8 ms·

Cambridge research team estimates 12% of England has been infected already

48 points by gwd 6y ago

gwd 6y ago
Other highlights: Death rate for under-45 is under 0.024% Look at the "Deaths incidence" tab of the graphs at the bottom to see actual deaths with the curve-fit model. EDIT: Meant to include in my initial "highlights" comment: Estimated "peak" daily infections was 23 March, with 500k infections. Estimate for daily infections as of 10 May closer to 10k; estimated country-wide Rt at 0.75, still well below 1. Bonus highlights: Method seems to be from this 2009 paper, "Bayesian modeling to unmask and predict influenza A/H1N1pdm dynamics in London": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215054/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215054/ Not equipped to evaluate their method, really; but if it's reasonably accurate, then the UK is not currently really headed towards "natural herd immunity".
- cmrx64 6y ago
  death is easy to measure quickly but the QALY impacts are not.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    As a 55 and over with a dad who's 85 and over one can excuse me for not being on the herd immunity train. I also have friends who've gotten sick and suffered impaired health. Figure the 80/20 rule. 80 people suffer impaired health for every 20 that die. We're talking about 1 in 50 having damaged health.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      The "herd immunity train" doesn't mean we should get people in high-risk categories (even 55+, let alone 85+) infected. It means we should get the lowest risk people infected, which blankets the high-risk people in coverage. Regardless of where you stand on that plan, it's worth calling out.
      - graeme 6y ago
        Not obvious this works though. 70% is herd immunity threshold when there is no epidemic. With an active epidemic it may be 95%. Here are some epidemiologists arguing that: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/sunday/coronaviru... 538 made a model to play with: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-immunity-wont-save-us/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-... So, the plan may be wrong. Proponents may have sincere but incorrect beliefs.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        Basically herd immunity overshoot is a thing and shows up both in the historical data and in all models. There is also the problem that as a virus takes years to burn through clusters of susceptible people. Currently it would take over a 100 years to achieve herd immunity in California.
        makomk 6y ago
        Note that in order for this kind of overshoot to happen, you basically have to have no social distancing whatsoever - not even voluntary changes to behaviour. If there is any then it decreases the reproductive number R further, meaning that it drops below one and the epidemic peaks before enough people have been infected to provide herd immunity after everything returns to normal, and then herd immunity is only reached during the overshoot past the peak. (As I understand it, the UK government's original plans couldn't have lead to herd immunity in the first wave without this, since they were planning on substantial measures to reduce spread even under those plans.)
      - mattmanser 6y ago
        How do you achieve that? It's already ripping through care homes because the people who work in them are unable to shield themselves and simultaneously actually go to work and do their job.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Honestly? And I'm genuinely surprised that this wasn't the first course of action: keep the staff locked in with the residents. You're either locked in at work, or you're locked in at the nursing home so it doesn't much matter does it? For what it's worth there are less drastic options. Kingston, Ontario for instance was able to avoid having even a single infection within a nursing home. [1] [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-with-an-early-focus-on-seniors-residences-kingston-has-so-far/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-with-an-early...
    - bthomas 6y ago
      That's not the 80/20 rule. There must be empirical estimates of that number.
    - cmrx64 6y ago
      I'm with you on this one, and the downvotes are peculiar to me. The death rate in the under-45 bracket doesn't matter to me and I don't know why the thread root author focused on it except as reassurance for that age range. What I was trying to call out is that even in that age range that observed death rate shouldn't be reassurance to justify going out-and-about.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Death rate for under-45 is under 0.024% The rate of death for people under 45 is very low. It's going to be more than 0.024% because: > Deaths which have COVID-19 on the death certificate are included in ONS figures but not here; we are looking into their inclusion.