Latest Posts
Reporting on excess deaths from Covid19 around the world Reflections #29
Insight Increasingly, the best way to measure the toll of Covid19 around the world is not the reported deaths (such as from Our World in Data) but by looking at overall deaths in a population. As an example, the reported deaths to 27 April 2020 in the UK are 20,732,Continue Reading
A look at the evidence of Covid19 transmission in schools #28 Reflections
Insight While the NSW School study of 18 pupils suggests that the risk of Covid19 spread from reopening schools is small, a much more comprehensive study of 661 students, teachers, parents and siblings from a school at the centre of the first outbreak of Covid19 in France suggests substantial spreadingContinue Reading
Anzac Day – remembering the horrors of war
Ever since I won the negative in a debate at school on the topic “that Anzac Day was the birth of modern Australia”, I’ve struggled to decide what I think of Anzac Day. Ultimately I would like it to be a day that is a day of remembrance, that makesContinue Reading
A look at the Infection Fatality rate of Covid19 Reflections #27
Insight Recent antibody testing in New York has added weight to my hypothesis that the infection fatality rate of Covid19 is around 1%. New York has done some random-ish population testing of antibodies to the Sars-Cov2. This New York Times article has the story. In New York City, about 21Continue Reading
Has air pollution reduced from Covid19 lockdowns? Reflections #26
Insight – Air pollution I have read a lot of people recently talking about how clear our skies are, given how few cars there are on the road. Sydney has had some beautiful days lately. So are we managing to reduce pollution (and hence improve our chances if Covid19 getsContinue Reading
Why should we do random testing for Covid19? Reflections #25
Insight Today I’m going to talk a bit about why random testing is important, and why in my view, we need to have the ability to do random testing in order to relax the lockdown. I now know of three countries where they are doing testing that is closer toContinue Reading
School reopening – how to think about the risks? Covid19 Reflections #24
Insight The possibility of reopening schools in Term 2 continues to be debated in the press (and here at home). As I mentioned in my last post, here in NSW, Gladys Berejiklian announced that schools would reopen to students in the third week of Term 2 (that’s May 11 –Continue Reading
Covid19 Reflections #23
Insight Today the Australian Government talked about more modelling that would start to inform its strategy for lifting the lockdown. One particular piece of research informing that is well worth reading – this piece from the Doherty centre which talks about two key issues – how many symptomatic cases ofContinue Reading
Covid19 Reflections #22
Insight There are an increasing number of data points showing that the deaths being counted for Covid19 around the world are a serious undercount of the actual deaths caused by the disease. Today I’m showing two fairly dramatic ones. First, in England and Wales the total deaths in a weekContinue Reading
Covid19 Reflections #21
Insight One of the key numbers that many people use to track how well we are going on containing Covid19 is the number of confirmed cases. I obsessively watch it myself. Today (14 April) there are 6,400 confirmed cases in Australia, which is only a 0.5% increase on the dayContinue Reading