LeSving wrote:
Since the similar result in Norway show that 1/3 is infected outside Norway and 2/3 is infected inland (or unknown), and we have more infected than Sweden, even though we are half the population and stronger restrictions, this would suggest that Sweden has testes way too few to have any idea of the real situation.
Hard to say. I recently saw statistics that Sweden ranks 7th in the world in the number of tests done per capita. I can’t recall Norway’s figure. Of cause, testing more than someone else doesn’t mean that you are testing enough — whatever “enough” means, which is far from clear.
LeSving wrote:
Since the similar result in Norway show that 1/3 is infected outside Norway and 2/3 is infected inland (or unknown), and we have more infected than Sweden, even though we are half the population and stronger restrictions, this would suggest that Sweden has testes way too few to have any idea of the real situation.
To me, it looks quite obvious that if they test more, they will find more, maybe even lots more. All from people that are not ill from it. Looks pointless.
Although, I would welcome that info, leading to more suspicion that the virus is pretty much everywhere and not causing harm.
hmng wrote:
Although, I would welcome that info, leading to more suspicion that the virus is pretty much everywhere and not causing harm.
Prepare for a visit from the thought police.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
hmng wrote:
I am focusing on actual deaths and excess mortality, as we have no hard data on infection numbers, it seems that % of that isn’t very informative
You mean the parameter or it’s early estimates? I agree we still have uncertainty on fatality rate estimates % but I hardly see it going to 0.1%, maybe 0.5%? 1%? 10%?
Also I think it is really early to talk about excess of mortality statistics, we are not yet even at end of season, let alone 10 years analysis
All we have at this early stage is “dynamic” epidemic predictive models, you can plug whatever parameters they think make sense (you can clean them from other standalone infections if you like or model other factors/estimations), once you have a reliable parameter estimate, having 1000 or 10000 infections initially does not make any difference, the result is just the same and will only shift by 3 weeks ahead…
hmng wrote:
The coronavirus deaths will not be in addition to these, as statistician Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, an expert in public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, explains.
“There will be substantial overlap in these two groups — many people who die of Covid [the disease caused by coronavirus] would have died anyway within a short period.”
I am really not sure how excess mortality means anything on the few data we have, there is no way you can get any inference or descriptive stats at this early stage, these things are better left for discussions in 10 years when enough data is around and things are “stationary”, the numbers we see now starts to looks like epidemic curve outputs to me rather than equally distributed and independent samples from day-to-day deaths
I agree there will be substantial overlap but we can’t compare mortality table rates for normal or at risk persons with virus fatality rate when they are infected, the time horizons and the future/past dynamics are not the same, but maybe things will just vanish in 4 weeks? the more informed experts on this topic tend to be life insurance guys (and epidemic analysts), apparently they disagree with Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter of normal week-to-week stats 
I will go with that, they have more skin & money in this for their written policies losses and investment yields
Also ground reality is different, the thing was empirically discovered as spike in a crowded hospital with too much pneumonia patients for one doctor alone, now many hospitals are getting close to full capacity on respiratory care, so I don’t buy the “day-to-day deaths argument”
But we maybe lucky with the rest of the year as this may mutate? heat may kill it? or it has infected 50% already? any of this could be true and it will vanish in 10 years mortality stats
Political rants will be deleted. If they form only a part of a post, the whole post will be deleted.
The number of UK deaths in the last 24hrs is markedly less than the preceding 24hrs. One data point does not a trend make, but it’s a start and it bucks what people said would be happening about now.
My wife is a GP.
I mentioned tonight I was surprised some of the récent UK fatalities today – a 21yr old female and a guy in mid 30s. She said that from her colleagues on the front line there appears to be a strong link between HIT (high intensity training) and having a bad Covid outcome.When we exercise hard, we cause some inflammation to our heart for a day or two. If we then contract Co-vid, which puts pressure on our hearts, the outcome may be significantly worse than average.
Reminded me of the Italian patient zero, who was a 35yr old marathon runner. I’ve no idea if he’d recently completed any hard sessions, but he was in ICU for several weeks and on the mend now.
In short, if you like to train hard, maybe ease off until more evidence comes to light.
Here in Hannover it’s a “calm before the storm” day regarding Covid-19. Cases have more than tripled since Monday, when our hospital had three patients, yesterday it was already 10, half of whom are in intensive care.
Still, in my department, with none of the staff infected and all elective surgery cancelled, we actually had excess staff today and I was sent home to reduce my overtime. We expect a big influx of new patients at the weekend, and lots of round the clock work for us in the coming weeks.
One interesting fact, published by the Robert Koch Institute, is that the median age of German Covid-19 patients so far is 47. Make of that what you want. Most of the patients we have in Hannover have been around 60.
Germany has what looks like a very good dashboard although it doesn’t appear to google translate into other languages.
The media is – finally – carrying reports of young people getting bad cases. That message needs to be driven hard. Probably weeks too late…
The average age in ICU varies by region. I very recently spoke to one front line guy who commented it is well above my age (63). He said the UK is expected to be like Italy at the peak but it should be all over by June.
Another UK “patient zero” has been apparently identified. He was another skier who like so many caught it in Ischgl, Austria, in a hot and crowded apres ski bar back in December.
