Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[William of Walworth]

Check out this new analysis of the UK's excess mortality: Excess mortality: England is the European outlier in the Covid-19 pandemic | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal It's by boffins from Oxford Univ. What does it say? My brain can't handle it just now.

Larry Elliott refers to/discusses that paper in his Guardian column today

How England found itself at the wrong end of the Covid-19 league table
Excess deaths, the stats that really count, show that England is paying the price for poor government

 

[elbows]

The England figures for under-65s are such an anomaly that I'd want to check the figures tbh. I know they're looking at excess mortality rather than covid-19 deaths only, but it's hard to square those figures with others showing that over 90 per cent of all England covid deaths have been over 60s.

Well I dont work with z-scores and I havent looked at other countries excess mortality by age yet.

I do look at the ONS figures every week though. And I believe I can make some graphs that might help your understanding of the data. There is a new ONS release tomorrow but I will get the graphs setup now so I might have something to post later this evening, not sure.

 

[elbows]

OK just a single screenshot of a lot of small graphs for now, so I've placed it in a spoiler tag as it may be a little large on some screens.

Note the very different scales, higher for each age group, with more deaths as we get older in normal times as well as this pandemic. But in age groups well below 'the elderly' the tell tale pattern of pandemic deaths is clearly visible.

This data is weekly all cause deaths for England and Wales from the ONS. I left out some of the lowest age groups because the pandemic doesnt show up in them and the 15-19, 20-24 etc age ranges should demonstrate this without me having to include even younger ages.

Spoiler

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Looks from those graphs like they should have been telling the over 45s to stay away from everyone else, not just the over 70s.

 

[frogwoman]

It's a bit baffling why 'excess' deaths, ie not necessarily covid related, in England are so high compared to spain and italy which had far stricter lockdowns than we did (and possibly therefore youd think there may be more deaths directly caused by the lockdown, mental health issues, DV and so on)? And at one point hospitals were overwhelmed in Italy so people often couldn't attend for other things?

Is it simply the case that more people got infected here and didn't attend hospital to a greater extent, but then deaths are also hugely high compared with scotland and Wales too? And some of those people weren't tested / had inaccurate tests so didn't show up as covid deaths?

elbows

 

[zahir]

Agency staff were spreading Covid-19 between care homes, PHE found in April

Exclusive: results of unpublished study were only shared with care home providers last week

www.theguardian.com

Temporary care workers transmitted Covid-19 between care homes as cases surged, according to an unpublished government study, which used genome tracking to investigate outbreaks.

In evidence that raises further questions about ministers’ claims to have “thrown a protective ring around care homes”, it emerged that agency workers – often employed on zero-hours contracts – unwittingly spread the infection as the pandemic grew, according to the study by Public Health England (PHE).

The genome-tracking research into the behaviour of the virus in six care homes in London found that, in some cases, workers who transmitted coronavirus had been drafted in to cover for care home staff who were self-isolating expressly to prevent the vulnerable people they look after from becoming infected.

 

[elbows]

It's a bit baffling why 'excess' deaths, ie not necessarily covid related, in England are so high compared to spain and italy which had far stricter lockdowns than we did (and possibly therefore youd think there may be more deaths directly caused by the lockdown, mental health issues, DV and so on)? And at one point hospitals were overwhelmed in Italy so people often couldn't attend for other things?

Is it simply the case that more people got infected here and didn't attend hospital to a greater extent, but then deaths are also hugely high compared with scotland and Wales too? And some of those people weren't tested / had inaccurate tests so didn't show up as covid deaths?

elbows

It has to be a quite large and notable sustained public health event of a certain sort to really show up in overall excess mortality data.I have tended to assume that deaths caused by lockdown itself are not statistically significant enough to have clearly shown up in overall excess mortality data so far. By zooming in on certain age ranges at certain periods of time, and by looking for much more gradual trends over time it might be ppssible to spot something, but generally for that sort of study I would not want to use all cause deaths, I would start to look at data for deaths recorded as having some specific causes. When looking at total mortality rates, we also have to consider other sorts of deaths that may have been less likely to happen under lockdown conditions than they would in normal times, which can skew the numbers in the other direction.

