It’s been a few months since I last looked at COVID statistics. This time, I thought, I’ll get the figures for the four constituent countries of the UK, and present them against each other for comparison. I chose to look at cases, deaths and lockdowns, and to leave testing and vaccinations for later.
This exercise may also help to give some insights into the
effectiveness, or otherwise, of various lockdown measures. This is because, for
the last four to five months, England has been under a significantly lighter
lockdown régime than Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Update, December 2nd: This is no longer the case,
at least as far as face masks are concerned. See here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/measures-against-omicron-variant-come-into-effect-30-november-2021.
All this, so we are told, is due to a new variant, of which there have been a total
of 22 cases in England and Scotland up to November 30th, compared
with a UK new case count that day of almost 40,000. Yet again, the political
class are missing no possible excuse to violate our rights and freedoms, even without
any proven evidence. But, as I’ll explain towards the end, I think they’re
going to find it hard to get away with this one.
The data
My usual data source, Our World in Data, doesn’t break the
cases or deaths figures down to the level of individual constituent countries.
I therefore had to go to the UK government’s website (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases
and https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths)
for these numbers. The data I used was taken on November 29th 2021, and runs up
to November 27th (November 26th in the case of Wales).
I soon noticed some significant differences between this
data and the UK-wide feed from Our World in Data. First, recent days’ deaths
seem to be understated in comparison to the UK wide data. I suspect this may be
due to deaths not being counted in individual countries’ data until they have
been positively confirmed as being from COVID. Whereas in the UK-wide data, it
looks as if an adjustment may be being applied to give a best estimate of the
number of COVID deaths which will eventually be confirmed for that particular
day. The same is true for the counts of daily cases, but the effects are
smaller.
Second, the last few days’ data are not always complete;
for example, there may be deaths reported for a recent day, for which there is
no number of cases shown yet. I resolved this problem simply by not using the
latest two days of data (three days in the case of Wales).
Thirdly, since I wanted to compare cases and deaths per
million population, I had to find independent estimates of the populations of
the four countries. I got a figure of 56,223,000 for England (estimated for
July 1st 2021) from http://www.ukpopulation.org/england-population/.
For Northern Ireland, I got 1,916,281, for Scotland 5,517,000 and for
Wales 3,247,165, all from the same
source. This gives a total of 66.9 million, as compared with the 68.2 million
reported by Our World in Data. A bit odd; where are the 1.3 million missing
people? Still, as I’ve said many times before, it’s the best data I’ve got, so
I’ll use it.
Happily, the Blavatnik School of Government does break its
lockdown measures figures down to the level of individual constituent
countries; so, I can use those directly.
Cases
Here are the total cases per million:
The curves all have a similar shape, but there have been some divergences. In particular, Scotland’s case growth has fallen away relative to the others since September 2021. The UK as a whole is currently 15th among 190 world countries in cases per million, with just under 15% of the population having been reported as cases. As shown above, Northern Ireland has had a higher proportion of cases than this, and Scotland a lower one.
Here are the daily cases per million, weekly averaged:
The three major waves of cases in April 2020, October/November 2020 and January 2021 are clearly visible, though the middle one was far less prominent in Scotland. With regulatory divergence since June 2021, the comparison has become increasingly confused. Though the sudden almost vertical upsurge in cases, which was the “signature” of the delta variant, is evident in England in June to July, but hit Wales only in August, and Scotland seemingly in two phases, one as early as June, the other at the same time as Wales.
It’s also worth noting that the current daily cases per
million rates in all four countries are well above the World Health Organization’s
200 cases per million per day threshold, at which they consider the virus
“endemic” and advise countries not to unlock. At least, some of the politicians
have shown more sense than unthinkingly obeying the WHO’s diktat. (But
no longer: sigh).
Here are the weekly case growths since September 2020:
It’s clear that since June 2021 or thereabouts, the peaks and, to an extent, the troughs in weekly case growth (which is a very good proxy for the reproduction rate of the virus) have become more and more dampened. This is particularly noticeable in Wales, but is also visible in England (where the growth is less volatile, due to the larger population). In Northern Ireland and Scotland, the biggest recent peaks in weekly case growth came later, in July and August respectively.
