4 ms·

Note that this is specific to the UK. In other European countries like Spain, death rates have been rising (with a few weeks lag from case rates). They just are

by ummonk 6y ago

Note that this is specific to the UK. In other European countries like Spain, death rates have been rising (with a few weeks lag from case rates). They just are nowhere near the first wave, when death rates were more than 10x what they are now but case rates were lower than today and because of severe under-testing.

pier25 6y ago
Death rates on the first wave were a lot more than 10x https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/
- kmonsen 6y ago
  holy shit that page shows that the US is an anomaly compared to all countries it is normal to compare to. It doesn't help that it is gigantic country where it is hard to limit internal travel, but still we are doing something wrong here.
  - glofish 6y ago
    not sure what you mean by anomaly, US looks a lot like Sweden, a country that looks like will be faring the best counter-intuitive as it may sound today, US might just end up the country that did really well. Most large countries are simply not measuring/admitting the real number of cases.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      This is false, if you look at expected deaths the US is sky high while all of Europe is under control. If we don't get vaccine then sure all countries might eventually end up the same, but Europe is largely back to normal living with kids back at school with almost no cases. In the US we still have lockdowns and no control at all.
      - Fjolsvith 6y ago
        >This is false, if you look at expected deaths So, would it be true if you looked at recorded deaths? After all, at the beginning of the pandemic they were expecting millions of deaths in the US.
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        At the beginning of the pandemic, there was less information on the nature and pathology of the disease, as well as how well governments and people would be able to adapt new behaviors to contain it. With updated information, we can narrow the expectations between the most optimistic and pessimistic models, but recorded deaths will always be a lagging indicator. As of right now, the fivethirtyeight summary (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts) has a spread in the US between 231,000 Americans dead by Oct. 17 (IHME) and 205,000 dead by Oct 17 (Los Alamos). What has changed since the disease started is the death curve has gone from exponential to linear (thank goodness), which is likely due to public health controls having an effect (we can guess this because the curve linearized around mid-April, which is about a month after California began treating the disease as an emergency and 2 weeks after New York followed suit). As it stands, it'd take over a decade to reach a million US deaths, assuming nothing changes (i.e. assuming people continue to avoid unnecessary contact and travel and protect their respiration); had the curve stayed exponential, it would have taken under a year.
      - sojournerc 6y ago
        Depends on where in the US. There is no nationwide policy. My nephews in Colorado are back at school half time...
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        There's also the risk of hospital saturation; even if we don't get a vaccine, countries that manage to slow the spread and diminish the effective R0 enough that their hospital capacity remains unsaturated will have more survivors than countries that don't. The disease is 99+% survivable with optimal medical care during the worst phase of it and significantly less survivable without it.
    - ragazzina 6y ago
      How can you say this when the US are in the top 10 countries by deaths/population?
      - Viliam1234 6y ago
        Sweden has always been near the top 10 (currently 13th; to give some context, Italy is 12th) and somehow the myth of "Sweden is magically successful at fighting COVID-19" refuses to die. If having 1 in 1730 people die is such a huge success, I suppose having 1 in 1690 die is okay, too. (To avoid misunderstanding, no, I don't think any of these numbers is okay. Many developed countries have an order of magnitude better results.)
  - anamax 6y ago
    It's useful to split the US into two pieces - NYC/NJ/CT/MA and the rest of the country. Death rates are roughly similar within those two groups yet very different between those two groups. (The "hotspots" outside the NYC group seem to be largely driven by travel from NYC.)

by ummonk 6y ago

pier25 6y ago

Death rates on the first wave were a lot more than 10x https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/

kmonsen 6y ago
holy shit that page shows that the US is an anomaly compared to all countries it is normal to compare to. It doesn't help that it is gigantic country where it is hard to limit internal travel, but still we are doing something wrong here.
- glofish 6y ago
  not sure what you mean by anomaly, US looks a lot like Sweden, a country that looks like will be faring the best counter-intuitive as it may sound today, US might just end up the country that did really well. Most large countries are simply not measuring/admitting the real number of cases.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    This is false, if you look at expected deaths the US is sky high while all of Europe is under control. If we don't get vaccine then sure all countries might eventually end up the same, but Europe is largely back to normal living with kids back at school with almost no cases. In the US we still have lockdowns and no control at all.
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      >This is false, if you look at expected deaths So, would it be true if you looked at recorded deaths? After all, at the beginning of the pandemic they were expecting millions of deaths in the US.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        At the beginning of the pandemic, there was less information on the nature and pathology of the disease, as well as how well governments and people would be able to adapt new behaviors to contain it. With updated information, we can narrow the expectations between the most optimistic and pessimistic models, but recorded deaths will always be a lagging indicator. As of right now, the fivethirtyeight summary (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts) has a spread in the US between 231,000 Americans dead by Oct. 17 (IHME) and 205,000 dead by Oct 17 (Los Alamos). What has changed since the disease started is the death curve has gone from exponential to linear (thank goodness), which is likely due to public health controls having an effect (we can guess this because the curve linearized around mid-April, which is about a month after California began treating the disease as an emergency and 2 weeks after New York followed suit). As it stands, it'd take over a decade to reach a million US deaths, assuming nothing changes (i.e. assuming people continue to avoid unnecessary contact and travel and protect their respiration); had the curve stayed exponential, it would have taken under a year.
    - sojournerc 6y ago
      Depends on where in the US. There is no nationwide policy. My nephews in Colorado are back at school half time...
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      There's also the risk of hospital saturation; even if we don't get a vaccine, countries that manage to slow the spread and diminish the effective R0 enough that their hospital capacity remains unsaturated will have more survivors than countries that don't. The disease is 99+% survivable with optimal medical care during the worst phase of it and significantly less survivable without it.
  - ragazzina 6y ago
    How can you say this when the US are in the top 10 countries by deaths/population?
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      Sweden has always been near the top 10 (currently 13th; to give some context, Italy is 12th) and somehow the myth of "Sweden is magically successful at fighting COVID-19" refuses to die. If having 1 in 1730 people die is such a huge success, I suppose having 1 in 1690 die is okay, too. (To avoid misunderstanding, no, I don't think any of these numbers is okay. Many developed countries have an order of magnitude better results.)
- anamax 6y ago
  It's useful to split the US into two pieces - NYC/NJ/CT/MA and the rest of the country. Death rates are roughly similar within those two groups yet very different between those two groups. (The "hotspots" outside the NYC group seem to be largely driven by travel from NYC.)