John, I will let you know when I have deaths by date of occurrence. Unfortunately, it won't be stratified by care home. Nor by sex. They wanted an extra £120 for that! And contrary to what the ONs believe, I think the delayed data may contain a substantial amount of the insight that we are looking for, given that the long delays are caused by referrals to the coroner.
My man! I have an FOI request in for all cause deaths in England & Wales by date of occurrence by quinary age band and sex by month dating back to 1970. The latest email from the FOI suggests they are actually going to deliver this rather than block my request or charge for the work. As soon as it arrives I'll let you know because it will be a handy cross-check.
LOL - you've pre-empted my next newsletter! I've been running cross correlation functions of COVID with non-COVID by region and have 10 tasty slides waiting to go under the grill.
I've been looking but can only find annual figures. Another FOI maybe. I've also been downloading everything ONS have on historic flu to see whether this regional sync is what generally happens.
No joy obtaining historic weekly by region but I have unearthed a glimpse as to what flu outbreaks look like on a regional basis for the 2021/22 season. Try figure 39b of this report.
Thanks, though obviously the picture diagnostically (if not biologically) is complicated by overlapping with Covid - flu isn't routinely tested for so was I reckon they're just a ragbag of respiratory infections with no obvious localization suggestive of bacterial infection which also test negative for Covid.
The same will be truefor prior years but at least the Covid effect won't intervene.
Yes, it's a right old ragbag with no prospect of data for earlier years. Shame, coz I was going to put good money on variations in timing of outbreaks between regions.
What about all-cause care home death patterns regionally then? If influenza is a major supervening event on top of a more predictable baseline then should we / could we test for regional synchronicity in bad flu years vs non-bad flu years?
If this is just what respiratory viruses do then surely you'd see it much more clearly in the bad flu years compared to milder years.
I can't find any weekly care home data prior to 2020. There are annual totals by specified causes or by local authority and that's about it, so I'd need to run another FOI at some point.
Living in Scotland, I was looking at our own data.
There was a massive extra risk in the Central Belt: where hospital admissions and deaths in Spring 2020 were far higher than in the Highlands and Islands.
That figures: Glasgow is Sick-city.
Oddly enough, in 2022 this distribution reversed, with far more 'cases' in the rural and island areas: I dont have all the figures to hand, but this looks much like New Zealand: isolation tends to slow down the spread of the bug, and 'Omicron' speads like wildfire to the parts that Delta missed.
Here at Rob Kay central, in a semi-rural area, all of my family finally caught the bug in Spring 2022: it was like a moderate cold for all of us of all ages, vaxxed or not, no real issues.
My 'out of the box' question is this: so far rates of death etc in very rural Sub-Sarahan countries like Ghana have been very very low indeed: so will they catch up eventually , or are they immune for whatever reason?
John, I will let you know when I have deaths by date of occurrence. Unfortunately, it won't be stratified by care home. Nor by sex. They wanted an extra £120 for that! And contrary to what the ONs believe, I think the delayed data may contain a substantial amount of the insight that we are looking for, given that the long delays are caused by referrals to the coroner.
My man! I have an FOI request in for all cause deaths in England & Wales by date of occurrence by quinary age band and sex by month dating back to 1970. The latest email from the FOI suggests they are actually going to deliver this rather than block my request or charge for the work. As soon as it arrives I'll let you know because it will be a handy cross-check.
Furthermore, if the non-COVID deaths were false-negatives, why would they peak one week before COVID? They would peak at the same time?
LOL - you've pre-empted my next newsletter! I've been running cross correlation functions of COVID with non-COVID by region and have 10 tasty slides waiting to go under the grill.
Not sure if this is the right place for this, but...do you have access to any regional care home deaths data going back further than 2020?
It would be nice to see whether that synchronicity of excess death curves is present or not during prior flu seasons.
I've been looking but can only find annual figures. Another FOI maybe. I've also been downloading everything ONS have on historic flu to see whether this regional sync is what generally happens.
No joy obtaining historic weekly by region but I have unearthed a glimpse as to what flu outbreaks look like on a regional basis for the 2021/22 season. Try figure 39b of this report.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1083633/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w24_v2.pdf
Thanks, though obviously the picture diagnostically (if not biologically) is complicated by overlapping with Covid - flu isn't routinely tested for so was I reckon they're just a ragbag of respiratory infections with no obvious localization suggestive of bacterial infection which also test negative for Covid.
The same will be truefor prior years but at least the Covid effect won't intervene.
Actually I see these are SARI cases...so lab confirmed. That makes it more interesting....
Yes, it's a right old ragbag with no prospect of data for earlier years. Shame, coz I was going to put good money on variations in timing of outbreaks between regions.
What about all-cause care home death patterns regionally then? If influenza is a major supervening event on top of a more predictable baseline then should we / could we test for regional synchronicity in bad flu years vs non-bad flu years?
If this is just what respiratory viruses do then surely you'd see it much more clearly in the bad flu years compared to milder years.
I can't find any weekly care home data prior to 2020. There are annual totals by specified causes or by local authority and that's about it, so I'd need to run another FOI at some point.
Living in Scotland, I was looking at our own data.
There was a massive extra risk in the Central Belt: where hospital admissions and deaths in Spring 2020 were far higher than in the Highlands and Islands.
That figures: Glasgow is Sick-city.
Oddly enough, in 2022 this distribution reversed, with far more 'cases' in the rural and island areas: I dont have all the figures to hand, but this looks much like New Zealand: isolation tends to slow down the spread of the bug, and 'Omicron' speads like wildfire to the parts that Delta missed.
Here at Rob Kay central, in a semi-rural area, all of my family finally caught the bug in Spring 2022: it was like a moderate cold for all of us of all ages, vaxxed or not, no real issues.
My 'out of the box' question is this: so far rates of death etc in very rural Sub-Sarahan countries like Ghana have been very very low indeed: so will they catch up eventually , or are they immune for whatever reason?
Do we have the data for N.I. and Scotland to compare?
No sir - someone will need to rummage better than I can!