Covid 19 interesting data from the UK

[Rupert]

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregistereduptoandincluding20april2020

Still trying to get my head round some of this.

Healthcare workers, including those with jobs such as doctors and nurses, were not found to have higher rates of death involving COVID-19 when compared with the rate among those whose death involved COVID-19 of the same age and sex in the general population.

and:

A total of 2,494 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the working age population (those aged 20 to 64 years) of England and Wales were registered up to and including 20 April 2020.

I think we were over 30,000 total on the 20th. april.

[Rupert]

Might find this interesting to:
https://covid19-phenomics.org/PrototypeOurRiskCoV.html

Have a play with the numbers.  My takeaway is that the risk to my Mum is higher from Mental Illness than it is from coming to Supper with us.


added.... Except it is showing higher deaths for women than men... something wrong there. Keep refreshing the page, and changing the inputs and the data changes. I wonder if its that code you were talking about Gary.

[gm66]

In the UK i think that we initially panicked (spelling? CBA Googling it), due to bad modelling from Imperial College, Neil Ferguson.

Now that we have data from the field, still ongoing of course so no final summary, we can see that his predictions were wildly inaccurate, as we now know they gave different results on the same data-set during multiple runs, this even after the Microsoft 'experts' stepped in to clean up the code. Additionally, he was the one who, during the UK swine flu epidemic, said that between 50 and 5,000 people would die, rather a wide range, a bit like his COVID19 software.

Now we also have reports of many doctors being forced by hospital admin to include COVID19 as one of the death diagnostics on the list, even when unproven.

So, at the very least, the initial predictions in the UK were more than untrustworthy, and that very modelling was translated into legislation/protocol and now we're possibly facing a huge economic impact due to actions based on flawed modelling.

Neil Ferguson needs to be punished :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/neil-fergusons-imperial-model-could-devastating-software-mistake/

[ergophobe]

My takeaway is that the risk to my Mum is higher from Mental Illness than it is from coming to Supper with us.

How are you getting from that tool to that conclusion? I really don't understand the tool.

- How do I decide which RR to choose?
- What is the meaning of full suppression vs mitigation? The only one of the four scenarios they define is full suppression (only essential workers allowed to leave the house). All the others are not even minimally defined.

And then for comparing vs mental illness, I assume you are finding those numbers elsewhere and comparing them?

I'm very curious about this because
1. I have some friends who are actually having mental health issues due to Covid stress

2. I find myself asking a lot of questions about what level of risk is acceptable.

Regarding #2, the question I keep asking people is "What criteria do you need to meet before you will invite friends into your home or hop on a plane?"

Most people have no answer to that and they basically seem to be pinning their hopes on a vaccine. And that leads me to a basic followup question:

"We could have a vaccine in 18 months, but we've been looking for an AIDS vaccine for 35 years with no success. We've been looking for a malaria vaccine for decades with no real success. Let's say a vaccine is five years away and I'm not going to get on a plane until there's a vaccine. Our parents are aged 91, 87 and 84. If I don't get on a plane at all in the next five years, we are most likely deciding that we will never see one or more of our parents ever again. Are you so afraid of Covid you would never see your parent again?"

So to me, the gating condition is whether or not the healthcare system will be overwhelmed, not whether or not people will die. If it were the latter, we would have a 45mph speed limit on our highways and require drivers to wear helmets, but we don't.

[Rupert]

You are right, in that I am making broad assumptions. But it is based on the data.  I dont think you need answers to your questions to help make the emotional decision.  I prbably wont put this in the same structured well thought out argument that you do, but fundamentally:

The message from the UK govt, is stay alert, and where ever possible maintain social distancing.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/staying-alert-and-safe-social-distancing

From the stats that health care workers are no more likely to contract the virus, then that says to me, that if we sit outside, (dont go into a metal tube like a plane or bus) and that it is clearly not as contagious as measles, then we will have to pass it on by her touching something that has the body fluid of someone infected on, and then touch her face. So she and we will wash our hands.

Often.

Next the top and bottom scale are clear.  Do nothing, or lockdown. The other 2 are irrelevant for my assessment. Look at the do nothing. The difference for an 86 year old female with no underlying conditions goes from 33 in 289  chance of death to 45 in 289 chance of death. (Chance of death in the next 12 months (11.3%)  that goes up to 15.8% if the country does nothing) Well, we are not doing nothing.

Next consider that in the UK the death rate is on its way down at the moment, and  so in the number of infections is likely to be leading that on its was down too.  so now is probably the safest time to meet Mum... for the last 3 months.

So, put that against the fact that as a social person, who is missing her family, it is her raison d'etre.  She is lonely, isolated, losing weight she cannot afford to lose (weights under 7 stone I believe).
All her friends are dead or dying, as dad was 11 years older, so their social group tended toward his age.  Don't get me wrong, she is strong mentally, and physically for her size (20 mins exercise every morning for the last 40 years has helped). 

But the need is there.... She needs positivity, a bit of laughter,... just to see us as a family, instead of hours on her own, with just the phone and the odd Zoom call for company.

As an aside. Zoom is frustrating. I end up on the phone for 10 mins helping set her up first.  Last night, I got a zoom call going, just the 2 of us before the family joined, and I asked:

"Can you hear me mum?"
The answer came back:
"Oh no I cannot!!!"  I feel like giving up on this stupid technology.

 There are more like that. Incredulous moments. Another:
After 10 mins of her saying she cannot see us or hear us. About to give up. She tells me that the reason is a big white "page" on the screen that covers it all up. It says something like "Click here to use internet Audio"

I throw those in, to illustrate her frustration with one of the key form of contact. The phone is starting to give her similar issues. ad did the computer stuff.

[nffc]

>The message from the UK govt, is stay alert, and where ever possible maintain social distancing.

