Corona Virus statistics - anomalies?

[horizon]

Here's another anomaly to chew over this Sunday morning:

Influenza vaccination rate for the over 65s in the UK: 70% (the highest in Europe)
Influenza vaccination rate for the over 65s in Poland: 10% (AFAIK the lowest in Europe)

Number of deaths due to coronavirus to date in the UK: 4,300 (population 60m)
Number of deaths due to coronavirus to date in Poland: 84 (population 37m)

(Things can change of course and those figures are obviously open to question. There is also not necessarily a correlation between the figures.)

[Psamathe]

That is not the case in the UK ..... yet.

I was talking about/responding to comparing death rates between different countries. My comment was not about the UK and (according to reports) that has happened in some other countries and will likely impact their number of deaths.

Ian

And as that is not the case in the UK yet it skews figures.

Plus, should it happen (in the UK) as things worsen then I guess might disproportionally increase the number of deaths making it possible for people to assume infection is becoming more widespread or more dangerous whereas such an increase would rather be due to treatment constraints. Making comparison of death rates even harder.

But that might then be offset by increasing testing which would detect more cases so death rates per confirmed cases might decrease further illustrating the limitations of the current statistics, all depending on what you are looking at.

I suppose that if you are looking at how dangerous C-19 is in any area then availability of care does affect the risk but if you are comparing e.g. Italy to UK using death rates/confirmed cases there are so many things impacting the comparison it makes it not very useful (e.g. testing regime, availability of care, population age profiles, how cause of death is recorded, etc.).

Ian

[horizon]

Just to put my figures above into context, here is a useful article about Poland's earlier and stricter lockdown measures:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/worl ... oland.html

The question in my mind is, did they really make that much of a difference?

[Psamathe]

Just to put my figures above into context, here is a useful article about Poland's earlier and stricter lockdown measures:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/worl ... oland.html

The question in my mind is, did they really make that much of a difference?

Whilst there are clear anomolies between how countries collect statistics, but e.g.
(as of 4 April 20 from https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200404-sitrep-75-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=99251b2b_2)
Singapore total cases 1114, total deaths 5
S. Korea total cases 10156, total deaths 177

Interestingly the UK seems to have ignored the steps many such countries took to fight the spread e.g. rigorous contact tracing. The UK Government has not even asked the Science Advisory Group modellers to model the impact of Contact Tracing despite it's demonstrated success in other countries and it providing a potential path out of lockdown (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/03/matt-hancock-government-policy-herd-immunity-community-surveillance-covid-19).

Ian

[Cunobelin]

[youtube]jZtEX2-n2Hc[/youtube]


Face masks are controversial, with advocates for and against. Czechia mad masks compulsory, and some attribute thie relatively low rate to this.

[mjr]

Here's another anomaly to chew over this Sunday morning:

Influenza vaccination rate for the over 65s in the UK: 70% (the highest in Europe)
Influenza vaccination rate for the over 65s in Poland: 10% (AFAIK the lowest in Europe)

Number of deaths due to coronavirus to date in the UK: 4,300 (population 60m)
Number of deaths due to coronavirus to date in Poland: 84 (population 37m)

(Things can change of course and those figures are obviously open to question. There is also not necessarily a correlation between the figures.)

Plot the two values for many European countries and let's see if it's more than random variation.

[fullupandslowingdown]

Face masks are controversial, with advocates for and against. Czechia made masks compulsory, and some attribute this relatively low rate to this.

England : 58 million souls Density 424/km2
Czechia: 11 million souls Density 134/km2

London 8,908,081 peeps 5,666/km2
Prague 1,324,277 peeps 2,700/km2

It stands to reason that without any interventions at all, a densely populated area will see faster transmission rates. But if wearing masks is at all effective, then by doing so, it will have dramatic effect, rather than a modest one. Our government can't argue otherwise because that's the same premise that their distancing is based on: by slightly reducing person to person transmission, it makes a much greater effect in the whole.

London Underground 1357 billion passengers
Prague Metro 589 million passengers

England 25-54 years: 40.55% 55-64 years: 11.98% 65 years and over: 18.04%
Czechia 25-54 years: 43.79% 55-64 years: 12.24% 65 years and over: 19.42%

I was half expecting to see fewer old people in Czechia, but then the figures for england are older than for Czechia, but I doubt it's changed 2 percentage points.

[horizon]

Here's another anomaly to chew over this Sunday morning:

Influenza vaccination rate for the over 65s in the UK: 70% (the highest in Europe)
Influenza vaccination rate for the over 65s in Poland: 10% (AFAIK the lowest in Europe)

Number of deaths due to coronavirus to date in the UK: 4,300 (population 60m)
Number of deaths due to coronavirus to date in Poland: 84 (population 37m)

(Things can change of course and those figures are obviously open to question. There is also not necessarily a correlation between the figures.)

Plot the two values for many European countries and let's see if it's more than random variation.

Seems not:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... n-the-west

[Jdsk]

Spiegelhalter on why we should be very wary of international comparisons:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/30/coronavirus-deaths-how-does-britain-compare-with-other-countries

And IMHO the best attempt at trying to document and understand the effects of different national approaches: the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT):
https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker

Jonathan