Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

So you're blaming the jerries for Brexit? 

[Sheilbh]

My understanding is that it is the way the numbers are collated. The Belgians are counting every dubious death, so it is possible that their covid-19 deaths might be revised downwards at a later date. Meanwhile in the UK we have 70,000 excess deaths but "only" 42,000 from covid-19, so our final figures are liable to be revised upwards.

We then enter the area of difficult questions of what constitutes a covid-19 death anyway. I would count someone who dies of a heart attack because they were to frightened to go to A&E as a covid-19 death; others would no doubt differ.

My info is secondary btw, from articles in the Economist, BBC or Guardian; I haven't studied the primary information as that would count as work 

Fair. My understanding is that's not fully right - just because I've seen stuff from Belgian people getting really annoyed at the Belgian government's defence which is basically "we're the only people in Europe who know how to count." The UK has the DHSC daily figures which is the deaths of people with a confirmed case (ie - they got tested), then weekly the ONS release details of death certificates which mentions covid (this is what the Belgians also count) and excess deaths. And the excess deaths will, no doubt, include some people who weren't diagnosed but it'll also include the indirect cost of the pandemic - people not going to hospital etc.

So I think for the pandemic period we have something like 42k deaths of someone who had been tested, but 50-55k death certificates mentioning covid and 60-65k excess deaths overall.

There are countries that have actually seen a fall in their average mortality because of lockdown that's larger than their covid deaths - like South Africa. It's just something I've found weird for ages because you see those per capita charts and Belgium is one of, if not the, highest in Europe. But then on the FT excess mortality tracker - and Zanza's links - it's 40% which is high but not the highest. And I'm a simple person when it comes to maths so I feel like they should fit together, but wonder why they don't.

[DGuller]

There have to be some positive effects on deaths from Covid.  During the lockdown stage, I imagine there would be less accidents.  In the longer term, people would be more conscious about hygiene, which should help against less publicized killers as well.

[Sheilbh]

On the causes of the Leicester outbreak, the Guardian quoted someone from Project Hope:

On Leicester I have more sympathy with the mayor now. There's another government data fuck-up. Basically the testing dataset that is made public and shared with local MPs, mayors, councillors etc only includes pillar 1 (NHS testing for key workers and people in clinical need) not the pillar 2 (tests processed by commercial partners - universities, research labs, pharma companies etc - this is the wider community testing):


The complete dataset is made available to some local public health authorities but not generally published (it is in Wales because devolution is good). So I can see why the mayor was getting pissed off at Leicester going into lockdown if he wasn't actually being shown all the data. Again - transparency is good

[Tamas]

Ah, so it is the doctoring of public numbers that's the issue.

[DGuller]

When it comes to "doctoring" the numbers, it never hurts to consider a couple of other explanations.  Sometimes you actually do need to adjust the numbers, because the unadjusted numbers are the misleading ones due to bias in collection.  Another explanation is plain incompetence and lack of common sense.  In a changing environment you have to be on your toes, and what's relevant at one time is misleading at a different time.  Here it seems like someone missed the changing importance of pillar 2, and did not revise the reporting scheme accordingly. 

That said, a third explanation is that someone really has a belief in how things are, and accepts or rejects data accordingly.  It's not "doctoring" in a sense of smoke-filled room conspiracy, but it's more of incompetence coupled with lack of critical thinking.  That unfortunately is very widespread.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think it's doctoring - I think Tamas's faith that the British state would be competent and transparent if only it weren't for those dastardly politicians at the top is touching. The politicians have their share of blame to take. But issues around transparency, decentralisation and sharing information outside of Whitehall, setting up IT systems etc are things that have been going wrong as long as I can remember following politics. They happened under New Labour, the Coalition and are still happening in the Brexit years.

My guess is it's probably incompetence - so I think part of the issue is apparently validating the numbers takes longer for pillar 2 than pillar 1 because they're coming from multiple sources not just PHE and the NHS. But I also think not really spotting the shift of importance and the general bias towards keeping things in Whitehall and sharing on a need to know basis (ie to local public health teams, but not to the public or local councils) were probably factors.

I mean even if it was doctoring - what was the purpose? The government was doctoring the figures to make it look like there were fewer cases while they were trying to lock the city down?

[DGuller]

Speaking of incompetent, I've refreshed my numbers again, and even the good states are now looking poised to not be good.  New York and New Jersey both officially flattened out, much sooner than I thought they would, and poised to re-enter the growth area.  That means that infections right now are a steady trickle, and probably would be ramping up soon.  Pretty much all of the Midwestern already crossed the neutral line, and are now back into exponential growth. 

It used to be a couple of weeks ago that the southern states were bad but the northern states were on an improving trajectory, but now the bad states have become dire and the improving states have or are about to retrench.  This is pretty grim. 

[PDH]

If everyone would just inject bleach into themselves then this would go away in no time.

[Valmy]

Speaking of incompetent, I've refreshed my numbers again, and even the good states are now looking poised to not be good.  New York and New Jersey both officially flattened out, much sooner than I thought they would, and poised to re-enter the growth area.  That means that infections right now are a steady trickle, and probably would be ramping up soon.  Pretty much all of the Midwestern already crossed the neutral line, and are now back into exponential growth. 

It used to be a couple of weeks ago that the southern states were bad but the northern states were on an improving trajectory, but now the bad states have become dire and the improving states have or are about to retrench.  This is pretty grim. 

Yeah it is pretty depressing. This is exactly what I was worried about, that we opened up too soon and now we are going to really get it despite all the economic sacrifices we made in March, April, and May. We have get to have our shit sandwich and eat it to.

America just cannot do jack shit right anymore.

[Sheilbh]

Speaking of incompetent, I've refreshed my numbers again, and even the good states are now looking poised to not be good.  New York and New Jersey both officially flattened out, much sooner than I thought they would, and poised to re-enter the growth area.  That means that infections right now are a steady trickle, and probably would be ramping up soon.  Pretty much all of the Midwestern already crossed the neutral line, and are now back into exponential growth. 

It used to be a couple of weeks ago that the southern states were bad but the northern states were on an improving trajectory, but now the bad states have become dire and the improving states have or are about to retrench.  This is pretty grim. 

There's also a report on Bloomberg that Florida's cases are now starting to pick up in care homes. So far part of the success of Florida in terms of mortality is I think they've been decent at shielding. Hopefully it's just a few isolated cases but, from the UK's experience, this disease is ruthless towards the elderly and will rip through that sort of environment if it gets in

[Caliga]

America just cannot do jack shit right anymore.

I was telling my wife last night that I don't know why the Chinese don't just go ahead and conquer us.  I think they could do it pretty easily... they'd just need to run ads saying they were saving us from evil liberals and abortion would be illegal and churches would all reopen, and they'd execute Obama and Hillary, and huge swaths of the country would welcome them as liberators.

[The Minsky Moment]

CCP has enough problems on its hands - having to deal with our American michegas on top of everything else is not an attractive option.

[Admiral Yi]

New Yiddish word! 

[Grey Fox]

America just cannot do jack shit right anymore.

You never could. Chaos in war, maybe.