Compared with earlier growth rates of over 100%, these are chicken feed. Suggesting that, absent new variants such as the “omicron” which is the supposed reason for the latest round of panic, the transmission of the virus now seems to be gradually, if irregularly, subsiding.
Lockdowns
Quantifying lockdowns is not as simple as it perhaps ought
to be. The “official” published measure I use is the Blavatnik School of
Government stringency index. This is a mixed metric of eight different lockdown
types (schools, workplaces, public events, gatherings, public transport, stay
at home, travel restrictions, international), plus a “public information
campaign” metric. The stringency of each is assessed separately, depending on
the level of lockdown and whether it is national or regional. Each is converted
to a percentage, then they are averaged (all with equal weight) to give the
stringency percentage.
Here are the stringency values over the course of the
epidemic:
It looks as if, of the four, the Welsh have been most keen to micro-manage the situation as they see it. The Northern Irish started out by panicking less than the others; but in more recent months, as the other countries have unlocked, they have been reluctant to follow suit.
Since July, the English have been most eager to keep the
stringency down. (Until now… grrr.) And judging by the total cases per million,
in which England was overtaken by both Northern Ireland and Wales during that
time, it doesn’t seem to have been a bad strategy. But politicians like Johnson
don’t care about facts; nor about the people they are supposed to be serving.
All they care about is virtue signalling and violating our rights and freedoms.
From my point of view, the Blavatnik stringency value has
three drawbacks as it stands. First, the “public information campaign” metric
is of little utility, since most countries in the world have kept it wound up
to maximum practically throughout the epidemic. Propaganda is cheap, so they
seem to think! Second, it doesn’t include face covering mandates. And third, it
doesn’t really assess the experienced impact on our lives of the different
lockdown measures.
Because of this, I created two metrics of my own. The
first, which I simply call “lockdowns,” uses the same assessment of the
stringencies of individual lockdown types as the Blavatnik index, but
substitutes face covering mandates for public information campaign. And to
avoid any confusion with the Blavatnik measure, instead of averaging the
individual stringencies, it simply adds them together to give a score out of
900.
The second, which I call “harshness,” uses the same inputs
as my lockdowns measure, but weights each type of lockdown according to how
harshly it affects the lives of those impacted by it. Thus, lockdowns which
affect everyone – like workplace closures (which affect both suppliers and
customers), stay at home mandates and internal travel restrictions – are
weighted higher than those which affect only some people, like school closures
and international travel restrictions. And only mandates are included – mere
recommendations are disregarded. Finally, to enable stringency and harshness to
be shown together on the same plot, the individual harshness assessments are
combined to form a percentage in the same way as the Blavatnik stringency
measure.
Here is the current status of lockdowns, calculated
according to my lockdowns measure:
At present, the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish still have workplace restrictions, which the English do not. The Scots and the Welsh prefer to restrict public events rather than gatherings, whereas the Northern Irish restrict both, but gatherings more than public events. And the Northern Irish and Scots have (or had) more stringent face mask requirements than the English.
Two further graphs I’ll show are the average values of my lockdown
metric over the whole course of the epidemic (weighted by number of days spent at
each stringency level), and the proportion of the time spent in full lockdowns
of each type (where “full” lockdown means 100% stringency according to the
Blavatnik definition for that type of lockdown). Here they are:
These bar charts give an idea of which of the countries have chosen to lock down for the longest time, or to lock down hardest, for each of the lockdown types.
The effects of lockdowns on weekly case growth (and hence
on reproduction rate) can be assessed using the following graphs, which plot
case growth, stringency and harshness over time for each of the individual
countries:
The times where lockdowns can be seen to have driven down weekly case growth to below zero are three. First, the initial lockdown in mid-March 2020, which produced falling new cases by about the second week of April (slightly later in Northern Ireland). Second, the brief lockdown of late October or early November. Though it’s worth noting that the case growth had come down on several previous occasions, even from big spikes, without a significant new lockdown. It’s also worth noting that this particular lockdown wasn’t needed at the time in Scotland. And third, the major lockdown of January to March 2021, which was released only slowly and bit by bit in the months from then until July. It’s debatable whether or not the Welsh lockdown in October 2021 actually had a significant effect on the case growth, or whether the spurt of cases would have died down anyway. And it’s debatable whether the Scottish lockdown of mid-October actually had any discernible effect on case growth at all.
