Coronavirus

[french frank]

We can only hope that business is spared the worst lockdown excesses, and that not too much extra collateral damage to physical and mental health is done.

Business v Public Health: which takes precedence?

[Simon B]

Out of control is not necessarily the same as R being over 1.

Only if it is heading for less than 1. If (R greater than 1 and no mitigation to force it less than 1) the only thing that will stop the epidemic is when everyone is either dead or has had it, survived and developed (possibly non-existent) lasting immunity. At which point (R less than 1) so this argument is circular anyway.

Define "Under Control" in light of this basic inalienable truth.

Believe me, I have "skin in the game". I have spent the last 8 months trying to shield an elderly relative from Covid. She had a stroke in September. She ended up in a stroke unit which recently had a Covid outbreak and was thus discharged in an (IMO) premature and disorderly manner due to an impossible tradeoff between mortal risks.

On top of consequently suddenly becoming a carer, I am at risk of losing my job and entire income due to both this and Covid. Everything else that constitutes what I used to call "my life" has been destroyed temporarily if not permanently (live music/opera/ballet etc) by Covid and/or govt incompetence. [Clearly, the govt is incompetent but even competent administrators cannot square circles].

Clearly, I can see both sides and am getting clubbed around the head by the consequences of each on a seemingly daily basis.

Apart from that, it's all going brilliantly.

None of this however changes the immutable laws of mathematics in the slightest.

[Simon B]

Business v Public Health: which takes precedence?

That's a secondary question. The first is, are they divisible? IMO answer : No.

[Dave2002]

Out of control is not necessarily the same as R being over 1.

It probably is ... but of course R numbers are averages over a region and "only" estimates.
Even R less than one isn't necessarily good but it is better.

Wales appears to have the lowest R values right now - well actually not sure - a few weeks ago - keep reading.

Scotland's estimated R number is between 1.1 and 1.4. In Wales the number is thought to be between 0.7 and 1.2 - while in Northern Ireland it is about 1.2. In England, the highest estimated R rate is in the South West, where it is between 0.9 and 1.6 - and also in the Midlands and North West, where the rates are between 1.2 and 1.5.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52....2%20and%201.5.

However, I can't find the very latest values for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland without a lot of digging around. This article dates from October 1st.

England does provide quite detailed and updated values at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk updated October 30th.

Unfortunately the same page refers to web pages from the devolved countries which are either very much out of date, or have so much other data/information, that getting a simple handle on R - something which is used as an indicator, but clearly not everyone understands.

The links from the UK Government site from the England page are as below:

NI link: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/news/r-number-covid-19 linked page seems to date from 11th June, so now very out of date
Scotland link: https://www.gov.scot/publications/?t...nalysis&page=1 updated recently - too much detail - no simple answer
Wales link: https://gov.wales/advice-coronavirus...-advisory-cell updated recently - too much detail - no simple answer

The other thing which may not be generally appreciated is that whatever the value of R, the behaviour is exponential - though the rates may vary. Exponential with R values above 1 is not good, and IIRC it's not only the rate which is exponential, but also the acceleration in rate, and the acceleration in acceleration etc. The derivative of e^x is e^x, as is also the integral. However, I've omitted the constant in that "explanation".

One reason why things may not be going quite as expected is because of modelling assumptions. The first cut at modelling shows exponential behaviour, but the biology and other factors may modify the real behaviour, so that it may not be quite exponential for all time - hopefully not with a positive R value.

[french frank]

That's a secondary question. The first is, are they divisible? IMO answer : No.

I'm not sure of the relevance of divisibility here. The portions of team's post which I highlighted and was querying was the (seeming) assertion that businesses (all businesses?) must be considered first and any downside from 'sparing them the worst' was 'collateral damage'.

[Simon B]

I'm not sure of the relevance of divisibility here. The portions of team's post which I highlighted and was querying was the (seeming) assertion that businesses (all businesses?) must be considered first and any downside from 'sparing them the worst' was 'collateral damage'.

Fair point. Taking the question on its own terms though, the two are broadly mutually interdependent - at risk of stating the obvious.

[Bryn]

In case this has not had attention drawn to it here, as yet:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-nurse-death-world-war-one-ww1-b1448185.html

[teamsaint]

I'm not sure of the relevance of divisibility here. The portions of team's post which I highlighted and was querying was the (seeming) assertion that businesses (all businesses?) must be considered first and any downside from 'sparing them the worst' was 'collateral damage'.