I'm taking that just as its written. I'm lucky and can maintain social distancing 100% of the time currently. May have to hop on a plane in a couple months, will reassess then.

Local friend had his fathers 80th birthday over the weekend, some relatives came over around 10 in total. Stayed outside, min 2m distancing, masks, no handshakes etc. Was still a good day.

>I feel like giving up on this stupid technology

You need more technology not less. Team viewer or similar so you can access her screen and set up. Only used zoom once, find MS teams much more straightforward with the app.

[Rupert]

Its family... moving from Zoom will be big EVERYONE would have to download the software.

But you right, I do need access to here ipad.

Good to hear the 80th went well. Not sure I want to be hopping on a plane too soon.  Not from the UK anyway.  Next trip is Sept for me, plenty of time away for them to get the systems sorted hopefully.

>I feel like giving up on this stupid technology 
That was meant to be in Mums words, I put it as my words. So not giving up just yet.

[ergophobe]

>>She needs positivity, a bit of laughter,... just to see us as a family, instead of hours on her own

Indeed!

I remember back in the 1990s there was accumulating evidence that low serum cholesterol was linked to severe depression and increased rate of suicide. One researcher said, "To some extent, it might be a choice between the head and the heart."  In other words, you might stave off the heart attack only to die of suicide.

Mental health needs to sit on an equal footing with other health metrics. Depression not only exposes you to the risk of suicide, but it weakens your immune system. Think about that for a minute in the age of Covid.

In the case of the person I was thinking of, she's suffering pretty severe anxiety with physical manifestations (sleep loss, abdominal cramps, etc) and no longer believes the US CDC since it's been clear that the Trump administration has been putting pressure on the CDC to downplay risks and exaggerate success. So I'm mostly looking for information that would make her less anxious. I'm not worried about her staying alert, I'm worried about her being hyper-alert to the detriment of her health.

Personally, from everything I've read about transmission (much of which is still just guessing), my feeling is that being 2m apart outdoors is very safe. Being occasionally closer, as to say hand an item to someone and then withdrawing is also very safe barring an ill-timed sneeze. So I'm comfortable when neighbors meet in the street and chat, without shaking hands or anything like that. I'm comfortable with someone passing me on a hiking trail. Etc. Viral load matters and brief exposures where outdoor currents are diluting the virus are not very dangerous in my opinion.

I also think the risk of contagion through touching surfaces is extremely low. Some of the studies about how long virus is detectable were irresponsible. They did not differentiate between finding RNA and finding viable virus, and that's a world of difference. Also, the 72-hour thing spread far and fast without mentioning that at 72 hours, 99.9% of the virus was inactive. Again, since viral load matters, that means that it was likely insufficient to infect someone, especially someone without a compromised immune system, long before 72 hours.

Acquiring Covid from, say, a tool or a toy, requires that I am infected, I have had poor hand hygiene, I touch it and leave behind enough virus to be infectious, the next person picks it up and picks up enough virus to be infectious, manages to introduce that virus to a mucous membrane, which it penetrates and binds with an ACE2 receptor and multiplies faster than the T-cells can fight it off. That's a much tougher pathway than breathing an airborne droplet straight into your respiratory system.

But that's just my take on it, one which some see as reckless (meanwhile my friend who is intubating Covid patients every day thinks it is obsessively cautious). I think it is supported by a fairly broad reading from virologists and infectious disease experts. My previous paragraph is a paraphrase of something one of the infectious disease experts said in a Vox article I have posted elsewhere.

In any case, for some people, I think the fear is driving unhealthy levels of anxiety that are not being balanced against actual risk of particular situations. In other words, failing to differentiate adequately (in my view) the difference in risk between riding around on buses with a bunch on strangers and picking up a tool that the neighbor last touched a day ago.

"Fear is the mind killer."

[gm66]

My friend Duncan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_(journalist)) told me off for jumping on the Neil Ferguson hate bandwagon :

"Looking at code in a critical way is also good, my friend, but hang
on hard to your goolies and don't get swept over by internet
rage-raising that has nothing to do with science or public health.

Ferguson and his team have been doing the same jobs internationally
for at least 2 decades before Johnson and Cummings showed up to and
chose to write cohorts of our population and elders off to quick and
terrifying deaths, alone, and without medical help, in pursuit of
dumb old ideas and new fantasies.

He and Imperial will be around when Britain is finally shot of these people.

Because of the gravity of what they did in February and March, and
the lethal effects, they are desperate for any distraction, as Trump
as is. The attacks on Ferguson come from there, as did the spying on
his personal life and then the hate campaign against him in
tabloids. We have seen it all before, have we not?

Take a deep breath, and see if any codepicking nitpicks actually
affect the scientific outcomes. For example, how does Imperial's
predictions compare with the University College, Edinburgh or John
Hopkins models.

Have proper peer-checked papers been published that make criticisms
of the IC model?

Most important.. Have you gone and got the code, run it, checked the
issues and claims and how they would affect outcomes. Have you
read the other and related NERVTAG papers about it ?

I would have expected everyone's models to essentially be at least 10
years old, because they were all put together after SARS. Its not a
crisicism, at all. There's been no real huge pandemic since.

If there is a stochastic element set to diffferent runs, then of
course each run will be different, and drive a probabilistic
outcomes. All these points need to be checked, to be responsible.

If you'd like to dig further, there is definitely rigourous checking
needing to be done. Suggest you do all the checks above, and come back"

[Rupert]

Interesting.  I have to say, that the biggest differences in the outcomes of the studies seemed to me to be in the assumptions made at the start. 

If you think the death rate is 1% of those infected, or 0.01%, then the projected deaths will differ, from catastrophic to not so bad.

My feeling is that Duncan Campbell is probably right.