.

Are most cases in the last 3 weeks family contacts for instance?
Are there cases that look to have picked up virus from public transport?
Are there cases that look likely to have picked up virus in parks?
Do shop staff appear to be a source of virus - or other shoppers?
Is virus still being spread in hospitals?
Is virus getting in to care homes via agency staff?

And so on.

It should not be beyond the wit of the British public health system to get these data in a form that does not impact on privacy.
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And if they'd been doing contact tracing they would have a lot of this information...
 
Adrian said:
This document shows some potentially interesting correlations over different areas in the UK with infection numbers against various stats such as population density, age, disability, deprivation etc

I'm not sure what to make of any of them in terms that none look that great a correlation to me but its interesting to look and could say something about spread characteristics,

https://lginform.local.gov.uk/reports/view/lga-research/covid-19-cases-and-area-characteristics
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The only R square values that look meaningful are these:

- there's a positive association between confirmed covid cases and population density in the region
- there's a positive association between confirmed covid cases and household overcrowding (% households in the region that are overcrowded).
- there's a positive association between confirmed covid cases and % of BAME people in the region
- there's a positive association between confirmed covid cases and % of people in the region who travel to work by train
- there's a positive association between confirmed covid cases and % of older people in the region who are "long-term social care clients".
- there's a positive association between confirmed covid cases and % of older people in the region with "income deprivation"

One of the more reliable associations goes in the opposite direction to that expected:
- there's a negative association between confirmed covid cases and % of people aged over 65 in the region

Also, you have to take them all with a pinch of salt, because for almost every measure that yielded a positive finding these is a very similar alternative measure that yielded null findings (so the ones I've listed above are cherry picked to a large extent).

Finally, bear in mind that these relations might be mediated by other, entirely different factors. So for example, % of people who travel to work by train is likely to be higher in cities, and they are also more densely populated.
 
Woolie said:
One of the more reliable associations goes in the opposite direction to that expected:
- there's a negative association between confirmed covid cases and % of people aged over 65 in the region
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That doesn't surprise me I think quite a few older people isolated early on.

Woolie said:
Also, you have to take them all with a pinch of salt, because for almost every measure that yielded a positive finding these is a very similar alternative measure that yielded null findings (so the ones I've listed above are cherry picked to a large extent).

Finally, bear in mind that these relations might be mediated by other, entirely different factors. So for example, % of people who travel to work by train is likely to be higher in cities, and they are also more densely populated.
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I think the spread over different regions is a huge factor which may well dominate over any other factors. London has been bad and that (I guess) is the area where people are most likely to travel to work by train.
 
NZ's daily new case totals include confirmed and probable* cases.
Today, for example, we had a total of 9 new cases, made up of 7 confirmed (by test) and 2 probable cases.

Do all countries do this, or do some only count confirmed cases - which would make comparisons (even more) misleading?

*Probable cases are people who have symptoms strongly suggestive of covid but whose test result hasn't come back yet, or whose test was negative but where the doctors suspect a problem with the test. Also people with a clinical picture of covid but who can't be tested because it would be distressing for them, e.g. dementia patients.
 
Ravn said:
Do all countries do this, or do some only count confirmed cases - which would make comparisons (even more) misleading?
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In the UK most of the time they don't even bother to confirm typical cases if mild as far as I can see. Outride numbers should probably be multiplied by ten. 9 new cases sounds good. Put on masks and it will be zero before you can say Jack Robinson.
 
Barry said:
How can that be happening with lockdown? Or is it something more alarming? With no lockdown then for sure the cases per day would have carried on accelerating, meaning there would have been many more cases per day by now than there are. But if the lockdown were really effective then the daily numbers should presumably have been starting to reduce by now. Does this mean the lockdown is still not as effective as it needs to be? Or has the lag between cause and effect still really not fed through yet?
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I don’t think our lockdown is anywhere near good enough. People are actively encouraged to go outside once a day (some are allowed out more than once, if they have certain disabilities. If you have a dog - other members of household can walk dog more than once. Then what about food and medicines, that’s another trip presumably?) I think about the streets outside my flat and how narrow some of them are, and the fact people don’t wear masks, and also don’t seem to realise talking can spread the virus. Compare this to Wuhan where one person from each household was allowed out once every 3 days for food and essentials only.