That certainly wasn't my intended effect FF.
The necessity of reducing the level of covid infections is a given, and I am assuming that it is for forum members.

IMO far too little coverage has been given in the media, to collateral damage, including the knock on effects for employees that failing and struggling businesses have. I suspect the same lack of emphasis is true as regards inputs into government. As Simon B says, these issues are not divisible.
Best not to start on issues of freedoms and rights.....

[Dave2002]

Referring to the UK government site, which states a current growth rate of between 2-4% one can do approximate - but possibly meaningless (!!) calculations.

This page shows the daily rate of infections - which currently seems to be around 20-25000 per day - https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZ...rday+in+the+UK

If each of these is allowed to be unchecked by any measure, then assuming the growth rate of 4% (max current estimate) one can do very simple and crude estimates:

Starting point 20,000 people.

10 days: 20000*1.04^10=29,600
20 days: 20000* 1.04^20=43820
50 days: 20000* 1.04^20=142130
100 days: 20000*1.04^100=1,010090
200 days: 20000* 1.04^100=51,101499
300 days: 20000* 1.04^100>2570 million

The growth rate may (will) of course change - and who knows how it'll adapt.
The death rate may also change - depending on who gets infected and how they're treated.

Oh - yes - there is a flaw in the above - also - what is the starting value? Is it just the 20,000 or so people estimated from yesterday, or is it 10 or 20 times that, depending on how many people over the last few weeks who have had the virus were still infectious? Do we need to integrate over the people ... Maybe!

Over to you - and the public health officials who are working on better models than this, and trying to keep things under control.

[Simon B]

...one can do approximate - but possibly meaningless (!!) calculations...

Not directed at anyone around here, but:

One of the things that has staggered me through this whole business is how many people in the UK seem to be incapable of understanding exponential growth. Or worse, do a fingers-in-ears la-la-la kind of reaction to it. Or worse still, make like it is some kind of pseudo-scientific conspiracy designed to dupe them.

I can understand that many won't be able to intuit e^x or deal with it mathematically - particularly in a country which seems to wear being as thick as porcine excrement re STEM as a badge of pride.

But when someone draws pictograms of 2 people each infecting 2, these 4 infecting 8 and then rapidly heading for 67,108,864 and people still going "...nope..." in response... I find myself for the first time having some sympathy with those who advocate things like "IQ test for the vote".

Further, If I encounter one more person going on about Ferguson's 500k deaths prediction diverging from the outcome (so far) while ignoring the bit about "if we do nothing" as though this is anything other than asinine... Basic logic and integrity in argument seems to have become beyond great swathes of people. Very depressing.

[french frank]

That certainly wasn't my intended effect FF.

I stand corrected, team

[teamsaint]

I stand corrected, team

Oh dear, now I'm really worried !!

And back to the serious stuff, today's numbers on cases, though undoubtedly very concerning and way too high, just don't look to be what I would describe as " out of control" . They look to me as if we are approaching what we were told earlier in the week was a " Lampshade " shape plateau.

Any chance of some parliamentary scrutiny , accountability, whatever it was we used to call these things ?

[french frank]

Any chance of some parliamentary scrutiny , accountability, whatever it was we used to call these things ?

No, I don't think so. :-|

[Dave2002]

Not directed at anyone around here, but:

One of the things that has staggered me through this whole business is how many people in the UK seem to be incapable of understanding exponential growth. Or worse, do a fingers-in-ears la-la-la kind of reaction to it. Or worse still, make like it is some kind of pseudo-scientific conspiracy designed to dupe them.

People who haven't perhaps heard about the grains on a chessboard story. One grain (of wheat, barley, whatever ...) on square one, two grains on square two etc. Not too bad, is it? Only 1024 grains on square 10 - still not too bad, and around 1 million on square 20 - starging to get difficult ..., and so on ......

The hope is that the model which predicts exponential growth is not sufficiently accurate to represent the reality which emerges. There is nothing incorrect about exponential growth - if that is the reality.

[Dave2002]

Correction to back of envelope calculations above - today's briefing suggested an infection rate of 50,000 per day - rather more than the 20,000 used in msg 4221. Go figure what effect that will have.

It was a somewhat bleak broadcast, but some things are perhaps better than earlier. No restrictions in England on outdoor exercise. The data presented was I thought quite impressive - a lot of data gathering and analysis has been going on.