It’s instructive, too, to compare the four countries’
lockdown harshness against each other. Harshness has generally a lower
percentage value than the Blavatnik stringency; but the closer they are
together, the more constraining the impact on individuals. It seems that the
Northern Irish have tended to be less harsh, for a given level of stringency,
than the rest.
Deaths
Here are the total deaths per million:
Now, that’s interesting. The English health “authorities” are well known to have reacted very poorly to the epidemic at the start, compared with other places. But since the second big wave of COVID deaths subsided around the end of March 2021, the other three countries have been, very gradually, catching up towards England. (Though I don’t think any of them is likely to get all the way there).
This is reflected in the graph of daily deaths per million
(weekly averaged) – note, the strong drops at the far right of the graph are
probably caused by deaths which haven’t yet been reported, since not yet confirmed
as being from COVID:
England is maintaining a COVID daily deaths per million rate comparable with Wales and Scotland, and well below Northern Ireland, even though the English have been (had been?) locked down less stringently than the others for some months.
Here’s the graph of weekly deaths growth (again, the big
drops at the right are probably due to deaths which haven’t been reported yet):
As with cases, the main trend over the last four months has been the decrease in the size of the peaks, and to a lesser extent the troughs, in weekly case growth.
Deaths per case
Here is the graph of deaths per case (with a 21-day offset) since
September 2020. Again, the number of deaths on very recent days may be biased
low:
Scotland and Northern Ireland have for at least six weeks been showing higher deaths per case than Wales or England. Perhaps there is a correlation between higher deaths per case and higher lockdowns? (I wouldn’t like to say whether there is causation, and if so which way!) In particular, the stricter face mask mandates in Scotland and Northern Ireland do not seem to have produced any corresponding reduction in recent deaths per case. (So, Johnson now wants to force people in England to wear face masks?).
I am loath to show the latest deaths per case histogram
because of the drop-off issue, but the following graph based on the Our World
in Data feed shows a current value of deaths per case of 0.35% for the UK as a
whole, a value which has been close to constant for three months now:
Another way to look at deaths per case is to plot the cumulative deaths per case over the course of the whole epidemic:
Two things to note about the graph. First, the almost vertical drops in all the countries except Wales between June and July 2020. I presume these were due to adjustments, caused by re-definition of what constituted a COVID case and/or COVID death.
Second, that down-jag in the blue line in late February
and early March 2020. There is evidence, from the world data for the very earliest
phase of the epidemic, that the virus variant which left China in the middle of
February 2020, after the (extended) Chinese New Year festivities, was something
like two and a half times as lethal per case as the earlier one that had
produced the first confirmed cases outside China. The interruption of this
down-jag by an upward trend about 3 weeks after the new variant left China
would seem to corroborate this. I myself am now glad that I caught the damned
thing so early, that I got the original variant rather than the later, more
lethal one – and passed it on to at least two friends!
So, where do we go from here?
It seems to me that Johnson and co are putting themselves in
a cleft stick of their own making. The new face mask regulations in England are
sure to raise a storm of protest from an already angry and disillusioned
electorate. (I, for one, plan to boycott any business that refuses to serve me unless
I wear a mask.)
But just as importantly, I don’t think they can win on this
one. If the omicron variant fizzles, the entire excuse for their U-turn goes up
in flames. If it explodes into dominance as the delta variant did, then making
people wear face masks obviously won’t have done anything to help against it;
so, they inconvenienced us under false pretences. If it persists, but makes little
or no measurable difference to cases or deaths, then there won’t be a problem, and
England will continue to do better than the other countries. So, why all the
fuss?
To sum up
·
Early relative success (or, as in England, failure)
in the early stages of the epidemic does not necessarily reflect what happens
later on.
·
Contrary to received wisdom, lockdowns do not
always have a discernible effect on cases or deaths. Indeed, the only three UK lockdowns
which have shown such effects (in March 2020, October/November 2020 and January
2021 onwards) have all been large scale packages of measures, involving several
different types of lockdowns at the same time.
·
Observed cases and deaths figures suggest that,
in the absence of new and significantly more transmissible variants, the transmission
of the virus is now tending gradually, if irregularly, to subside.
· Whichever way things go with the “omicron” variant, I think Johnson and co have put themselves in a lose-lose-lose situation.
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