Coronavirus 3 - Al Pacino's turn to mumble

[watt price tully]

^

That's the "expert health advice" they rely on to make their decisions.

Yes, he was highly recommended by Scotty

[stui magpie]

Why bring Scotty Burns into this?

[Pies4shaw]

... I see the UK is actually worsening.

What's your basis for saying this? Every graph I have seen has the cases and deaths decreasing progressively and dramatically, so that each is a tiny fraction of the position in January 2021? Are you looking at, say, an increase from a couple of deaths to a couple more deaths recently and missing that a couple of months back it was in the many thousands per week - or do you have some point to make with actual data?

[Dave The Man]

New Variant in Viteman which is said to be Very Dangerous as Spread by Air very Fast

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/vi ... d=msedgntp

[eddiesmith]

... I see the UK is actually worsening.

What's your basis for saying this? Every graph I have seen has the cases and deaths decreasing progressively and dramatically, so that each is a tiny fraction of the position in January 2021? Are you looking at, say, an increase from a couple of deaths to a couple more deaths recently and missing that a couple of months back it was in the many thousands per week - or do you have some point to make with actual data?

Just going off the news, said there was a 24% increase in cases this week. Was interested in knowing if there was any trends going on around the world as all we hear is Australia is doomed and the rest of the world will be living Covid free soon.

[Pies4shaw]

Yes, fair enough. The 7-day trends are very misleading. Deaths in the UK are "up" by a total of 18 in the week - from 41 to 59 (that's for the entire week, not per day). I'm not even sure that the change is statistically significant - you get very big percentage changes with small movements in small numbers. The drop in about 4 months (late January) from a 7-day rolling average of 1,250 deaths per day to 9 deaths per day is the thing, along with a roughly commensurate drop in the number of new cases per day (from 66,000 per day to about 3,400) and a massive drop in the total number of active cases (down from over 2,000,000 active cases on 31 January to about 66,000 today).

The scope of the UK problem was massive. The plunge has been precipitate. The figures there are still way worse (even allowing for the larger population) than they have ever been, here.

I think the genuine concern in Australia - trying to put aside the political tit-for-tat - is that until the population is generally immune, small outbreaks will continue to be of massive concern to us because of their potential reach and the havoc and death they can spark.

As for the trends, the weekly figure that you heard was just taken from the Worldometer "weekly trends" page. If you sort it by percentage change, you'll see all the other statistically meaningless changes caused by a change in deaths from, say, 1 to 5 in a week - reported as a "400% increase" which, in a narrow sense it is. Also, some countries are just very haphazard with their reporting - I see Sweden's deaths are said to be down 89% this week - but they have tended to report deaths in batches and they might just have reported fewer batches this week (I don't know - I'm just encouraging caution is using those weekly numbers). I still think that the only useful way to see the trends is to look at the graphical depictions of new cases and new deaths over time. They are on the main Worldometer pages.

Here's the two links: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ly-trends/ and
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

If it helps to say, when the "weekly trends" page was launched a few weeks ago, I had a look and decided not to report any figures from it because they are too spurious for words - that was just my view of the numbers, not mediated by any political view. If the reporting structures are too volatile, they don't give any meaningful data.

[eddiesmith]

Awesome, thanks for that P4S exactly what I was wondering

[think positive]

Had the shot, have to wait 15 min for my Lollipop

[Tannin]

Eddie may turn out to be right on this one. Stranger things have happened. (Well, probably.)

The UK is easing restrictions very quickly and the concern is that it is, one again, going too fast. Yes, the UK is doing well on vaccination but there are a lot of people still not vaccinated and a lot of Covid out there in the wild, and with social distancing restrictions coming off so fast, the risk is real. It may or may not happen, but "third wave" concerns are alive and well in the UK. One thing we can be 100% certain of is that, if there is a third wave, it will be a very small thing indeed by comparison with their first and second waves, which were terrible. Vaccination is having a huge impact and any Covid bounce-back will be fairly minor.

[Pies4shaw]

In Victoria, another 5 new local cases. Now 54 active. 43,874 test results received.

[stui magpie]

[quote="think positive"]Had the shot, have to wait 15 min for my Lollipop

[stui magpie]

In Victoria, another 5 new local cases. Now 54 active. 43,874 test results received.

6 more cases so the day's tally is now 11 with over 50 in the cluster.

[Dave The Man]

Sounds like Victoria be in Lockdown for Quite Some Time

[Pies4shaw]

^ Is that the way to count it? We've always had an evening cut-off and found out about cases during the day before they're formally reported and counted. It's not an idle question - if we call today "11" and have 5 tomorrow, it looks like things are getting better, whereas if we call today 5 and have 10 tomorrow, that's a fairer reflection of the trends. On the other hand, if we have, say, 35 tomorrow, I guess it won't matter.

[stui magpie]

I have no idea. the early advice from DoH was 5, then at the presser I gather they said we have found 6 more since then.

Either it's 11 today or it's 5 today and tomorrow starts as 6 plus whatever they find overnight.

I guess there really should be a cut off time for when numbers are counted against a particular day that is consistently applied.