Stats update…Time for a review.
In response to a few friends asking, I’ve been suggesting on here how Covid might go – since 4 March. Hope you’ve found it helpful amid the noise. No claims of perfection! So it’s time for a review. Maybe it makes you think about how your world and perception has changed since then too.
Of course, many of you will think Covid is being taken too seriously, and many will think not enough. These two large camps can argue that between themselves elsewhere! I feel sorry for the politicians (flawed but we collectively elected them) in the middle being hit by both sides and threatened with future criminal action by baying mobs whichever way they go. You try! But then we are in the ‘Blame’ stage of Change (and I predict that gets worse before it gets better), and hindsight as they say, has 20/20 vision. Am I critical in some areas? Yes, but I’m imperfect (extremely!) myself. ‘Judge ye not…’ and all that.
First mention of Covid was 4 March – Table Tennis England float the idea of not shaking hands at end of table tennis matches. I agreed, saying it was a ‘serious’ point.
6 March: Bought Genesis tickets. Couldn’t have been that worried about lockdown by December! Hmmm…didn’t account for social distancing though!
18 March: Shared Imperial College research and the ‘power of social distancing’…
19 March: (40 fatalities that day). “We are heading for a rapid and sustained increase in deaths. Maybe 1248 on 2 April without lockdown”. This was having been confidently told by a ‘don’t take it so seriously’ expert type that lockdown would be over by 2 April. It was 569 on 2 April. ‘Bout right in an exponential situation. In hindsight the 569 didn’t include Care Home fatalities at the time. It took another week for official figures to get to a sad 1000 a day.
30 March (7 days after lockdown): “Fatalities mid-April will still not be falling”. They weren’t, but thank goodness they stayed around 1000 and didn’t go to the many thousands per day that I predicted was likely without lockdown, or with lockdown too late. Agree with the policy or not, but if the goal was to accept that total starvation of the virus was not feasible in our society (probably true, sadly) and so to time lockdown to get to NHS capacity but not exceed it, the timing of lockdown was spot on, except for a nasty PPE distribution crisis.
31 March: “New Moderate/Severe cases per day tops out at 4-6,000 at 4-6 April if lockdown reasonable.” This has been a good estimate, and has held well after previous consistent sharp rises but is not falling as soon as predicted – I said by towards end April. I think incubation periods are longer than I thought (this makes forecasting and hence de-lock policy harder to time correctly). Plus I think we had more ‘2nd-generation’ infections in homes after lockdown as families huddled and cross-infected each other (not a bad policy but inevitable short-term issue). Think I underestimated that. Also inevitably some types don’t lock down properly, so this makes me worry that the virus continues to be more infectious than we think upon de-lock.
15 April: Calculation that CV19 far deadlier than flu, even accounting for over-stating numbers dying ‘with’ CV19 not necessarily ‘from’ CV19. Now from the figures that I can see, it’s dangerous for old/vulnerable, but also about as deadly for middle-aged people as flu is for old/vulnerable people. So not nice. Against this we have to balance increased future fatalities from other causes, caused by our lockdown or bad/reduced data. That’s for another policy conversation but very important.
I guessed that 1.5m-4m people have been infected by now in UK and recovered. So still a long way to go. I hope more have had it (I reckon 100k per day who dont need hospital with lockdown-lite) and are now immune. Data on this is still poor at this stage. So we can’t bank on that.
15 April: Countries without large cities (eg Sweden) have an option of no lockdown. I stick by this and I now think this is even more true for some USA states and for many rural countries that have good communications, education and social cohesion. Its a voluntary and cultural form of social distancing. But would never have worked in large cities with so many naysayers around. Democracy, eh?!
16 April: Among others, my cousin (50 yr old female bodybuilding champion and NHS nurse) recovers slowly from v bad CV19. It’s not at all like flu. Their husband also gets it, plus many friends around the country. Not all the older ones my friends know personally have survived, though many have.
So that’s my stats story so far.
I hope you are well and managing, and can enjoy the next two weeks of lockdown before de-lock is even considered.
When we emerge, it will only be the end of the beginning…
Next? Well at this stage, its dangerous growth is temporarily halted – good. Expect little new data/policy from the government right now. They will be holding lockdown in place as far as they can for another two weeks (they know they can’t hold it forever – socially or economically) and playing desperately for time to put things in place (PPE supply chains etc, temporary mortuaries etc). And to learn about this thing (and our behaviour!) from a medical-social point of view – commissioning and receiving an increasing range reports on national differences explanations, reliability of testing (I’m not confident in this yet – for both current and historical cases), infectiousness, transmission methods, social cohesion models, vaccination accelerations, better treatments, effects of lockdown release at various stages. It is the chaos stage internally as tons of ideas and activities need collating and integrating, before a clear next government policy emerges. They will need to integrate several elements – medical, statistical, social, political, economic and technological. But buying time not only improves your chances of getting ahead of the game, it also means you give yourself more chance of getting lucky. For example, optimistically, we may find nature helps us – sunlight or warmer temperatures would be a nice killer of the virus. But until we have something we can rely on….Enjoy (manage) the next two weeks.
Good luck. Take care of people. It’s been rocky and more rocks to come.