Monday, June 01, 2020

The Dim and Dom show

I feel like I should be blogging about something related to the ongoing epidemic, but I can't bring myself to do it. The utterly vacuous, self-destructive, hopelessly incompetent nature of our government is beyond my ability to put into words. I am surprised at the scientists who are still prepared to work with them over the epidemic.

That aside, it's been an interesting couple of weeks. I'd been doing more of the same modelling and forecasting of the epidemic (and have updated our paper and submitted to a real journal), and then suddenly the media got hold of the delayed lockdown story. This is a very simple calculation, initially I thought too trivial to even write into a blog post, but it is of course very eye-catching. After mentions in the Guardian, Telegraph, More or Less, some requests for interviews came in. Initially I ducked them as I didn't really think it was appropriate for a non-expert to be pushing his own research especially as no-one else had backed it up at that point, and ATTP had tried to get results out of the IC model but initially came up with some significantly different answers (after a few more tries at getting the code to do the right things it worked very nicely though). Kit did a very good job on Sky I thought:

and then I found this manuscript (also written by an outsider, mathematical modeller like me) and the research showing essentially the same results for USA (manuscript here) (I think the smaller effect is mostly because they looked at a shorter interval) and also the Sunday Times article which managed to claim it was all new research from the IC team so I relented and did an interview for Vanessa Feltz on Radio 2 (which was live):

and also for the German channel ZDF which was recorded on Friday. Whether it will/did make the cut remains to be seen...the said they would send a link to the final version so I wait with bated breath.


IanR said...

Your name was mentioned in a Mallen Baker YT video. Somewhat disparagingly as a non-expert in the epidemiological field giving your tupenny-worth. Personally, I've enjoyed your intervention and learnt much. Thank you.

James Annan said...

I don't mind people pointing out that I don't have a long background in the field (though in fact my mathematical modelling past does include a brief stint modelling infectious disease in crops) but I would hope that they do a little due diligence on the credibility of the result rather than dismissing it just based on the messenger like this guy did.

James Annan said...

link was supposed to go here

crandles said...

Any signs of R increasing where lockdown restrictions have been eased?

Italy most likely to have good data and easing of lockdown starting some? weeks ago? By eye only, I don't see anything particularly alarming in Italy's data, but maybe still too soon?

Maybe Iran's highest deaths since April 27 does back up appearance of second wave in both new confirmed cases and in number of active cases. I don't know anything about how their restrictions have changed. R increasing does seem quite clear for Iran.

Anyway maybe case numbers do have some use for advance warming rather than just using deaths?

I am thinking excess deaths may be a better way of comparing different countries than confirmed case deaths but there is long delay before this info is available and earlier indicators are needed.

Yes, there is problem of increased case numbers might just be from increased testing. Surely there must be some useful way of processing number of cases, number of tests and proportion of people tested being positive to get a more reliable earlier indicator of changes in R than ignoring this data and just using number of deaths? Is there a simple formula or is it difficult to process?

crandles said...

I would say Tom Chivers thinks of a reason why you might be wrong or at least overstating it and runs with that without doing any testing or credibility checks on whether that reason might be significant enough to matter much. I would say it was that rather than "dismissing it just based on the messenger", but ymmv.

David B. Benson said...

James, I encourage you to toot your horn as loud as Frogie's.


Let'm know what you know and think.

Blat again...

Phil said...

RE: crandles

Case counts are potentially very misleading, as depends on the rate of testing.

Covid deaths are potentially misleading, as some countries are counting fairly accurately and others are not.

Fraction testing positive is also potentially misleading, as it depends on who is being tested. Is it the low status high risk people like supermarket checkout workers, or high status low risk people that are being tested?

Excess deaths is probably the best, but Congo is having an Ebola outbreak... Oh and measles.

"While Ebola and COVID-19 have drawn far more international attention, measles has killed more Congolese than those diseases combined. WHO said there have been 369,520 measles cases and 6,779 deaths since 2019."

winston said...

On a slightly related note, I don’t know if you’ ve seen this, which was linked to from Andrew Gelman’s blog:

It doesn’t seem a million miles from what you’re doing, and the idea of a standardised approach is appealing. Even if it does mean using R and learning to count from 1 rather than 0 as God intended.