Update on NSW Covid19 deaths Reflections #37

Insight

NSW Health’s latest report confirms that there don’t seem to have been any unidentified Covid19 deaths (unlike many other countries), based on how many deaths in total there have been in NSW so far this year.

I took that statistic from NSW Health’s  weekly report on all things Covid (they’ve done four so far) with all sorts of interesting insights.

They have been closely tracking recovery timeframes for all Covid19 cases. Even for those under 40, Covid19 takes an average of two weeks to recover from (with 50% of cases taking longer). For all ages, it takes more than three weeks before three quarters have recovered. In case it wasn’t already obvious, Covid19 is a serious disease, which makes many people quite sick. 

This week’s report shows that as I had hoped, (given how closely we are monitoring everything) we have no evidence of excess deaths (that aren’t being labelled Covid) in NSW. The graph shows a slight reduction in deaths in March and April, compared with 2019, which is consistent with a reduction in risk from many things other than Covid (traffic accidents, flu are the two obvious causes with lower likelihood of occurrence), or is a small enough difference that it could just be random fluctuation.

Link

I challenged geekinsydney to make a map when I discovered just how much data the NSW government is releasing about daily covid cases. Partly, I admit, as I knew I had no hope of doing it myself. You can read about how difficult it was (spoiler alert, the data is not perfect), but right now, it tells you that there aren’t many cases around. Which is very comforting.

It may be more useful if we get an outbreak, as South Korea is experiencing (or even one as small as Victoria’s) but right now, I’m happy to see that there are still no diagnosed recent cases anywhere I might go in my daily life.

Life Glimpse

In honour of the opening up of NSW restaurants, geekinsydney and I went out for lunch this week. While I don’t think there is very much Covid19 in the community, so the risk is low, I was a bit taken aback at how lackadaisical their precautions were. I’ve read about restaurants thinking hard about disposable cutlery, and menus, and only setting the table on arrival, and making sure they had our contact details, but there was none of that. The only obvious change was the big bottle of hand sanitiser at the front and a bit more space in a restaurant that normally crams everyone into the (very small) available space. We even had the bill delivered to the table!

It’s amazing how much my mindset of acceptable interaction has changed in the 11 weeks since I last went out to eat. I suspect I will have to ease back into it a bit more gradually. The food was very nice, though.

Bit of Beauty

Today’s bit of beauty comes from the sunset freeway in Sydney. If you look closely you can just see the curve of the bridge and the opera house. Still a quieter road than usual, but getting busier…