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How long before Coronavirus impacts Football?

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Big Cat said:
Can you cite this? Everything I've read has it lower than that
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Yeah, and with "experts" saying the real infection could be from 7 times (Iran) to 10 times (US) to 100+ times (Indonesia) recorded cases, the R numbers would appear to be guesswork at this point.
 
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Conflating figures.

Those "PHE" figures I can't find anywhere. Not even on the Gov.uk website. ;)

Here's another (and I suspect) more accurate source. :)
 
Kes said:
Conflating figures.

Those "PHE" figures I can't find anywhere. Not even on the Gov.uk website. ;)

Here's another (and I suspect) more accurate source. :)
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Yeah there's something odd between the 28k for 2014-15 and:
"In the UK an average of 600 people a year die from complications of seasonal flu. However in 2013-14, it is estimated that about 11,000 people died from flu-related causes."

Especially odd considering say this, which basically says "don't trust any of the govt sources"!
 
Big Cat said:
Can you cite this? Everything I've read has it lower than that

The BBC are keeping up their usual propaganda efforts by showing footage of every individual in hospital from the low risk age groups
Scaring people into distancing compliance. The fatality rate of under-50's is extremely low on a downward exponential scale

The rhetoric from Government has changed somewhat. Boris is starting to leak bits and pieces. It seems they're targeting total suppression (zero cases) and 20000 deaths in this first wave. Followed up by tactics published widely (e.g. The Lancet) to avoid or rapidly suppress secondary outbreaks using various tactics without having to go back to lock-down

The problem with the 'do nothing' approach, is once we're on that rollercoaster, we ain't getting off

The problem with 'mitigation' is 'suppression' quickly becomes out of reach. The good thing about 'suppression', is if it fails, it's a very good head-start WRT 'mitigation'

It still seems like there's very little account being taken of the consequences
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I'm in close contact with colleagues and friends in two of the worst hit areas in the world, Milan and Madrid where the deaths are climbing at a rapid rate.

Whilst there are a high proportion of people dying who are in the "vulnerable" category, there are an increasing number that are not in those categories that are dying from it.

There are also reports of larger numbers of people not in this "vulnerable" group needing more advanced medical treatment such as critical care beds or ventilation.

The point is that no one knows why some people get it worse than other, why it's lethal for some and others are completely asymptomatic. That will come with time and research.

And we are only at the start of this, we're 3 months or so in globally right now and learning more about it and how to combat it every day.
 
Crickey!
I've gone from the City scandal and Liverpool possibly picking up two League trophies this season to the possibility of another humungous slip up!
(I'm aware this is steps below but the same logic will surely get applied above if legit).

In the meantime, here's a thought from Facebook, specifically related to the austerity policies of recent govts:


"...the *actual* danger of the epidemic is less about the virus, and more about the fact that health services don't have the extra capacity. It's easier for govts to blame the virus rather than explain that they failed to plan for something like this, despite knowing about it. I don't know how much this is going to end up costing, but a lot more than 40 fu*king hospitals that's for sure"
 
Latest estimate from Imperial is that unchecked this virus would kill 40 million people worldwide.

Interesting article on Spanish flu I caught today :
"Additionally, hospitals in some areas were so overloaded with flu patients that schools, private homes and other buildings had to be converted into makeshift hospitals, some of which were staffed by medical students.
Officials in some communities imposed quarantines, ordered citizens to wear masks and shut down public places, including schools, churches and theaters. People were advised to avoid shaking hands and to stay indoors"

Sounds familiar
 
Big Cat said:
Can you cite this? Everything I've read has it lower than that
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Well for starters, see the video in post #237. It's also a figure cited by the Imperial College study:
On the basis of the observed three-day doubling time in the incidence of deaths across Europe, we here use a central estimate of R0 to 3.0 and investigate scenarios with R0 between 2.4 and 3.3.
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However, as that quote also mentions, there's a possible range of numbers - as another study points out:
It’s important to realize that both the basic and effective R0 are situation-dependent. It’s affected by the properties of the pathogen, such as how infectious it is. It’s affected by the host population – for instance, how susceptible people are due to nutritional status or other illnesses that may compromise one’s immune system. And it’s affected by the environment, including things like demographics, socioeconomic and climatic factors.
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Kes said:
I'd be interested to know your source for those figures mate. ;)

The ones you've given suggest an average annual death toll (for England) of around 3000.
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The 17,000 figure for average annual flu deaths in England comes from the official figures published by Public Health England.
Public Health England estimates that on average 17,000 people have died from the flu in England annually between 2014/15 and 2018/19.
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Coronavirus & Influenza

Here's a link to a page with the annual flu reports for the last several years in .pdf format - these give the 17,000 figure that you are asking about.