A friend in North London who goes out to shops every 1-2 weeks, tells me only about 50% of people there have masks on, and even those that do, sometimes don’t seem to understand and pull the mask down under their nose. She says people working in her local supermarkets (she’s been to two) don’t wear masks and often don’t seem to care about social distancing.

Postmen and delivery drivers that come to my flat don’t have masks on, or anything.

Then there’s the matter of 15,000 people coming into the country each day. No tests no enforced quarantine, no tracing.

Schools, some still open. Construction sites & “essential” work open - if you can’t work from home, you can travel to work.

Then there’s the whole only stay at home 7 days after onset, which the govt have repeatedly been asked about but not given a proper answer as to why we diverge so much from other countries & the WHO. People will be going to the supermarket, to work, on public transport, 7 days after they first got symptoms, and if still infected - spreading it.

Because of no tracing - I have no idea if any people in my block of flats is infected. I’m sure some would be. Yet there’s no increased cleaning of communal areas in my flats at all since the start of this crisis, and we haven’t been told, so those in the flats don’t know to be more careful.

I don’t know how tubes & buses are at peak time, but in London quite a few bus drivers have died and so now, they’ve had to make it so people only board the bus at the middle doors and they’ve even made All bus travel free, so that people don’t go near the bus driver! So there must have been quite a big problem and it’s spreading through public transport somehow.

As Jonathan Edwards said earlier, we don’t even have data so we don’t know how it’s even spreading.

There’s so many issues like this. It worries me so much that even when we are in lockdown, it’s a half hearted one at best, and our case numbers aren’t dropping. It worries me that people aren’t being traced and they’re putting emphasis on an app in the future, there’s absolutely nothing being done at our borders. I don’t know when our leaders will recognise that it’s not enough.
 
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mango said:
where other countries use the law to control these things, the Swedish government and health authority choose to put the responsibility on the people/individuals and our "common sense" by calling it "advice" or "recommendations". One of the reasons is they believe it gives people a greater sense of freedom and that it therefore will be more sustainable in the long run (less people breaking the rules).
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There have been a number of Swedish news articles lately, commenting on the growing number of people out and about in Stockholm.

Based on data collected and analysed by the mobile network operator Telia, there are "tens of thousands more" people out and about now, compared to at the end of March. They expect the numbers to rise even more in the coming days/weeks, because of the warmer, lovelier weather.

So, it seems that loose advice/recommendations maybe aren't so sustainable after all? What are the trends in comparable countries/places that are using stricter laws etc, do you know?

I can't help thinking, maybe the loose advice/recommendations in combination with the overall reassuring tone of the public health authority's messages ("everything is under control", a considerable focus on reassurances and reducing people's worry etc), is giving lots of people a false impression of how serious the situation actually is?
 
jUst this morning I heard on our local Montreal news, that if we consider Quebec a country (and it does operate more or less like an independent state) then we rank 4th worst in the world: starting with Spain, Italy and the USA--Quebec is next in line. One of the lead doctors at the local Jewish General Hospital made this statement. He broke down the data by how many suffered per million. There are currently 8.5 million residents in Quebec. Not very cheerful. Whereas, there are many provinces in Canada where things are very quiet. One friend in Winnipeg Manitoba wrote to say that folks are walking about in large groups. Quebec and Ontario are hardest hit.
 
Well corelation is not causation, but there may be something here:

Air pollution may be ‘key contributor’ to Covid-19 deaths – study

Research shows almost 80% of deaths across four countries were in most polluted regions

High levels of air pollution may be “one of the most important contributors” to deaths from Covid-19, according to research.

The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted.

The research examined levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced mostly by diesel vehicles, and weather conditions that can prevent dirty air from dispersing away from a city. Many studies have linked NO2 exposure to health damage, and particularly lung disease, which could make people more likely to die if they contract Covid-19.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environ...y-be-key-contributor-to-covid-19-deaths-study
 
RE: Pollution.

Both Sweden and the UK havn´t implemented that strict measures, though it would be needed to compare them. Apart from that, pollution may be a factor:

daily deaths in Sweden:
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in the UK
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