The British government are not planning on making it compulsory and it doesn’t track you. That’s one reason they are keen to overcome the privacy worries - they need people to want to use it.
Most smartphone users already allow Google or Apple to track their every move, without even realising it. To change this default behaviour you have to delve into the privacy settings of the operating system.
www.bbc.co.uk
Good from the BBC. Lots of important points in this.
Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll
The rising number of coronavirus deaths is distressing. But what are the figures actually telling us?
The 35% was a quarterly drop in the OBR scenario (educated guesswork...), back to normal by Q4 with an annual 13% drop in GDP.
It’s all guesswork really!
A lot of that self employed work will be suppressed demand, with a post lockdown rush possibly keeping prices high enough to make up a good bit of the cancelled demand.
Yes, it's a really good article. Some of the extremists who shout very loudly really need to try to understand the bigger picture.Good from the BBC. Lots of important points in this.
Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll
The rising number of coronavirus deaths is distressing. But what are the figures actually telling us?
That article is dated 1st April. A lot has changed in the intervening 14 days, both in the science/modelling and in the acceleration of the UK death rate. The newly published ONS statistics show that, during the week ending 3rd April, there were already 60% excess deaths relative to the norm for this time of year. When the statistics for last week are eventually published, they will undoubtedly be much worse.
The main points remain unchanged, for example that ""Many people who die of Covid [the disease caused by coronavirus] would have died anyway within a short period," obviously it's difficult to say how many or how short a period. Bear in mind seasonal flu was mild in the last couple of years so there are more people who are alive now than perhaps would normally be expected to be, had seasonal flue deaths not been so low.
In an ideal world from the point of view of suppressing the virus you want the lockdown to go on for as long as possible but the bigger picture cannot be ignored.
Just because there is a large increase in weekly deaths it does not mean the majority of those who have died weren't going to die in the near future and it will take a number of months to become clear how many of those who have died were not otherwise close to death. Unfortunately this makes it hard to work out the economic cost per life saved in the short run, let alone the more sophisticated models that are usually used in health economics in determining whether a treatment is value for money. In normal circumstances the NHS uses a threshold of around £20-30,000 per QALY* gained from the use of a treatment (with some exceptions, such as for rare diseases where it is accepted the development costs have to be spread over fewer patients and therefor the cost per patient is going to be higher). Even if the economic cost of lockdown could be quantified at this stage (which it realistically could not), the problems with working out such a cost for the current situation are multiple. for example it is impossible to accurately predict how many (and who) would have died in the absence of lockdown, and while the typical life expectancy could be substituted to work out how long people had left to live (using figures accounting for diagnosed preexisting conditions and socio-economic factors) and the average quality of life with age there is quite possibly a reason why some are more likely to die of COVID than others, and that reason could be linked to early mortality more generally even if whatever the link is hasn't yet been detected.
A QALY related methodology does not care why an outcome is the way that it is but purely what that outcome is as it is (in fact as an economic tool many of those calculating such outcomes probably have no idea or understanding as to the scientific reasoning). That means it would consider the outcome in lockdown in comparison to there having been no 'treatment' (in other words allowing the virus to spread until heard immunity is achieved naturally) and would therefore include deaths for whatever reason. For example if 500,000 people with an average of 10 QALYS to live would die without intervention and 20,000 with an average of 5 QALYS (assuming a lower QALY value on the reasonable assumption that those who die due to a lack of available treatment will on average be younger and in better health than those who die due to the treatment not being sufficient to keep them alive) die despite lockdown, lockdown will have saved 4.9million QALYs will have been saved by locking down. The cost per QALY would then be worked out by dividing the cost of lockdown by 4.9 million. Based upon the typical NICE value of £30,000 in this case lockdown would have to cost no more than £14.7billion for lockdown to be considered a value for money treatment (although as the QALY values were plucked out of thin air the true acceptable cost in usual circumstances is almost certainly different to this).
The BBC article was updated on 14 April, after I posted #163 at 15:55. A cache of the original 1 April version can still be viewed on the Wayback Machine, see http://web.archive.org/web/20200406065850/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654 . Comparing the two versions, the following passage was deleted:
The replacement in the updated version is:
This change shows how the number of excess deaths directly attributed to Covid-19 in just w/e 3 April was nearly half that of the worst case number predicted for the whole epidemic in the UCL modelling quoted in the original version! No wonder the author deleted the reference to that discredited modelling. Of course the death rate has accelerated further since 3 April. Hospital deaths alone now total more than 12000, and even if we assume no more than 10% extra in care homes and the community, the excess death total is already more than double the UCL worst case of 6900, and still rising at nearly 1000/day.
A figure over a singular week without any context is of little use in determining much more than how many deaths took place in that week. What it doesn't tell us how many of those people wouldn't have seen Christmas in any case. It is quite possible that in a couple of months time the weekly deaths will be significantly below the typical value because the people who would have died in those weeks actually died in the week ending the 3rd April. In such a case the number of excess deaths over a number of months will be much lower than the sum of the weekly excess deaths (as in many weeks there will not only be no excess deaths but a lower than expected number of deaths) and it is the figure over a number of months that is more important (as sad as bringing any death forward however slightly is, the level of tragedy is much lower if most of those who died only had weeks to months to live in anycase).
There was an interesting thread on Twitter yesterday contrasting the actions taken in Ireland and attributing the higher death rate in the UK entirely to them. Unfortunately, while it was interesting and compelling it was wildly and disturbingly unscientific. I mean it was written by a history lecturer, but even in that context it was bad. You can't take took two wildly different countries in terms of population density, initial infection rates, ethnic makeup and other factors, and say they are basically the same except for a week difference in lockdown time, and then claim that the week's delay was therefore entirely responsible for all of it.
I don't think it can be entirely attributed to the approaches that individual countries have taken,although it has certainly got a bit of effect,