PHE Annual Flu Reports

There's also info about the surveillance methods used and the algorithms used to calculate the estimates.
 
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What's the difference between "associated with" and "cause by"? I suspected if the changed the wording to "caused by" those numbers will drop dramatically.
 
The thing is, there are no definitive numbers of how many people died from flu - in any country. All over the world, the numbers are estimates based on an algorithm. That's because flu is not a notifiable disease, so it's not required to be reported, either when sometime gets it or when they die of flu-associated illness.

As a report into flu mortality by several infectious disease specialist says, deaths from flu are not necessarily reported and so they have to be estimated.
Although mortality data is available in England and Wales with primary cause of death, underreporting of influenza-related deaths is common – either influenza infection is not diagnosed by the clinician or, if influenza is detected, a secondary complication resulting in mortality might be reported rather than the infection. Therefore statistical modelling is needed to indirectly estimate the population-level burden due to influenza and adjust for other factors which temporally coincide with influenza and impact on mortality ...
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Mortality attributable to flu in England & Wales
 
That's sort of my point. That's why those figures from PHE are in my view "inflated" because they just show deaths in which people died from "influenza-related" symptoms. Exactly how measurable is that? And in point of fact, if as those figures show, there have been nearly 90,000 UK deaths from "flu" in the past 6 years, then why would the Oxford University site I linked to state that it kills around 600 people a year on average. The two figures aren't even close. :wtf:
 
I'm not sure why you think the PHE figures are "inflated" - they're based on an algorithm that was developed over many years to try to provide a realistic estimate of how much excess mortality is caused by the flu, each year. The system used is called FluMoMo and is itself derived from the EuroMoMo model. I don't know what that figure of 600 is based on - because the Oxford site it comes from provides no details of what methodology was used to arrive at that figure. It's so low though, that I suspect it's based on the number of death certificates that list flu as the cause of death - known as "cause-specific data."

However, as the scientific research paper linked to below puts it:

Infection with the influenza virus may often lead to exacerbation of underlying chronic conditions or to secondary bacterial infections.
Therefore, influenza is often not recorded as the primary cause of death, and using cause-specific data as an outcome may lead to underestimation of influenza-associated mortality.
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The FluMoMo model

The paper on that link provides full and exhaustive details including the underlying assumptions and mathematical formulas that guide how the EuroMoMo/FluMoMo model works but the basic idea is this:

Since 2009, the network for European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action (EuroMOMO) has monitored weekly excess all-cause mortality.
[...]
Within the EuroMOMO network, we developed a model to estimate influenza-associated mortality based on influenza activity in the population while controlling for extreme ambient temperatures, the FluMOMO model.
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If you have anything showing how the Oxford site arrives at their figure, I'd be interested to see it, so we can compare their methodology.
 
Anyone else think we've strayed into another one of Peter's areas of expertise? I am genuinely impressed.

What other areas of expertise do we have on this forum.

Now if anyone wants to discuss GCSE Maths, I'll be over here.
 
However many influenza deaths - and however indirect they are - in a "normal" year - it's still pretty clear that the NHS (and others in most other countries) has been woefully underprepared, underfunded and has been sailing very close to the wind with resources. Depending on your politics, in the UK it's pretty easy to establish why (in my opinion, giving billions to banks, not taxing highly profitable technology companies, and then hobbling public services while attempting to privatise, plus the power of commercial interest lobbyists in govt decisions are all factors).

We are now in a place where a lot of people are clapping for the NHS when they've spent years voting against it. With a backdrop of unnecessary deaths. Fingers crossed we don't start to see the numbers of doctor deaths as seen in Italy. We have to get through this. But I think it's also healthy to look at the big decisions that got us here and what big decisions will be made differently in future - NHS resources, secure care for the elderly, personal transport and climate change, import/export of goods and climate change, consumption of digital services and taxation, digitisation of education (why, who owns the tools, who pays, benefits) etc.
 
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