I cannot really comment properly on how our overall deaths in the below 65 age group compare to these other countries, because I havent seen their data by age group. But I suppose a mixture of explanations for any differences would be expected. For example, we have heard much about increased risk for BAME groups, and that, combined with what sort of occupations and underlying health conditions people from these groups are likely to have, and in what sort of numbers, is one of the first areas I'd look into in regards the UK and England. Certainly other things too, such as not monitoring the health of 'mild' patients, encouraging people to stay at home with the illness and not giving clear guidance about when they should seek help again, not admitting enough people to hospital, having a late and weak lockdown, having poor infection control, general population health, pollution, inequalities of all forms, etc.

The biggest thing that still strikes me when comparing non-age-specific mortality data from various countries is the story on the regional level. In the USA, Italy, Spain and France to give the most obvious and dramatic examples, a few regions tended to totally dominate in terms of the size of epidemics, number of hospitalisations and deaths. Really pronounced stuff where the worst effected regions/cities lead to total excess deaths on the peak weeks in those places that in some cases reached 3-7 times the normal number of deaths for a week at that time of year. London does stick out in the UK but not quite to those extents. Anyway I will do some graphs about that sometime in the coming weeks so will save further thoughts on that till then.

 

[Epona]

Agency staff were spreading Covid-19 between care homes, PHE found in April

Exclusive: results of unpublished study were only shared with care home providers last week

www.theguardian.com

That isn't massively surprising - although a few years ago now, my OH used to work (registered nurse) on a 0-hours contract for an agency in care homes and many places aren't fully staffed with permanent employees at all, a large percentage of carers are casual/agency labour who do not have a permanent job and move from place to place on a daily or shift by shift basis depending upon where they are booked via the agencies.

Just want to make it clear that I don't in the slightest consider those workers at fault in any way - when the gig economy is rife in health and social care, this is what happens.

 

[frogwoman]

It has to be a quite large and notable sustained public health event of a certain sort to really show up in overall excess mortality data.I have tended to assume that deaths caused by lockdown itself are not statistically significant enough to have clearly shown up in overall excess mortality data so far. By zooming in on certain age ranges at certain periods of time, and by looking for much more gradual trends over time it might be ppssible to spot something, but generally for that sort of study I would not want to use all cause deaths, I would start to look at data for deaths recorded as having some specific causes. When looking at total mortality rates, we also have to consider other sorts of deaths that may have been less likely to happen under lockdown conditions than they would in normal times, which can skew the numbers in the other direction.

I cannot really comment properly on how our overall deaths in the below 65 age group compare to these other countries, because I havent seen their data by age group. But I suppose a mixture of explanations for any differences would be expected. For example, we have heard much about increased risk for BAME groups, and that, combined with what sort of occupations and underlying health conditions people from these groups are likely to have, and in what sort of numbers, is one of the first areas I'd look into in regards the UK and England. Certainly other things too, such as not monitoring the health of 'mild' patients, encouraging people to stay at home with the illness and not giving clear guidance about when they should seek help again, not admitting enough people to hospital, having a late and weak lockdown, having poor infection control, general population health, pollution, inequalities of all forms, etc.

The biggest thing that still strikes me when comparing non-age-specific mortality data from various countries is the story on the regional level. In the USA, Italy, Spain and France to give the most obvious and dramatic examples, a few regions tended to totally dominate in terms of the size of epidemics, number of hospitalisations and deaths. Really pronounced stuff where the worst effected regions/cities lead to total excess deaths on the peak weeks in those places that in some cases reached 3-7 times the normal number of deaths for a week at that time of year. London does stick out in the UK but not quite to those extents. Anyway I will do some graphs about that sometime in the coming weeks so will save further thoughts on that till then.

That is my gut feeling too, that some lockdown related deaths will have happened but as the same kind of pattern of huge levels of deaths which take a long time to go down, hasn't been seen in Italy and Spain which had far stricter lockdowns, there will only be a small number of those deaths compared to COVID-19 itself. I guess when more detailed data comes out we'll be able to say more on that.

