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    That's amazing, weird, and difficult to imagine a use for all at the same time

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      Things are bad in Nepal. Cases and deaths both up more than 90% on last week. Up to 47% of tests are coming back positive for Covid-19. They've asked for international assistance: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/20...nt-covid-surge

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        Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
        That's amazing, weird, and difficult to imagine a use for all at the same time
        Well clearly the next step is for bees to be able to fly up to people with the virus and sting them with a vaccine jab. Or something. Maybe wasps would be better at this actually.

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          Turkey is the fifth country to officially exceed 5 million cases of Covid-19.

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            The current global death toll of 3.305 million+ is now higher than the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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              Originally posted by matt j View Post
              And here we go, IHME has begun modelling excess deaths and is displaying it in their projections:

              http://www.healthdata.org/special-an...ovid-19-deaths

              http://www.healthdata.org/covid/vide...d-19-model-run

              Somebody smarter than me take a look.
              That's quite fascinating. This was on the front of the Irish times the day it came out. It seems that they think the covid death toll here is 7100, roughly 40% higher than our figure of 4900. Thing is I'm not sure where that would have come from. There's never been any political pressure to leave covid off the death cert, and I think they had covid tests quite early on, and we've never had that with/of distinction. The other thing is we politically make a big deal about the number of dead people, because we have to justify a fairly serious lockdown, and adherence with it has become increasingly lax as the deaths have slowed to a relative trickle.

              The other thing is that any effort to systematically downplay covid deaths would instantaneously become front page news, and the people doing it would get burned alive in the public square.

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                That's because it's counting excess mortality and has identified 6 drivers of that, only 1 of which is deaths directly caused by Covid. It's trying to account for deaths from delayed treatment, mental health deterioration and so on.

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                  Yes, as an example of this, deaths due to alcohol in England and Wales were at their highest level for 20 years in 2020, and they were up 20% from 2019.

                  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57008067.amp

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                    And, it also is trying to account for reductions in deaths e.g. lower numbers of road traffic accidents, and reductions in other mortality causes like flu or heart disease, accounting that some of that reduction is because the people who would have died of those conditions caught Covid instead.

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                      The correlation between Covid-19 and suicide is hard to determine, but worth noting suicide mortality in 2019 was at its highest for 20 years. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352 (that's a paper from November 2020; there might be more recent data out there)

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                        Azerbaijan has now reported more deaths from Covid-19 than China, 4,680.

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                          The Maldives has recorded the world's highest rate of new cases of Covid-19 per million population for the last seven days (9,241 cases per million, 5,070 new cases in the last week in total, up 77% on the previous week). For the last two weeks there have been lots of stories about Bollywood stars and Indian Instagram influencers all fleeing to the Maldives and posting insensitive content of them frolicking on the sand. I suspect these two facts are correlated.

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                            Bahrain has had the second highest rate of new cases per million population worldwide over the last seven days. I find this more concerning as Bahrain has administered more doses of Covid-19 vaccine per 100 population than the UK (79.17 for Bahrain vs 77.19 for the UK as of May 7th 2021). Bahrain is moving to introduce a third vaccine boosting campaign: https://amp/s/gulfnews.com/amp/world...-19-1.79052338

                            I wonder if this means that the current low numbers in the UK are due more to lockdown measures than the vaccination roll-out.

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                              Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post
                              The Maldives has recorded the world's highest rate of new cases of Covid-19 per million population for the last seven days (9,241 cases per million, 5,070 new cases in the last week in total, up 77% on the previous week). For the last two weeks there have been lots of stories about Bollywood stars and Indian Instagram influencers all fleeing to the Maldives and posting insensitive content of them frolicking on the sand. I suspect these two facts are correlated.
                              Haven't all the Australian cricketers in the IPL also gone to the Maldives?

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                                Bahrain has reported 5,743 new cases of Covid-19 per million population over the last seven days. The equivalent figure for the UK is currently 215.

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                                  Originally posted by ad hoc View Post

                                  Haven't all the Australian cricketers in the IPL also gone to the Maldives?
                                  Yes, I think I saw a headline about that.

                                  Edit: people seem to have been using the Maldives as a staging post to get between places with travel bans. In Europe, the same was happening with Turkey. Both the Maldives and Turkey have now closed some of those loopholes but a lot of damage will already have been done.

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                                    Many of them have.

