My latest COVID-19 post includes my submission to the Australian Long Covid enquiry, noting that there is a significant proportion of the population who have long term serious after effects from a COVID-19 infection, and that more data is needed.Continue Reading
What does “living with Covid” mean in Australia in 2022? There is continued pressure on the hospital and health care system, with illness creating disruption in most workplaces. It is likely that life expectancy has reduced by 6 – 12 months.
The impact is definitely substantially worse than a bad flu season, but at the same time it isn’t the catastrophe it would have been without an effective vaccine.
So what should we do about it? My view is that we should continue to look for mitigations that work to limit the spread of Covid19, without having too much of an impact on day to day lives – a vaccination plus strategy. On vaccination, we should make a bigger attempt to vaccinate those who aren’t yet fully vaccinated – the school children in the 5-11 age group are not even 50% vaccinated yet, only two thirds of adults have had their third booster doses. We should be monitoring and improving ventilation and/or air filtration in all public buildings – eg schools, offices, shopping centres. While that will be expensive, the cost of this much illness is quite substantial, even ignoring the human implications. We should continue the cultural change we have started of wearing masks where possible (such as public transport) and staying home when we are sick. Reducing the spread of this disease is worth quite a lot both economically and socially.Continue Reading
What proportion of reported Covid19 deaths are caused by Covid19, rather than being with Covid? Evidence from Australia and the UK suggests the vast majority of reported Covid19 deaths are caused by Covid19, and the others were hastened by it.What proportion of reported Covid19 deaths are caused by Covid19, rather than being with Covid? Evidence from Australia and the UK suggests the vast majority of reported Covid19 deaths are caused by Covid19, and the others were hastened by it.Continue Reading
In NSW in this wave of Covid19, are hospitals starting to ration care and send more sick people home as they run out of space? The statistics suggest that hospital in the home is being used more and more to take the pressure off hospitals. But some of the reduction in hospitalised cases could also be vaccination starting to reduce the seriousness of Covid19 illnesses.Continue Reading
Today’s Link In something that will gladden the heart of any actuary or statistician reading this, a number of Victorian testing centres have decided to test every 5th person who comes in, whether or not they meet the testing criteria. Why does that matter? Because it will give them aContinue Reading
Marta asked whether I would be writing on the weekend. The answer (as you can see) is yes, but I’ve decided to give myself the weekend off from analysis. So only three sections today. Today’s links If you’re riding bike around, you should leave more than 2 metres between youContinue Reading
Get a bunch of actuaries together (particularly life insurance actuaries) and sooner or later we will start talking about pandemics. Fortunately for us, our experiences are almost entirely theoretical. We’ve lived through AIDS (for the life insurance actuary, a very slow-moving pandemic, where the challenge was more about underwriting thanContinue Reading
Factfulness, Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think by Hans Rosling (with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund) Hans Rosling is the person who introduced me to Ted Talks, with this classic talk on visualising the world through statistics. I’ve used it aContinue Reading
At this time of year, towards the end of winter, there always seem to be more people around who are sick. There are a lot of people struggling on with the “flu” and a few people who actually have the flu, who depending on politeness, often tell those people withContinue Reading
Get a bunch of actuaries together (particularly life insurance actuaries) and sooner or later we will start talking about pandemics. Fortunately, our experiences are almost entirely theoretical. We’ve lived through AIDS (for the life insurance actuary, a very slow-moving pandemic, where the challenge was more about underwriting than claims andContinue Reading