 

[BristolEcho]

]

Agency staff were spreading Covid-19 between care homes, PHE found in April

Exclusive: results of unpublished study were only shared with care home providers last week

www.theguardian.com

Supported someone to while they reported to CQC about being sent to different care homes when they weren't even needed because the company didn't want to lose money or furlough them. CQC were not interested at all. FFS.

 

[Fez909]

It has to be a quite large and notable sustained public health event of a certain sort to really show up in overall excess mortality data.I have tended to assume that deaths caused by lockdown itself are not statistically significant enough to have clearly shown up in overall excess mortality data so far. By zooming in on certain age ranges at certain periods of time, and by looking for much more gradual trends over time it might be ppssible to spot something, but generally for that sort of study I would not want to use all cause deaths, I would start to look at data for deaths recorded as having some specific causes. When looking at total mortality rates, we also have to consider other sorts of deaths that may have been less likely to happen under lockdown conditions than they would in normal times, which can skew the numbers in the other direction.

I cannot really comment properly on how our overall deaths in the below 65 age group compare to these other countries, because I havent seen their data by age group. But I suppose a mixture of explanations for any differences would be expected. For example, we have heard much about increased risk for BAME groups, and that, combined with what sort of occupations and underlying health conditions people from these groups are likely to have, and in what sort of numbers, is one of the first areas I'd look into in regards the UK and England. Certainly other things too, such as not monitoring the health of 'mild' patients, encouraging people to stay at home with the illness and not giving clear guidance about when they should seek help again, not admitting enough people to hospital, having a late and weak lockdown, having poor infection control, general population health, pollution, inequalities of all forms, etc.

The biggest thing that still strikes me when comparing non-age-specific mortality data from various countries is the story on the regional level. In the USA, Italy, Spain and France to give the most obvious and dramatic examples, a few regions tended to totally dominate in terms of the size of epidemics, number of hospitalisations and deaths. Really pronounced stuff where the worst effected regions/cities lead to total excess deaths on the peak weeks in those places that in some cases reached 3-7 times the normal number of deaths for a week at that time of year. London does stick out in the UK but not quite to those extents. Anyway I will do some graphs about that sometime in the coming weeks so will save further thoughts on that till then.

Also discharging known Covid positive patients to care homes will have increased the deaths a lot here, too. That's the biggest scandal so far for me.

 

[elbows]

Also discharging known Covid positive patients to care homes will have increased the deaths a lot here, too. That's the biggest scandal so far for me.

Its a big one for sure. And some of their historical pandemic plans warned about it, whilst others (like the NHS England 'reverse triage') basically encouraged it.

 

[zahir]

The Sage advice must be published now to find where Britain got coronavirus wrong | Anthony Costello

The public deserves to know what happened in the secretive scientific debates that have informed government policy, says Anthony Costello, the former WHO director

www.theguardian.com

 

[The39thStep]

who the fuck is this guy?

 

[two sheds]

"Herd immunity is just a ..... a ... a thing"

It reminds me of sayings of Zaphod Beeblebrox but I can't quite place it.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

We have another way to measure the UK establishment lag:

Coronavirus symptoms: UK adds loss of smell and taste to list

Loss of smell and taste join a new cough and fever as signs that self-isolation may be necessary, experts say.

www.bbc.co.uk

I havent checked when people, including on this forum, started going on about these symptoms and it became obvious they should be part of the symptoms guide to COVID-19, but if someone could check when that was then we can measure how long it takes for the establishment to react.

Callie made this post on April 3

Lost my log in info for the app post update a few days back so unable to tell them I'm mostly back to normal bar the loss of smell/taste.

I have had anosmia previously with a cold/flu like illness so I still have some caution over the possibility of it not being COVID causing it. Hoping I'll be able to be antibody tested at work (we've got some kits to try out). Perhaps the app users could have some priority for testing when capacity allows because the app data would then be so much more valuable.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

And this was March 24th

I've gone all snotty. My temp is down today. I've lost my sense of taste n smell though. Various hits on the net for anosmia being a COVID-19 symptom but not sure how reliable that might be as I have had this before with a cold.