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    That isn’t likely to change the deaths under 45’s by much if it all as the ONS figures only a additionally include out of hospital deaths primarily form care homes and hospices in which the average age will be well above 45. If you remove comorbidities in the under 45 pool the rate drops even further for the most part if you are under 45 and healthy your chances of dying from covid-19 are exceedingly small.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      > if you are under 45 and healthy your chances of dying from covid-19 are exceedingly small. Yes, I did say that. However, > as the ONS figures only a additionally include out of hospital deaths primarily form care homes and hospices in which the average age will be well above 45 The ONS figures include all people where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate no matter where they died. Care homes isn't just elderly people, although that's a common misconception. Care homes here are using the Care Quality Commission service specification definition. This includes residential services for people with learning disability and or autism, but also other settings for children and working age adults. Care home services with nursing (CHN) Care home services without nursing (CHS) Specialist college services (SPC) NHSE+I have only just started including this table in their daily death count reports. https://twitter.com/chrishattoncedr/status/1260967567155515398?s=20 https://twitter.com/chrishattoncedr/status/12609675671555153...
      - dogma1138 6y ago
        That would be a valid conjecture if we didn’t had the ONS data already there are virtually no additional reported deaths for that age group above what PHE reports: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinapril2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... In fact even deaths under 65 only make up 11% of all COVID-19 deaths. So again the likelihood of the death rate changing in any significant manner for that specific age group due to the inclusion of the ONS data is currently about zero, for other age groups especially those above the age of 65 there would likely be some changes.
- gerdesj 6y ago
  0.024% is 9,100 people. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/august2019 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati... Figure 8 you can highlight the age group (0-45) and get a summary figure: 37,980,275 people aged 45 or less * 0.00024 = ~9,100 I'm not sure I call something like 10,000 dead a highlight.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > I'm not sure I call something like 10,000 dead a highlight. Not on an individual level of course, but on a population scale, it can be. That level would be comparable with driving, with the flu and so on for that demographic. The world will never be risk-free, and "exceeds expectations" can be a highlight even if the expectations were low.
    - gerdesj 6y ago
      The 10,000 are likely to be mostly additional deaths, over and above driving casualties, 'flu sufferers etc. We are already getting "additional death" scores here which is a sort of measure by proxy of the effect of SARS-CoV-2. There is a standard way of counting this, at least across Europe (and pre-Brexit UK!) There is of course a fair amount of variation but having COVID-19 is something to avoid if you can. It is going to take some really funky stats to work out the real effect because there is less 'flu already in say Aus due to less travel and N hemisphere residents bringing it down south as they head into autumn/winter. Air quality is up nearly everywhere so COPD might be mitigated somewhat. Less road travel means less accidents. However suicides might be up and at least here in the UK there is a fairly well documented lack of people going to A&E (ER) when they should out, of fear or being stoic. Many other treatments have been put on hold. SARS-CoV-2 has turned the world upside down. I do look for bright sides eg the huge social WFH experiment seems to be a huge success and opportunity. However, additional people are dying in rather unpleasant ways that they would not have done less than six months ago.
    - ferzul 6y ago
      isn't the all ages symptomatic ifr for flu about 0.02? and the flu is worse for the elderly. it sounds like taking the young, total infections including asymptomatic cases fatality rate and comparing that to the elderly, symptomatic ifr and saying it's good is playing with stats
martythemaniak 6y ago
Currently around 500 deaths/ million. If you need ~60% for "herd immunity", that implies they'd get around 2500/1m, or 0.25% of the population. Pretty gruesome.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  0.25% IFR is among the lowest we've seen yet, on the plus side. Lower than Gangelt @ 0.36%.
  - sathomasga 6y ago
    If I'm reading it right, they report an IFR from 0.49% to 0.81% (95% credible interval). Ballpark population of England is 50 million. Herd immunity at ~70% means over 200,000 deaths at median IFR of 0.63%. Extrapolating to US population of ~350 million is around 1.5 million deaths.
  - gwd 6y ago
