Author Topic: Covid. Green shoots for vaccines showing in my stats downloads  (Read 244 times)

klondike

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23258
First sign of green shoots it the death stats w/e 12 Feb.

As I said in a different post on the Scotland hospitalisation studies there was nothing showing in the death stats at that time. Amongst the stats I have set up doing automatic downloads and minor analysis on (mostly graphing, grouping and computing percentages) there is now an inkling of a relative decline in death numbers amongst the older groups.

What I am looking at is the percentage of weekly deaths in a series of age groupings. Those percentages have remained pretty much static throughout the epidemic. Because of the delays between vaccination and build up of immunity and the maybe 3 or 4 weeks between infection and a death being recorded in the weekly ONS stats  I expected it to be maybe a little later before anything showed.

First vaccinated were care home and NHS staff. By 11 Jan when the first NHS England vaccination stats started appearing regularly there were enough given that those groups were done. So next up would be the over 80s the first of who should be gaining some immunity by late January. Roll forward to mid February and if the vaccines were working the numbers should start showing in the death stats. Well it's small but they do.

Click for bigger



The change is small but bigger than anything I've seen by way of change across the period of our epidemic. Differences in the age grouping provided by NHS England and ONS make direct comparison across the whole pandemic tricky when you get the rather small changes seen here. Number wise the change is small but the graph shows a decline in percentage deaths over the last week for both the 90+ and 80-89 groupings with that drop being made up for mostly by the increase in the 60-69 group. Of course as we are in a period where the virus is in retreat overall all deaths have declined.

A link to the actual graphs which link back to all the others. The percentage one I've posted about is the bottom one.
.co.uk/ONSdeaths_by_age.php]https://covid.[censored].co.uk/ONSdeaths_by_age.php You'll need a laptop or computer for this to show much as tablets don't seem able to handle the javascript produced by the graphing software I chose to use and show no "hover" data. Phones are way too small anyway.
So long and thanks for all the fish

Jacqueline

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5261
Re: Covid. Green shoots for vaccines showing in my stats downloads
« Reply #1 on: Feb 25, 2021, 01:03:56 PM »
The Exeter Nightingale is being closed at very short notice now Covid numbers are going down. Many jobs lost including my son's who is now desperately looking for a new one along with the rest.


Covid may be under control but the jobless seem to be the new pandemic.

klondike

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23258
Re: Covid. Green shoots for vaccines showing in my stats downloads
« Reply #2 on: Feb 25, 2021, 02:08:41 PM »
They will be. Doubly so once furlough ends. There are gong to be millions in continued need of taxpayer support and a reason why I snapped a bit at Brian's crass post this morning about Universal Credit. Lockdown has has no impact on him other than probably increasing his bank balance (me neither as it happens). He seems to be afraid that he might have to pay a few quid out extra in tax to help support those who are in no way to blame for the mess they find themselves in. Few on minimum wage jobs can build a buffer to tide them over even a week let alone the impact on their incomes of this past year.


My son gets his first jab this afternoon. He suffers from severe asthma or as least severe enough for the NHS to bump him in advange of his age group. He's not impacted financially either other than to be better off as he doesn't need to travel to work.
So long and thanks for all the fish

klondike

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 23258
Re: Covid. Green shoots for vaccines showing in my stats downloads
« Reply #3 on: Feb 25, 2021, 05:58:06 PM »
Thursday is the NHS England weekly file day. That tells the same story.

The 80+ age group over the course of the epidemic made up 52.52% but over the last week since 17th February show as 49.23%. Looking at all the weekly spreadsheets the only other time I spot it sinking below 50% was way back when the overall death toll was comparatively small at less than 100 deaths a week in total.

This is actually the second week in a row with a fall but it was smaller the previous week and I wasn't confident that it wasn't just natural variation in the numbers. It still could be of course but that is looking less likely to me now.
So long and thanks for all the fish