CORONAVIRUS

[Bleednipple]

23 minutes ago, john.r.davies said:

Don't make sense?    

 29,427 deaths recorded across the UK -

The latest total for Italy, previously the highest in Europe, now stands at 29,315. (BBC)

And Italy are about two weeks ahead of us, so they have had time to count the corpses, while we still have to count the care home deaths.   Why does that not make sense?

They don't make sense because apparently we have the best corpse-counters in Europe (the ONS) according to Dom this evening. He COULD have mentioned the differences in population sizes, in numbers of tests carried out, demographics, geography, travel patterns, etc, but he didn't. God knows why not, maybe he thinks we can only cope with simple explanations.

[stillp]

There's probably a lot of variation between different countries' protocols for deciding what cause to put on the death certificate.

Pete

[Geko]

It's a wonder why WHO didn't set the protocols for body counting and how to consolidate the figures. Isn't it its job ?

[john.r.davies]

13 hours ago, RobH said:

Totals do not make sense. Deaths expressed as a percentage of the total population makes some sort of sense but still doesn't take into account differences in demographics/ ethnic background (vit D)/ etc. etc. 

Useful for scaremongering but not for much else. 

Your wish, etc.etc    This is from Johns Hopkins.  https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality  Rubbish that if you dare.

So on a population basis Belgium leadeth all the rest, Spain not far behind, Italy and the UK are not significantly different.  But look at the original page.   There are some startling outliers, Andorra (58/100K) and San Marino (121/100K!) And at China.  Their rapid 'lockdown' seems to have confined the bug to the Wuhan district.   Unless, of course, you subscribe to the Trump Theory.

The reports from Africa seem to support the VitD theory, but Iceland, Finland and Latvia, countries very near the Arctic Circle, are also very low.

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by john.r.davies

[Bleednipple]

7 hours ago, Geko said:

It's a wonder why WHO didn't set the protocols for body counting and how to consolidate the figures. Isn't it its job ?

I haven't checked, but it's quite possible they do have such protocols. Unfortunately though, national governments tend to be picky about which of the WHO protocols they choose to recognise/adopt, or the terminology they accept. A good example is cholera, which outbreaks regularly in quite a few poor countries. But never in (among others) Ethopia, whose governments for many years have wished not to acknowledge it has a cholera problem. There, instead, there are tens of thousands of cases of "acute watery diarrhoea" (AWD), which just happens to be caused by the bacterium vibrio cholerae.

There are plenty of other examples of why science, and medicine, and data, should never be assumed to be politics-free. Not in China, not in international agencies like the WHO, and not in the UK. 

Nigel

[john.r.davies]

Indeed, Bleednipple.

Or, in the case of the unfortunate Prof.Ferguson who, rational man that he is, concluded that on his recovery from Covid, he was immune as could enjoy an evening eith his (otherwise married) girlfriend.      The Dauily Telegraph goes into horrified dowager mode, shrieks his guilty pleasure, and forces his resignation.    I note tht two of the members of Sage have elected not to reveal their identity, no doubt because they don't want the Red Tiops camping ion thier doorsteps, which is what all th eother will have nopw, looking for that juicy story.

Journalism is the first draft of history, but too often it's the last gasp of the window twitchers.

[Bleednipple]

8 minutes ago, john.r.davies said:

Indeed, Bleednipple.

Or, in the case of the unfortunate Prof.Ferguson who, rational man that he is, concluded that on his recovery from Covid, he was immune as could enjoy an evening eith his (otherwise married) girlfriend.      The Dauily Telegraph goes into horrified dowager mode, shrieks his guilty pleasure, and forces his resignation.    I note tht two of the members of Sage have elected not to reveal their identity, no doubt because they don't want the Red Tiops camping ion thier doorsteps, which is what all th eother will have nopw, looking for that juicy story.

Journalism is the first draft of history, but too often it's the last gasp of the window twitchers.

Yeah, and from the pic I saw, she was quite hot. 

