Corona virus: traffic lights

The UK is implementing a traffic light system to enable holiday makers to travel to other countries. Red means you can't go, and I believe green and amber mean you can and there is no 14 day quarantine on return. 

I thought I would compare the relative averaged death rates per million between pairs of countries to see if I could make my own list. I decided not to use the current case counts because these numbers are difficult owing to the different numbers of tests being done. The death rate is the least bad number to use.

So for the UK at the moment, the number of deaths per million for the last seven days is 1.64. The death rates for some other countries are shown below.

Brazil - 4.68
USA - 1.88
Sweden - 2.53
Italy - 0.33
France - 0.26
Spain - 0.12

So for travel between the UK and France, the difference is 1.64 - 0.26 = 1.38 which means there is more chance of infection being brought in to France from the UK. If I were the French government, I would set this to red. Travel in the reverse direction would yield -1.38 which means there is much less chance of new infection being brought back into the UK. I would set this to green if I were the UK government. Where the numbers are about the same, I set the colour to Amber. 

Here's the graphic for some interesting countries. 

Read it by choosing a country from the left side and reading along to see whether travel is OK to arrive at another country. It's interesting to see that travel from the UK should really be mostly red. The basic problem is that the UK's death rate is relatively very high compared to other countries.

On the face of it, it seems quite confusing that travel is allowed to other countries from the UK and there is obviously something else driving the decisions.

Corona virus: what is a peak?

It can be difficult to know when a peak happens but I'll have a go for Sweden.

Here's a graph showing the 7 day rolling average of Covid deaths, per day, per million. This time not using a logarithmic axis. 

Before we get to peaks, it's clear that Sweden now has the largest number of deaths per million, now surpassing the UK - something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It's interesting to see that France and the UK have different trajectories. I've seen and heard that lockdown in France was very severe - you had to have a certificate to prove you were allowed to go outside. I happen to know in the UK, because I look out of the window, some neighbours have been having impromptu barbecues for some weeks now. Some of my fellow citizens are clearly above the rules. 

Anyway, to Sweden. My untrained eye sees 4 peaks around the following dates...

11-April

25-April

10-May

30-May

So for Sweden, peaks are happening.

The UK has just relaxed its lockdown even more, so it will be interesting to see how the graph changes. Will it go up? My guess is it will, and there will be a period of shouting and distraction to make it go away.

I still can't get away from the simple fact that before a vaccine or cure happens, the virus still has to inflict its Infection Fatality Rate on us. An optimistic 0.36% still means we have more than 150,000 deaths to go. We have more than a year to run at the current daily death rate.

Corona virus: how long will this go on for?

This graph shows the 7 day rolling average of reported Covid-19 deaths for various countries. It's quite interesting to see Belgium and the UK slowly reducing with Sweden now showing a quite clear plateau since the beginning of April. These three countries are suffering around 6 deaths per million per day. 

It's important that I say the data I am using is from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and there are many caveats about whether the data are showing the same thing for different countries and whether all deaths are being included. 

If Sweden carries on with its lockdown policy, presumably I would expect the death rate to remain relatively higher than other countries. Two more weeks should allow enough time to get a sense of this.

The UK and Sweden have so far suffered respectively 511 and 358 deaths per million cumulatively. We do not know what the infection fatality rate (IFR) for the virus is but if I look at San Marino, they have had 1213 deaths per million. This is 0.12%. The back of my envelope says it is going to be at least this number everywhere. On this basis, and continuing with my envelope, if we carry on with the current death rate of 6 per million per day, the UK will require another 120 days and Sweden another 140 days to clear the infection. 

In reality, the IFR is going to be higher than this and will vary by the demographics of each country. A recent German study concluded that it is 0.36% in a particular part of that country. If that number is correct, that means we have at least another year to run. If it's higher than this then it's longer.