    Overall IFR was estimated at 0.63%, because IFR in the 75+ bracket is [EDIT] 16%. This is definitely a deadly disease for the elderly. Seriously, click the link and look around -- there's a lot of interesting stuff to see.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- luckylion 6y ago
  Their normal death rate is ~1%, right? Are we sure that there would be little to no overlap between these groups and they'd end up with a death rate of 1.25%?
  - gwd 6y ago
    There's a ton of information to poke around at the link; but here's their [EDIT] median estimated IFR by age range: 15-24: 0.0032% 25-44: 0.018% 45-64: 0.28% 65-74: 1.8% 75+: 16% The last one looks similar to the measured death rates by age group in Germany -- i.e., the COVID-19 deaths of 80+ in Germany divided by people tested positive in Germany was around 18% when I looked before, IIRC. So nearly the entirety of the "1-3% fatality" comes from the fact that it's so incredibly deadly to the elderly.
notahacker 6y ago
Looks optimistic when large scale serological testing in Spain, which has a higher per capita death rate[1] suggest prevalence under 5%, and under 12% in the epicentre of the disease in Madrid. [1]yes, caveats apply
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Potentially, but it's not unheard of for a disease to be differently severe in different places for inscrutable reasons. (Of course, that also does suggest those of us outside of England shouldn't generalize the findings too far.)
  - makomk 6y ago
    It's not necessarily all that inscrutable either. We know that a lot of deaths are in places like nursing homes, and that measures which reduce spread amongst the general population aren't necessarily going to be as effective at preventing spread in nursing homes since those obviously have to be staffed, etc.
- vannevar 6y ago
  If you take the low end of the prevailing IFR estimates (~0.5%), the 5700-odd deaths would mean an infection rate of ~12% in London (population ~9M). If you assume 40% of deaths are not properly reported as COVID-19, that gets you to around 20%. But NYC, with a similar population, has had three times as many confirmed deaths, and antibody tests there suggest a total infection rate of 20%. LA antibody tests indicated something like 4%. I'm betting that when antibody tests are done, London will be lower than 20%, and the other areas are likely at the low end, or below, this estimate of 5-14%.
- joshuahedlund 6y ago
  Yes, it would be one thing if this was an antibody/serotological testing result and we could add it to the mix of similar studies, like the ones suggesting ~1.1% rate in Spain (with 5% infected) or ~0.8-1.0% rate in NYC (with 25% infected). But this is not empirical data; it's pure modeling.
redis_mlc 6y ago
This is interesting ... The positive rate for those tested in the Bay Area started at 10% 2 months ago, but new test in past week are under 2%: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#cases https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ca...
- Ovah 6y ago
  Without having a source to back it up, I'm guessing that a month ago tests were more scarce. So you had to have a strong clinical indication to get tested.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > Without having a source to back it up There's a bar chart in the link I provided, "Individuals Tested in the Last 40 Days." Also, it's not my job to provide you a personal corona briefing.
hanoz 6y ago
Sounds more plausible than the 50% estimate put out two months ago by Oxford.
hacker_9 6y ago
Shame we can't prove it until they start randomised testing.
- exdsq 6y ago
  I was part of a randomised testing survey in Oxfordshire which involved an antibody serology test and swab tests. Hopefully the results come out soon (I took part last week).
LatteLazy 6y ago
It would be really cool if we could confirm some of these estimates. Like maybe if we used tests? The government could run a program to test people. Then they’d know. And they wouldn't need to keep guessing. It wouldn't even need to be everyone, just an appropriate sample. Nah, fuck it, let's just keep testing MPs and guessing about what to do next.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
buboard 6y ago
As evidenced in this epidemic, epidemiological modeling is either not very good or overconfident. I mean, all models are wrong, but theirs have also been useless. Why trust a model if you can do a serology study instead?
- tree3 6y ago
  > Why trust a model if you can do a serology study instead? Because studies require a lot more time and money, while a model is just on a computer and can be constantly and quickly updated as things change?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Why trust a model if you can do a serology study instead? I think the earlier tests were pretty bad, and the newer tests are expensive, but also this kind of modelling is used for other respiratory illness deaths (flu, flu and pneumonia, rhinovirus, adenovirus) so they want to start developing the models to be used in those annual respiratory illness death reports.

