6 ms·

Last I saw the doubling time for infections was 1 week.

• collyw 6y ago
  Does it matter if deaths are not going up?
  • garblegarble 6y ago
    > Does it matter if deaths are not going up? Deaths lag infections. People take a long time to die. This naive way of thinking that infections are going way up but the death rate isn't and so it was all overblown keeps playing out again and again, and it needs to stop.
    • collyw 6y ago
      >Deaths lag infections. But the numbers don't show that at all if you look at the "second wave" that we are having here in Spain. There is a second wave of infections, but deaths are staying very low despite all the media hype. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ The hype is what needs to stop.
      • frabcus 6y ago
        Interesting. Could be either test capacity going up, or medical practices improving, or more infection of young people? Good advice I heard was that hospitalisation with Covid symptoms is a better measure than deaths (happens sooner) or positive tests (not altered by increasing testing). This report has that for Uk but alas only updated every week and then nearly a week late. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19...
        • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
          You can see up to date data on hospitalisations at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk
          • xo5vik 6y ago
            These are the measures to watch as they were unavailable at the start of the pandemic. Hospital admissions, Covi-19 occupied beds and ventilator beds have all roughly doubled from 1-14 Sep.
            • xo5vik 6y ago
              Good article about the PHE Covid-19 Dashboard here - it's quite recent: https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/04/the-covid-19-dashboard-bringing-together-data-and-statistics-in-one-place/ https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/04/the-covid...
            • collyw 6y ago
              Yes, but doubling from practically none is still a low number, compared to the peak a few months back.
        • zelos 6y ago
          The covid survey seems to show current rates are roughly a quarter what they were towards the end of the peak in the UK. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/11september2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
      • garblegarble 6y ago
        With deaths lagging by ~21 days, though, that data only shows deaths for cases from around the 19th of August - so the data is showing a lower rate, but it still seems sensible to be cautious about the death rate. I don't think it's at all reasonable to classify caution as hype... in addition to the increased risk of fatalities there are plenty of reports about damage to heart tissue even in young people who didn't have serious symptoms[0] - and if people start to ignore the risk and reduce measures like distancing and mask wearing there IS much greater scope for increased fatalities and long-term health impacts. [0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
        • collyw 6y ago
          If you look at the two graphs in the link I posted we have passed the second peak of infections more than 21 days ago, so we should have expected the spike in deaths already. The graphs don't show that.
    • frabcus 6y ago
      Exponentials are very unintuitive.