Covid19 Reflections #7

Today’s insight

NSW Health has released a whole lot of new information on its website about all the cases in New South Wales. There is far more information than last time I looked. The sobering statistic is that there are now 19 people in intensive care in NSW with Covid19, nine of whom are on mechanical ventilation.

The site also includes a list of events with known clusters of cases associated with them. One of two events with more than 20 cases emerging was the  “Boogie Wonderland Party” in Waverley Local Government area on 15 March (that area is centred on Bondi beach). That was the day before all “non essential mass gatherings” were banned.

The section I immediately jumped to was the cases by local government area, and specifically the cases with unknown origin by local government area. I’ve shown here the local government areas with at least 5 locally acquired transmissions, but this gives you a sense of which areas are likely to have the most “community based transmission”. And the biggest area, with 17 cases locally acquired without a traced contact was Waverley – probably not coincidentally where that “Boogie Wonderland Party” took place. There are 116 cases in total in Waverley local government area.

Today’s links

In a cross-over promotion today, today’s first link is the article some colleagues and I published for the Actuaries Institute on Covid19. It’s a bit technical and for life insurance actuaries, so it’s really just for the aficionados. That’s where some of my statistics from yesterday came from.

But a bonus link for my readers who are not actuaries (which really counterbalances the first!) an article from the Atlantic pointing out how flawed all the statistics you are reading right now are.

Many people will want to know in the next few weeks how the war effort is going. Are infections still rising exponentially, or are we flattening the curve? Is the economy headed for another depression, or are we poised for a swift bounce back? In short: Are we winning?

The frustrating answer is that we don’t know—and we might not know for a while.

That sounds a little downbeat, but it is always worth taking a step back before going too far down a statistical rabbit hole.

Life Glimpses

This week I’ve had quite a few meetings (all by phone or some form of videoconference), and I always start by asking people where they are. Sometimes, if they are on zoom, or some other video app, it’s obvious as you check out the backdrop, and admire the decor and see a new side of your colleague you have not seen before.

At the beginning of the week, there were one or two people in the office, but yesterday I had 8 people, all from different companies, all at home. Some were having a bit of challenge with their company’s infrastructure, as it struggled to work with so many people logging in remotely at once. One person commented that his office in the city now has weekend security on, there are so few people going in. Not everyone likes it, but everyone agrees that there will be far more remote working even when we are all allowed back in the office.

Bit of Beauty

Today’s bit of beauty comes from the park nearby, where it was once again a beautiful day at lunchtime today. We don’t always get contrails in the sky (it depends on how the wind direction affects the flight paths) but there definitely weren’t any today.