Using ARIMA To Investigate COVID Death (part 4)

Cranking the handle on the latest daily data sitting in the UK GOV coronavirus dashboard

In part 3 of this series I presented the results of a predictive model for daily certified COVID death across England for the period Sep 2020 - May 2021, this being a busy period which saw the second and third wave of cases, viral variants and vaccination roll-out. I concluded that the initial jab simply didn’t provide any measurable benefit or significant harm and promised to run the ARIMA model again to assess the impact of the second jab. Herewith the results.

Before We Begin

Before we begin it’s worth plotting out the two time series of interest in a dual plot:

There’s a flurry of early second dosing back in early January 2021 that pops up around 2 weeks before the seasonal peal death toll. Whilst this is interesting, and we may speculate about vaccine harm vs. seasonal effects and dosing of the most vulnerable members of society, we need to put one eye on the surge in second dose uptake that isn’t reflected in the COVID death count.