[SuzanneH]

No one has picked up on the density of population by land mass of country yet,  in relation to the spread of Covid19 and subsequent deaths?
I know they mention it between London and the rest of England, as they should.

This surely has an effect on the spread of the virus within each country, for example comparing England to Germany, Germany compared to France and say Canada to US.

I feel that % deaths by  population density  per 10s of square miles area of land, per country,  should be incorporated into the official figures.

Edited May 6, 2020 by SuzanneH

[RobH]

59 minutes ago, john.r.davies said:

Rubbish that if you dare.

Not rubbish John but still a bit questionable unless the numbers in each country were derived the same way and the same demographic factors apply everywhere. There is already the debate as to whether deaths counted in all those countries are actually the same thing e.g. from CV19 rather than with CV19. Of course the actual infection rate in all countries is probably unknown too given that a lot of people are symptomless or unreported mild cases, so those single figures must represent two variables - how many infections there have been in each population and how many of those infected subsequently died. I still maintain that because of this it is not a very useful thing to know but comparisons make for good scary headlines.

 

Strange that you seem to support that absolute hypocrite Ferguson. Everyone else can remain locked up whether at risk or not  - but that s**t is above the law while grannies can be fined for sitting on a park bench? 

If it was the Grauniad that had outed him I wonder what your reaction would have been.

 

 

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by RobH

[acaie]

Some interesting stuff

[Rod1883]

I agree Sue, and we have discussed that here at home and with neighbours 'over the fence'. There must be an impact where countries are more densely populated - our population is similar to France, but with less than half the land mass for example.

Imho we have to stop the headlong house building programme, destroying countryside and wildlife, and diminishing agricultural land and so our ability to feed ourselves even more. It's a difficult issue though for all of us with the numbers of people already here, and more arriving constantly.

[Bleednipple]

1 hour ago, SuzanneH said:

No one has picked up on the density of population by land mass of country yet,  in relation to the spread of Covid19 and subsequent deaths?
I know they mention it between London and the rest of England, as they should.

This surely has an effect on the spread of the virus within each country, for example comparing England to Germany, Germany compared to France and say Canada to US.

I feel that % deaths by  population density  per 10s of square miles area of land, per country,  should be incorporated into the official figures.

Actually there appears to be little or no correlation with pop density, at least according to reported mortality figures:

Of course that doesn't allow for population clustering and patterns of settlement within countries, but on a raw pop density it doesn't tell us much.

Nigel

Edited May 6, 2020 by Bleednipple

[Misfit]

countries population per km sq
 

England  424 per km sq

France    118 per km sq

Germany  232 per km sq

Spain       92    Per km sq

scotland   68   per km sq

Italy           200 per km sq

Wales.      143 per km sq

Sweden.   23 per km sq

[Bleednipple]

Okay I will now get geeky on this. As I said above, using population density figures at national level gives no meaningful correlation to C19 mortality. That may be because of inaccuracies in the presumed dependent variable (deaths) but it's also quite likely to be that national pop density is a much weaker determinant of mortality than many others (demographics, public health baselines, yada yada).

It might be very interesting, on the other hand, if we ended up being able to look at C19 at a much more granular level of local population densities than just average densities for each country. There are readily available and quite good quality datasets (derived from satellite remote sensing) of world population densities down to approx 1km squares. BUT to analyse C19 data against that data frame would require the C19 data also to be available at a locally disaggregated level (maybe at least by health district) for all the countries to be cross-analysed.

I'm sure data scientists are starting to look at this, but it might take a while to get anything useful out of that due to the likely limitations of the data. Meanwhile we need to be very wary about posing a hypothesis (that C19 deaths are highly correlated with living densities), however plausible, and then cherry picking data to fit it.

Nigel

[SuzanneH]

55 minutes ago, Bleednipple said:

Actually there appears to be little or no correlation with pop density, at least according to reported mortality figures:

Of course that doesn't allow for population clustering and patterns of settlement within countries, but on a raw pop density it doesn't tell us much.

Nigel

Is it me? I can’t see UK, or England, Wales, Scotland amongst this data. Is it because we are way off the top or side  of the chart?

