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Covid 19 Part XX-26,644 in ROI (1,772 deaths) 6,064 in NI (556 deaths) (08/08)Read OP
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At what population scale can the excuse that cases are inflated by population size remain valid? Can a country of 10 million also claim their case numbers only looked bad because of their population size, what is the cut off.It's hard to argue this because what is considered a small country is subjective. The metric is cases per capita, doesn't get any more representative than this, so the population size imapact this is pretty irrelevant for the most part, especially in a country like Ireland which has millions of residents and is not particularly small.
The numbers are what they are. I agree though that it is a cause of unnecessary fear mongering not because of that but because the cases have mostly been traced as far as we know. As long as community transmission remains limited then there is no need for most of us to be worrying.
Tbh this is one thing I struggled with at the start, and still cant wrap my head around, though I only recently became an internet epidemiologist.. How come it spreads to more people in the UK than here? Clearly the answer is they have more people, but shouldn't it spread at the same rate everywhere with similar population densities? So in my mind, a smaller country should get through it quicker rather than a comparable population %.
Obviously there are many other factors at play, but consider a room with 10 people and a room with 1,000. By the time 10 of the 1,000 have caught it, shouldn't the other room have all 10 infected rather than just 1?
Anyone any idea, or a Pandemic for Dummies link for me?
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There are a lot of factors at work, primary amongst them is the level of testing and contact tracing. Next you look at how robust the two biggest risk areas are, hospital system and care homes. All the while, of course, locations that naturally have a lot of people or are high risk are shut down. Then it's test, isolate and contact trace.What Username Guidelines wrote: »Tbh this is one thing I struggled with at the start, and still cant wrap my head around, though I only recently became an internet epidemiologist.. How come it spreads to more people in the UK than here? Clearly the answer is they have more people, but shouldn't it spread at the same rate everywhere with similar population densities? So in my mind, a smaller country should get through it quicker rather than a comparable population %.
Obviously there are many other factors at play, but consider a room with 10 people and a room with 1,000. By the time 10 of the 1,000 have caught it, shouldn't the other room have all 10 infected rather than just 1?
Anyone any idea, or a Pandemic for Dummies link for me?
The league tables and these per 100K stats are not of much use as countries have been doing all kinds of different counting. The real numbers are R0, hospital admissions, ICU cases, deaths and average number of contacts. We can make sense of these and they give better indications of the management of the disease.
As for your room example it's unknown. There are superspreaders and superspreading events but why some are and others are not is not well understood. Clearly not packing everyone into a room would be a good start anyway.0 -
What Username Guidelines wrote: »Tbh this is one thing I struggled with at the start, and still cant wrap my head around, though I only recently became an internet epidemiologist.. How come it spreads to more people in the UK than here? Clearly the answer is they have more people, but shouldn't it spread at the same rate everywhere with similar population densities? So in my mind, a smaller country should get through it quicker rather than a comparable population %.
Obviously there are many other factors at play, but consider a room with 10 people and a room with 1,000. By the time 10 of the 1,000 have caught it, shouldn't the other room have all 10 infected rather than just 1?
Anyone any idea, or a Pandemic for Dummies link for me?
Population density is a total red herring. It is all about interactions, which has more to do with behavior than population density. If all the people in Antarctica decide to have a midwinter bash in the same hut or what ever...
Your rooms scenario, is an interesting question and any attempt to answer it will require dozens of assumptions, both explicit and implicit.
I would note that given the potential viral loads that somebody could be exhaling, one person could potentially pass on the virus to 100s if they are all in the same room, esp. if they are mixing and remain together for a period of time.0 -
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What Username Guidelines wrote: »Tbh this is one thing I struggled with at the start, and still cant wrap my head around, though I only recently became an internet epidemiologist.. How come it spreads to more people in the UK than here? Clearly the answer is they have more people, but shouldn't it spread at the same rate everywhere with similar population densities? So in my mind, a smaller country should get through it quicker rather than a comparable population %.
Obviously there are many other factors at play, but consider a room with 10 people and a room with 1,000. By the time 10 of the 1,000 have caught it, shouldn't the other room have all 10 infected rather than just 1?
Anyone any idea, or a Pandemic for Dummies link for me?
How it spreads is a down to the actual mechanics of transmission. Which are complex. The distribution of the R number is not linear due to super spreading type things so looking at that and think we are doing grand is not a great idea because one day you could get one person spreading it to 50 as has happened.
Then your R number jumps to 42 or whatever.
You have to take into account the fundamental dynamics of the transmission rather than looking at the macro effects of decisions. For instance.
"We are doing great, there is no community transmission. It SHOULD be safe to open schools now as they were before."
Problem with that is that the fundamentals of the virus transmission hasn't changed.
Best we can say is it might be safe but we don't know. We literally have to just try. Add into that the environmental factors which have an impact of respiratory diseases. It's extremely complex.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.10488.pdf
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1292806618510286851?s=200 -
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