lots of conversation now about the inexorable rise of cases and the linkage between hospitalisation and death. This three link stat-chain we've got going on.
Cases: undeniably rising, and quickly, driven by the Delta variant. Data strongly suggesting younger demographic is far more represented this around than any previous time (even accounting for sampling bias via testing strategy)
Hospitalisation: rising at the moment. It is unclear what is happening here, although some evidence suggests younger people are admitted in greater numbers and might require less serious treatment and that more serious treatment is bias towards those with no or one vaccine jab. Double jabbed folks might be limited to those who have conditions or are just damn unlucky. Public data really lacking on the vaccinated status of those going in. Sub-situation here is those who need serious intervention, is this relationship between admission and ICU/ventilation changing.
Deaths: the last part of the chain has no discernable pattern as of yet. We can hope that with diminishing age of case, comes diminished IFR and further diminished serious illness through vaccination. I am afraid we might not know this right up until June 21, by which time we will be either sticking to or delaying that date.
So yeah, i am a little disappointed that apparently known cases to hospital ratio is now about 4.5%, and before was about 9%. That doesn't seem like a huge drop and some of that may actually be due to increased testing. However we must know more, or someone must, about the nature of hospital treatments. Mechanical ventilation appears to be on the up, ever so slightly, and is possibly the better indicator now of deaths to come? just a hypothesis.
i dont doubt that cases wont simply translate to deaths like they have in the past, but i am afraid some will. It just depends how many weeks after the case rise (started Bolton about Apr 27, started more widely ~3 weeks later) we see that effect - probably end of next week?
To me it makes not a great difference to delay 3 weeks and get a few more million double jabbed.
i do stress that any data after the black dashed line is likely to change, these are specimen/deaths dates.
View attachment 18776
data is; case by specimen date, date of admission, n occupied MV beds and actual date of death. seven day rolling mean for smoothness. First horizontal line is April 27 when cases began to rise from baseline on Bolton, further lines are one week blocks. Black line is latest data minus 4 days.