48 points by gwd 6y ago

gwd 6y ago

Other highlights: Death rate for under-45 is under 0.024% Look at the "Deaths incidence" tab of the graphs at the bottom to see actual deaths with the curve-fit model. EDIT: Meant to include in my initial "highlights" comment: Estimated "peak" daily infections was 23 March, with 500k infections. Estimate for daily infections as of 10 May closer to 10k; estimated country-wide Rt at 0.75, still well below 1. Bonus highlights: Method seems to be from this 2009 paper, "Bayesian modeling to unmask and predict influenza A/H1N1pdm dynamics in London": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215054/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215054/ Not equipped to evaluate their method, really; but if it's reasonably accurate, then the UK is not currently really headed towards "natural herd immunity".

cmrx64 6y ago
death is easy to measure quickly but the QALY impacts are not.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  As a 55 and over with a dad who's 85 and over one can excuse me for not being on the herd immunity train. I also have friends who've gotten sick and suffered impaired health. Figure the 80/20 rule. 80 people suffer impaired health for every 20 that die. We're talking about 1 in 50 having damaged health.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    The "herd immunity train" doesn't mean we should get people in high-risk categories (even 55+, let alone 85+) infected. It means we should get the lowest risk people infected, which blankets the high-risk people in coverage. Regardless of where you stand on that plan, it's worth calling out.
    - graeme 6y ago
      Not obvious this works though. 70% is herd immunity threshold when there is no epidemic. With an active epidemic it may be 95%. Here are some epidemiologists arguing that: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/sunday/coronaviru... 538 made a model to play with: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-immunity-wont-save-us/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-... So, the plan may be wrong. Proponents may have sincere but incorrect beliefs.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        Basically herd immunity overshoot is a thing and shows up both in the historical data and in all models. There is also the problem that as a virus takes years to burn through clusters of susceptible people. Currently it would take over a 100 years to achieve herd immunity in California.
      - makomk 6y ago
        Note that in order for this kind of overshoot to happen, you basically have to have no social distancing whatsoever - not even voluntary changes to behaviour. If there is any then it decreases the reproductive number R further, meaning that it drops below one and the epidemic peaks before enough people have been infected to provide herd immunity after everything returns to normal, and then herd immunity is only reached during the overshoot past the peak. (As I understand it, the UK government's original plans couldn't have lead to herd immunity in the first wave without this, since they were planning on substantial measures to reduce spread even under those plans.)
    - mattmanser 6y ago
      How do you achieve that? It's already ripping through care homes because the people who work in them are unable to shield themselves and simultaneously actually go to work and do their job.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Honestly? And I'm genuinely surprised that this wasn't the first course of action: keep the staff locked in with the residents. You're either locked in at work, or you're locked in at the nursing home so it doesn't much matter does it? For what it's worth there are less drastic options. Kingston, Ontario for instance was able to avoid having even a single infection within a nursing home. [1] [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-with-an-early-focus-on-seniors-residences-kingston-has-so-far/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-with-an-early...
  - bthomas 6y ago
    That's not the 80/20 rule. There must be empirical estimates of that number.
  - cmrx64 6y ago
    I'm with you on this one, and the downvotes are peculiar to me. The death rate in the under-45 bracket doesn't matter to me and I don't know why the thread root author focused on it except as reassurance for that age range. What I was trying to call out is that even in that age range that observed death rate shouldn't be reassurance to justify going out-and-about.
DanBC 6y ago
> Death rate for under-45 is under 0.024% The rate of death for people under 45 is very low. It's going to be more than 0.024% because: > Deaths which have COVID-19 on the death certificate are included in ONS figures but not here; we are looking into their inclusion.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  That isn’t likely to change the deaths under 45’s by much if it all as the ONS figures only a additionally include out of hospital deaths primarily form care homes and hospices in which the average age will be well above 45. If you remove comorbidities in the under 45 pool the rate drops even further for the most part if you are under 45 and healthy your chances of dying from covid-19 are exceedingly small.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > if you are under 45 and healthy your chances of dying from covid-19 are exceedingly small. Yes, I did say that. However, > as the ONS figures only a additionally include out of hospital deaths primarily form care homes and hospices in which the average age will be well above 45 The ONS figures include all people where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate no matter where they died. Care homes isn't just elderly people, although that's a common misconception. Care homes here are using the Care Quality Commission service specification definition. This includes residential services for people with learning disability and or autism, but also other settings for children and working age adults. Care home services with nursing (CHN) Care home services without nursing (CHS) Specialist college services (SPC) NHSE+I have only just started including this table in their daily death count reports. https://twitter.com/chrishattoncedr/status/1260967567155515398?s=20 https://twitter.com/chrishattoncedr/status/12609675671555153...
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      That would be a valid conjecture if we didn’t had the ONS data already there are virtually no additional reported deaths for that age group above what PHE reports: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinapril2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... In fact even deaths under 65 only make up 11% of all COVID-19 deaths. So again the likelihood of the death rate changing in any significant manner for that specific age group due to the inclusion of the ONS data is currently about zero, for other age groups especially those above the age of 65 there would likely be some changes.
gerdesj 6y ago
0.024% is 9,100 people. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/august2019 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati... Figure 8 you can highlight the age group (0-45) and get a summary figure: 37,980,275 people aged 45 or less * 0.00024 = ~9,100 I'm not sure I call something like 10,000 dead a highlight.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > I'm not sure I call something like 10,000 dead a highlight. Not on an individual level of course, but on a population scale, it can be. That level would be comparable with driving, with the flu and so on for that demographic. The world will never be risk-free, and "exceeds expectations" can be a highlight even if the expectations were low.
  - gerdesj 6y ago
    The 10,000 are likely to be mostly additional deaths, over and above driving casualties, 'flu sufferers etc. We are already getting "additional death" scores here which is a sort of measure by proxy of the effect of SARS-CoV-2. There is a standard way of counting this, at least across Europe (and pre-Brexit UK!) There is of course a fair amount of variation but having COVID-19 is something to avoid if you can. It is going to take some really funky stats to work out the real effect because there is less 'flu already in say Aus due to less travel and N hemisphere residents bringing it down south as they head into autumn/winter. Air quality is up nearly everywhere so COPD might be mitigated somewhat. Less road travel means less accidents. However suicides might be up and at least here in the UK there is a fairly well documented lack of people going to A&E (ER) when they should out, of fear or being stoic. Many other treatments have been put on hold. SARS-CoV-2 has turned the world upside down. I do look for bright sides eg the huge social WFH experiment seems to be a huge success and opportunity. However, additional people are dying in rather unpleasant ways that they would not have done less than six months ago.
  - ferzul 6y ago
    isn't the all ages symptomatic ifr for flu about 0.02? and the flu is worse for the elderly. it sounds like taking the young, total infections including asymptomatic cases fatality rate and comparing that to the elderly, symptomatic ifr and saying it's good is playing with stats