ETA Sorry Callie, I see that you’ve already made this point...

 

[SheilaNaGig]

Hmmm, perhaps. Herd immunity certainly means that the virus won't spread within the community much any more because R is well below 1. I'm talking about how safe it is for someone who's vulnerable to use (for example) public transport, though. I still think it's not all that safe if, every journey, you're vulnerable and likely to come in contact with the infection.

Do we definitely know that people who have had the virus and are themselves immune aren't still shedding the virus? Or that they won't be carrying the virus on their hands if they've been in contact with someone who's infected although they themselves are immune?

Last I heard the false positives that had been picked up from people who had recovered were down to faulty tests, but is that conclusive? And as I say there are suggestions that immunity is not necessarily permanent, which might make the whole idea of herd immunity illusory without people being regularly immunized.

extra dry posted a video somewhere that said that out of 12 autopsies, all of them died of lung complications, all of them had viral RNA in the lungs, but only 9 had any found in the throat. Viral RNA was also found in the kidneys and heart of some but not all. So it seems to be quite possible that a test could come back negative even if someone has cto cud replicating in the lungs.


Found the video.

 

[little_legs]

Not this autopsy again. C’mon now.

 

[little_legs]

Also, here are some words from Satan reincarnate:

 

[Raheem]

Also, here are some words from Satan reincarnate:

He's starting to look a little like Bez.

 

[David Clapson]

Covid will cost some years of life lost due to delayed detection of cancer. New patients are more hesitant than usual to get suspicious lumps checked etc. The excess deaths can't be counted yet because they will occur gradually over a number of years. Oncologists are all too aware of this and will try to measure it, but it will be difficult, because there are so many factors which affect the longevity of cancer patients. It wouldn't hurt to have a public information campaign to persuade patients to come forward.

 

[Epona]

Covid will cost some years of life lost due to delayed detection of cancer. New patients are more hesitant than usual to get suspicious lumps checked etc. The excess deaths can't be counted yet because they will occur gradually over a number of years. Oncologists are all too aware of this and will try to measure it, but it will be difficult, because there are so many factors which affect the longevity of cancer patients. It wouldn't hurt to have a public information campaign to persuade patients to come forward.

It is going to take a long time before the knock on effects are fully known. I heard an estimate that there could be an additional 60k+ cancer deaths as a result of a mix of stopping treatment, delaying treatment and a gap in the usual cancer screening/wellness checks

 

[David Clapson]

60k! Christ almighty. Can you remember the source?

 

[Epona]

60k! Christ almighty. Can you remember the source?

I thought I saw it quoted on one the daily coronavirus news programmes on TV back in March, a quick google provided this ITV article, which quotes some oncologist

'60,000 cancer patients may die': Oncologist on the coronavirus dilemma | ITV News

Usually in April, wards see 30,000 people diagnosed with cancer. Prof Sikora "would be surprised if that number reaches 5,000" this month.

www.itv.com

Reading back over that - it is clear that I did hear that figure on the news, but the article is not particularly scholarly and involves a lot of conjecture.

EDIT: This article is not where I got the figure. It looks as though they are doing a report based upon the same TV interview that I saw and went "fuck me" about back in March and have added a load of fluff and filler.

 

[rekil]

who the fuck is this guy?

Dr John Edmunds OBE.

Spoiler

 

[Artaxerxes]

"Herd immunity is just a ..... a ... a thing"

It reminds me of sayings of Zaphod Beeblebrox but I can't quite place it.

"Zaphod is just this guy y'know?"

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

Also, here are some words from Satan reincarnate:

was there not some evidence based war he was involved in as well?

 

[cupid_stunt]

It was reported a few days ago that we had sent 50,000 tests to US labs, now the news that 100,000 have been sent to German labs, and that they deliver results quicker than UK labs.

Fresh Questions Over Testing Capacity As UK Sends At Least 100,000 Swabs To Germany

Exclusive: Figure leads to accusations ministers are dodging transparency as EU labs process home testing kits.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

 

[quimcunx]

Well that can be right. Hancock said we were global champions.