                                    The resorts claim to be hermetically sealed from the general population.

                                    They also appeared to be unaware of the bomb attempt on the life of the ex-PM.

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                                      What exactly is the point of the UK government saying that Australia and New Zealand are on the 'green list' when it is impossible to return from them without passing through a 'red list' country's airport? Unless you come back all the way on a boat without going ashore at all on the way back I suppose.

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                                        There are direct flights between Perth and London.

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                                          67 deaths from Covid-19 in the UK in the last week. Down to fewer than 10 deaths per day. A reduction of 39% compared to the previous week. I am cautiously, pleasantly relieved that schools reopening hasn't yet led to a big resurge in cases. I hope the next relaxation of lockdown restrictions (indoor hospitality resuming and households allowed to meet indoors from next Monday) won't reverse the trend.

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                                            Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                            That's because it's counting excess mortality and has identified 6 drivers of that, only 1 of which is deaths directly caused by Covid. It's trying to account for deaths from delayed treatment, mental health deterioration and so on.
                                            Ah cheers. There's got to be a healthy dollop of delayed treatment deaths alright.

                                            As to the falling deaths, 22 million people in the UK were living in council areas that didn't have a single death in April, and two third of councils either had 0 or 1 covid death.

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                                              Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post
                                              Bahrain has had the second highest rate of new cases per million population worldwide over the last seven days. I find this more concerning as Bahrain has administered more doses of Covid-19 vaccine per 100 population than the UK (79.17 for Bahrain vs 77.19 for the UK as of May 7th 2021). Bahrain is moving to introduce a third vaccine boosting campaign: https://amp/s/gulfnews.com/amp/world...-19-1.79052338

                                              I wonder if this means that the current low numbers in the UK are due more to lockdown measures than the vaccination roll-out.
                                              Might be dependent on the type of vaccine. Upthread there was a comment about the Sinopharm vaccine being less effective.

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                                                Ooh, another slide presentation from Professor Chris, I've missed those.

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                                                  "No dancing at weddings" is an oddly specific prohibition to come out of the latest easings.

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                                                    Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                                    That's because it's counting excess mortality and has identified 6 drivers of that, only 1 of which is deaths directly caused by Covid. It's trying to account for deaths from delayed treatment, mental health deterioration and so on.
                                                    True, but to be clear in the explanation:

                                                    "...Given that there is insufficient evidence to estimate these contributions to excess mortality, for now we assume that total COVID-19 deaths equal excess mortality. For the reasons presented in this section, we believe that this is likely an underestimate. As the evidence is strengthened in the coming months and years, it is likely that we will revise our estimates of the total COVID-19 death rate upward in future iterations of this work, once we can properly take into account the drivers described in this section."

                                                    Emphasis mine, of course. I interpret all this as they are basically looking these drivers and saying everything is a wash in most places 'except' for COVID-19.

                                                    similarly, earlier in the same explanation:
                                                    "...An analysis by the Netherlands statistical agency suggested that all excess deaths in the Netherlands were directly due to COVID-19. In fact, their analysis actually suggested that direct COVID-19 deaths may be higher than estimated excess deaths because deaths due to some other causes have declined during the pandemic...."

                                                    I think if TAB's political analysis of Ireland is correct, then the problem with the IHME projections is probably the ratio they are applying..(and/or that their other data on Ireland just disagrees with TAB - and we'll have to wait for stories of 'missed' deaths in the country).

                                                    My other interpretation (which I'm not confident about), is that most of the projections tend to assume a larger number of deaths right from the start... by which I mean, many more deaths caused by Covid-19 before full testing was in place and the deaths could be attributed properly. People just died (especially old people near the end of their life expectancy with flu-like symptoms) and it wasn't tied to the pandemic. (also quote: "deaths from some chronic conditions such as ischemic heart disease or chronic respiratory disease declined in some months of 2020, most notably in May and June in Europe. These declines were most likely due to the fact that frail individuals who died from COVID-19 earlier in the year would otherwise likely have died from these chronic conditions.")

                                                    I think this is going to be something that needs a lot more research, but it's going to require paying attention in the next few years to know the full extent of the deaths. I'm not sure I'm a fan of how it's being presented so far (on IHME), as it seems like it can be used improperly and feed into the 'it's only scaremongering' crowd. For some, we can't even convince them of the 'actual' deaths le alone the excess.

                                                    Tricky stuff.

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