[foster461]

7 minutes ago, SuzanneH said:

Is it me? I can’t see UK, or England, Wales, Scotland amongst this data. Is it because we are way off the top or side  of the chart?

The detail got lost in the screen shot Sue, you can see more if you go to the original interactive source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-population-density

[Bleednipple]

18 minutes ago, SuzanneH said:

Is it me? I can’t see UK, or England, Wales, Scotland amongst this data. Is it because we are way off the top or side  of the chart?

It's not broken down below UK level, but the UK dot is the one below the Y in Italy.

Here's the original link (you can can hover over the chart for specific point labels): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-population-density

N

[EDIT - Foster beat me to it!]

Edited May 6, 2020 by Bleednipple

[foster461]

2 hours ago, acaie said:

Some interesting stuff

That was very informative. These guys should do this every couple of weeks.

[Geko]

5 minutes ago, Bleednipple said:

It's not broken down below UK level, but the UK dot is the one below the Y in Italy.

Here's the original link (you can can hover over the chart for specific point labels): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-population-density

N

Population density is irrelevant for this purpose, population distribution relative to their habitat is. But no actionable data.

[Bleednipple]

4 minutes ago, Geko said:

Population density is irrelevant for this purpose, population distribution relative to their habitat is. But no actionable data.

Yes, absolutely and the chart shows that. Population density data globally is available down to approx 1km squares (derived from satellite remote sensing) but unless we have reliable spatially disaggregated C19 data for all the countries being studied, that doesn't help very much. Although I'm sure a lot of data scientists are doing their best on that.

Nigel

Edited May 6, 2020 by Bleednipple

[stillp]

9 minutes ago, Bleednipple said:

Yes, absolutely and the chart shows that. Population density data globally is available down to approx 1km squares (derived from satellite remote sensing) but unless we have reliable spatially disaggregated C19 data for all the countries being studied, that doesn't help very much. Although I'm sure a lot of data scientists are doing their best on that.

Nigel

We'd need the C19 data for the area where people caught the virus rather than where they died though.

Pete

[SuzanneH]

Stef and Pete, I agree.

[Misfit]

Following in from Rod 1883 post 

Why has London got more Covid Virus than say Cornwall or Midlands than Scotland.

Statistics and Data may not be available but is that a case that density has no baring. 

I understand that Paris and London will have similar figures as will any similar city, but if the population is spread over a bigger area as is the case of France and Germany contact frequency with others will be less.

I drive through Brittany France and see a fewer cars  with houses spaced out.  Logic would indicate less contact less chances of spreading the virus surely therefore density has some baring on the ability to spread and therefore some impact on the figures, perhaps I am being to simplistic or just simple  I am happy for someone to explain in simple terms why it doesn’t .

m

Edited July 27, 2020 by Misfit

[Peter Cobbold]

29 minutes ago, stillp said:

We'd need the C19 data for the area where people caught the virus rather than where they died though.

Pete

All the data I have seen are for hospitalised pts. Without random testing we cant know who has been infected and shrugged it off. There are areas where serum D3 is physiological eg southern Philippines mean level is 100 nmol/L, where we could look at "excess deaths" to see ifthey are resisting covid.

Peter

[acaie]

52 minutes ago, foster461 said:

That was very informative. These guys should do this every couple of weeks.

They're doing one tomorrow:

The second Cambridge Conversations webinar will feature Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, one of the world’s foremost biostatisticians, who will unpick the numbers surrounding COVID-19. He will explore the reporting of cases and deaths, explain the bases on which predictions have been made, examine comparisons with the ‘normal’ risks faced by people, and investigate whether many deaths from COVID-19 could have been expected and have simply been brought forward.

He will be joined by Professor Mike Hulme, whose expertise is in climate change, with particular interest in the role of model-based knowledge in strategic and policy decision-making relative to political and cultural values: a question of similar importance for COVID-19.

Dr Alexandra Freeman will introduce the panel and moderate the event. Together, they will provide profound analysis as an antidote to the speculation rife in social media.