martythemaniak 6y ago

Currently around 500 deaths/ million. If you need ~60% for "herd immunity", that implies they'd get around 2500/1m, or 0.25% of the population. Pretty gruesome.

arcticbull 6y ago
0.25% IFR is among the lowest we've seen yet, on the plus side. Lower than Gangelt @ 0.36%.
- sathomasga 6y ago
  If I'm reading it right, they report an IFR from 0.49% to 0.81% (95% credible interval). Ballpark population of England is 50 million. Herd immunity at ~70% means over 200,000 deaths at median IFR of 0.63%. Extrapolating to US population of ~350 million is around 1.5 million deaths.
- gwd 6y ago
  Overall IFR was estimated at 0.63%, because IFR in the 75+ bracket is [EDIT] 16%. This is definitely a deadly disease for the elderly. Seriously, click the link and look around -- there's a lot of interesting stuff to see.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
luckylion 6y ago
Their normal death rate is ~1%, right? Are we sure that there would be little to no overlap between these groups and they'd end up with a death rate of 1.25%?
- gwd 6y ago
  There's a ton of information to poke around at the link; but here's their [EDIT] median estimated IFR by age range: 15-24: 0.0032% 25-44: 0.018% 45-64: 0.28% 65-74: 1.8% 75+: 16% The last one looks similar to the measured death rates by age group in Germany -- i.e., the COVID-19 deaths of 80+ in Germany divided by people tested positive in Germany was around 18% when I looked before, IIRC. So nearly the entirety of the "1-3% fatality" comes from the fact that it's so incredibly deadly to the elderly.

