The almost invisible report
On the 13th Of August the UK Government with Imperial College put out a report showing that only 6% of the UK population had been infected with Sars-Cov-2.
The report is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/largest-home-antibody-testing-programme-for-covid-19-publishes-findings
You may not have noticed it because it was not heralded with fanfares even though the population infection rate is one of the crucial numbers on the journey to Widespread Acquired Immunity (I refuse to use the term 'herd immunity' it is too contentious.
The answer Imperial college came up with is 6%.
It is based on 100,000 volunteers (more on self-selecting samples later) taking a home antibody test.
This is what the NHS currently say about home antibody tests here https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/testing-and-tracing/antibody-test-to-check-if-youve-had-coronavirus/:
"Home antibody test kits are not currently recommended, as it has not been confirmed if they're safe and reliable yet. You can pay for a test to be done at a private clinic if you want to."
"Only 10 per cent of people who are infected with the coronavirus develop antibodies, a professor claims. "
So do the home antibody kits work or not?
What does Sweden v the UK suggest?
Does that mean 6%x10 = 60% are now immune? With T-Cell immunity (or the Professor's words "a different immunity response" we are well into the realms of Widespread Acquired Immunity.
A simple empirical* method might give us a clue. Sweden, whatever they did or didn't do are currently living pretty well normal lives. No masks and no restrictions. They have a trickle of deaths but are holding their nerve. Here's what their deaths profile looks like:
And here are the numbers at the tme of writing:
The number I want to concentrate on is deaths per 1m population - 573.
Now let's look at the UK. Here's the deaths profile
And here's the numbers:
The profile looks similar doesn't it?
And the deaths per 1m population are a little higher - 609
They are within 5% after the the 9% downward adjustment by PHE.
If we can assume the Infection Fatality Rate is similar across UK and Sweden then why is the UK not in the same situation as Sweden.
Are the Swedes so very different to us?
Usual Disclaimer
- I've tried to give references for the factual information.
- If I've missed any tell me and I'll find them
- If you have arguments with the sources, you need to take them up with them.
- I have no intention of killing anyone's granny.
- My opinion is that there are more deaths to come but they are inevitable and mainly among vulnerable people
- Individual tragedies are that. They are poor determinants for policy. I'm not going to respond to "yeh but this individual..." By their nature if you know individual cases that buck the statistics, they are outliers and not statistically significant.
*Sidebar on the empirical method
A lot of science today is concerned with prediction. It's where tne money is. If you can tell the future then you quids in. It largely concerns forming a hypothesis and then finding information and references to confirm your hypothesis. You can then declare your hypothesis proven and you can publish.
There are two methods that are used in retrospect:
- heuristics - using a previously successful method to solve the current problem.
- and empiricism which analyses real data that was collected in the past and can be related to events to analyse the real effects of those events.
With respect to covid-19 we now have nearly 6 months of data from all over the world and we can look back and see when events that should have affected results and what determine what effect they had. This works best in single territories because recording and reporting methods vary when using it to compare territories some caution has to be used.
