shurlock

UK data runs only to April 24th, so doesn’t reflect the recent revision and inclusion of care home deaths into official statistics. But even with that revision, it remains that UK official deaths as a share of excess deaths are still low relative to peers. By extension, it sits uneasily with the claim that the UK’s record is so unflattering only because it’s too honest or zealous in counting Covid-19 related deaths compared to other countries. On a side note, the figures for Germany are odd but the main economist article attribute this to the fact that they are not recent enough and may have been exaggerated by exceptionally low flu-related deaths earlier in the year.

I agree that some organisations, regions and countries took measures into their own hands well before they were required by law (just look at the reaction of the Premier League). In that respect, the distinction between voluntary restrictions on behaviour (say like what is happening in Sweden) and legal requirements (like what is happening in the UK and most of the rest of the world) can be artificial since if both are reducing non-essential interpersonal contact to a similar degree, they should have pretty similar health and economic impacts. How that reduction is achieved is secondary. At the same time, there is a cuddly libertarian belief that we could have relied on the voluntarism and good judgement of the public. That might work in some contexts but it is bloody hard to pull off and requires deep reserves of social capital and trust. Could it have worked in the UK? Maybe but equally there are grounds for scepticism: you just have to look the crowds, confusion and in places indiscipline on the weekend (March 21-22) before the lockdown was properly introduced to see that more direct intervention (even then it’s been pretty light-touch) was arguably warranted, especially as government didn’t have the luxury to wait for the public to learn and adapt to these new norms.

No not on a systematic basis but when papers are being submitted to high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, I know from my own experience much of the heavylifting has been done. Either way Ive cited peer-reviewed research showing asymptomatic infection was a risk and it was publicly available before the lockdown.

https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa077/5739751 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7088568/#__ffn_sectitle https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099(20)30114-6.pdf https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2001468 Either way it’s moot - the lag between doing research and it being published is significant, so findings would have been circulating among policymakers and decisionmakers well before they were published and made available to the public. Even the article you cite was received on March 2.

There was serious research published before the lockdown showing that asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 could transmit the virus. No doubt experts and policymakers would have been informed of those cases and findings even before then.

Not watched season 2 of Afterlife. Sounds pretty much like season 1, so an acquired taste. Is there anyone who liked season 1 but didn’t like season 2?

According to my friend who read's the blog and is a highly skilled coder and modeller (they're not the same thing), the nature of the bug which occurred at the seed storage stage (and has been subsequently fixed) shouldn't compromise the model and its results when its run many times.

Their estimates are laughable -even the CCP seems embarrassed by them -hence the crafty revision.

Not read the piece; but there is nothing odd about identical inputs producing different results if you're using a stochastic model which is the default technique for modelling complex, chaotic systems. Models are then run many, many thousands of times and the mean and variance of the outputs are presented. Who'd a thought the world is complex.

Agree, though the chief statistician at the ONS also rightly pointed out that the R number shouldn't be viewed in isolation. While it is very important and captures the speed at which the virus is spreading (or contracting), the existing prevalence of the virus in the population is also important. Where levels are low, a small increase in R should be easier to manage since the higher transmission rate is partly offset by the lower number of individuals who can infect others in the first place. As for the media, they are partly to blame, though it was depressingly predictable that some outlets would get carried away and so should have been anticipated. The Sun seemed more interested in punning on 80s/90s bands than communicating a complex policy message affecting millions of lives. While I've knocked her quite a bit, I thought Kuenssberg's request for info on the government's estimates for R and how it varies geographically and has changed over the past few weeks was a decent intervention.

In his own words: https://unherd.com/thepost/imperials-prof-neil-ferguson-responds-to-the-swedish-critique/

How's his current prediction for the UK faring? Note he would claim that you've misrepresented the countermeasures the Swedish government has taken and more importantly the voluntary behavioral changes made by the public and hence the number of deaths his team was predicting. Sweden never pursued a simple mitigation strategy which the estimates you've presented here imply.

To be fair, briefing excitable journos who've been overegging headlines and what is likely to be announced was not a particularly clever or edifying strategy. There's a time and place for major announcements and any disciplined government should know that once the genie is out of the bottle, its incredibly hard to put back in.

Riggers is getting under Brett's* skin I see. *GDPR-compliant

You do realise you’re in a minority pal - that polling shows the UK public is now among the least likely to believe the country should be opened up if the pandemic is not fully contained, behind the US, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan etc. https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/britons-least-likely-believe-economy-and-businesses-should-open-if-coronavirus-not-fully-contained

Little Westie just can’t help himself.

Only in the US: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Eh. We were talking about December a moment ago. I'm not wading into a different debate with you -suffice to say I prefer to follow serious analysis i.e. the EuroMOMO and even recent work by the FT, not some innumerate and illiterate bumpkin. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.ft.com/content/0ed8ea34-ebc5-4425-b86a-7a29447de57b Enjoy the rest of your evening little westie.

Good. So you posted some meaningless numbers for the hell of it. How's Taiwan doing #classicwestie

And I assume you don't use data in your day job pal. No credible analysis would make inferences on the basis of one year's data as opposed to a long-run average and then fail to examine statistically whether the departure from that average fell within the normal range (defined by EuroMomo as +- 2 z-score). If you had bothered to do so (or more pertinently were capable of doing so), you would have discovered that deaths in Dec 2019 were well within the long-run normal range.

Yep Pride Park has that depressing feel much like the Britannia Stadium or whatever it’s now called.

Hypo knows everyone.

As I say, you're incredibly naive but I guess its not your fault.

Clearly the virus originated in China and the government is responsible for the horrendous state of many of its wet markets. I have seen many with my own eyes. There will rightly be a reckoning at some point. As such I don’t understand the additional value or purpose of the term. And let’s not be coy: it’s not just a neutral descriptor but is knowingly being used by some to whip up dubious passions and prejudices. Fine it might be cathartic but it is also naive politically as the CCP is expert at exploiting this type of rhetoric to massage it’s own sense of victimhood which is the defining feature of Chinese nationalism. Frankly I wouldn’t give them any ammunition.

To be clear, Trump is trying to pin the outbreak on a government lab rather than wet markets as if the former makes ‘China’ more culpable. So far the evidence for that hypothesis is pretty weak, even according to the US own intelligence agencies.