notahacker 6y ago

Looks optimistic when large scale serological testing in Spain, which has a higher per capita death rate[1] suggest prevalence under 5%, and under 12% in the epicentre of the disease in Madrid. [1]yes, caveats apply

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Potentially, but it's not unheard of for a disease to be differently severe in different places for inscrutable reasons. (Of course, that also does suggest those of us outside of England shouldn't generalize the findings too far.)
- makomk 6y ago
  It's not necessarily all that inscrutable either. We know that a lot of deaths are in places like nursing homes, and that measures which reduce spread amongst the general population aren't necessarily going to be as effective at preventing spread in nursing homes since those obviously have to be staffed, etc.
vannevar 6y ago
If you take the low end of the prevailing IFR estimates (~0.5%), the 5700-odd deaths would mean an infection rate of ~12% in London (population ~9M). If you assume 40% of deaths are not properly reported as COVID-19, that gets you to around 20%. But NYC, with a similar population, has had three times as many confirmed deaths, and antibody tests there suggest a total infection rate of 20%. LA antibody tests indicated something like 4%. I'm betting that when antibody tests are done, London will be lower than 20%, and the other areas are likely at the low end, or below, this estimate of 5-14%.
joshuahedlund 6y ago
Yes, it would be one thing if this was an antibody/serotological testing result and we could add it to the mix of similar studies, like the ones suggesting ~1.1% rate in Spain (with 5% infected) or ~0.8-1.0% rate in NYC (with 25% infected). But this is not empirical data; it's pure modeling.

redis_mlc 6y ago

This is interesting ... The positive rate for those tested in the Bay Area started at 10% 2 months ago, but new test in past week are under 2%: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#cases https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ca...

Ovah 6y ago
Without having a source to back it up, I'm guessing that a month ago tests were more scarce. So you had to have a strong clinical indication to get tested.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > Without having a source to back it up There's a bar chart in the link I provided, "Individuals Tested in the Last 40 Days." Also, it's not my job to provide you a personal corona briefing.

hanoz 6y ago

Sounds more plausible than the 50% estimate put out two months ago by Oxford.

hacker_9 6y ago

Shame we can't prove it until they start randomised testing.

exdsq 6y ago
I was part of a randomised testing survey in Oxfordshire which involved an antibody serology test and swab tests. Hopefully the results come out soon (I took part last week).

LatteLazy 6y ago

It would be really cool if we could confirm some of these estimates. Like maybe if we used tests? The government could run a program to test people. Then they’d know. And they wouldn't need to keep guessing. It wouldn't even need to be everyone, just an appropriate sample. Nah, fuck it, let's just keep testing MPs and guessing about what to do next.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

buboard 6y ago

As evidenced in this epidemic, epidemiological modeling is either not very good or overconfident. I mean, all models are wrong, but theirs have also been useless. Why trust a model if you can do a serology study instead?

tree3 6y ago
> Why trust a model if you can do a serology study instead? Because studies require a lot more time and money, while a model is just on a computer and can be constantly and quickly updated as things change?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
DanBC 6y ago
> Why trust a model if you can do a serology study instead? I think the earlier tests were pretty bad, and the newer tests are expensive, but also this kind of modelling is used for other respiratory illness deaths (flu, flu and pneumonia, rhinovirus, adenovirus) so they want to start developing the models to be used in those annual respiratory illness death reports.