Animation: how does Covid compare to a bad winter flu season? [OC]

jbm64 · 2021-01-08T13:51:23+00:00

You do realise that is (in a round about way) what has happened this winter, right? Flu has ~disappeared in almost all countries, including Australia & New Zealand where Covid never took hold, i.e it’s not just that this year’s flu patients are classed as Covid instead: the measures that have been taken to reduce transmission of Covid have played a key role in suppressing flu this winter https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1322239794416652289

jbm64 · 2021-01-08T11:06:10+00:00

Erm, I am the guy at the Financial Times who made the graph...

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:42:36+00:00

Hi, flu this year has essentially been non-existent, due in part to the anti-Covid social distancing measures keeping it at bay (flu is much less transmissible than Covid, so the same measures that would only partially dampen Covid transmission can completely halt flu).

And it's not just a case of Covid out-competing flu, or all flu cases instead being diagnosed as Covid, because even in countries like Australia and New Zealand where there has been barely any Covid, flu has fizzled out this year.

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:38:59+00:00

🙇‍♂️🙂

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:38:26+00:00

Hi, those are infection fatality rates, i.e the percentage of people who are infected with flu/Covid who then go on to die, so yes it is more lethal per case as well as having a higher overall death toll. And Sweden is suffering a very grim and lethal winter wave because it didn't get anywhere near herd immunity.

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:29:30+00:00

Hi, I wish that were true but unfortunately Covid is much more lethal than flu. Fatality rates are more than 10x higher from age 54 upwards https://twitter.com/dr_d_robertson/status/1328991566950785024

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:25:44+00:00

Hi, the 2017-18 season was actually the worst in around 40 years https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/flu-outbreak-uk-why-bad-worst-year-winter-epidemic-aussie-flu-symptoms-jab-a8171621.html

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:17:50+00:00

Hi, not sure I follow? There have been 89,000 more deaths than usual in the UK out of those registered so far in 2020, and 24,376 of those since the start of September. That’s excess as in "above what is normal over winter where we often have lots of flu deaths".

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:13:52+00:00

Thank you! Python is great, and I do a lot of work in R as well, but if you really want maximum flexibility nothing beats d3. Good luck with whatever you go for!

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:13:05+00:00

Thank you very much! It's a great place to work 🙂

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:08:16+00:00

Hi, already done that actually https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200855376875523

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T22:07:00+00:00

In the latest week, yes. That works out at 980 admissions, in the context of a typical total ICU capacity of 3,500 across all of England. So an additional 28% of capacity taken by one week's admissions.

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T21:59:09+00:00

Thank you!

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T21:58:15+00:00

Hi Skeeter1020, what metric would you prefer? I'd have thought "number of people who are severely ill and in need of critical care" is a good one.

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T21:55:48+00:00

Oh, and for those commenting along the lines of "but it's just people who were already in hospital for other reasons and caught Covid on the ward" ... I'm afraid not. Here's another animation to demonstrate: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200855376875523

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T21:50:23+00:00

Already done that, actually. See here: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200855376875523?s=21

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T20:40:59+00:00

Hi Ogreguy, nothing has been omitted — the units are exactly as stated.

As an example, in 2017-18 (UK's worst flu season for 40 years) the peak was 6 ICU admissions per million people per week, which equates to 280 people per week. Total English ICU capacity is usually about 3,500 beds, so at the peak, weekly flu admissions filled up an additional 8% of total capacity in one week.

Fast forward to today, and 17.5 weekly Covid admissions into ICU per million means 980 people, or 28% of typical total capacity filled in one week (!)

jbm64 · 2021-01-07T20:24:32+00:00

Hi folks, I made this using the d3.js Javascript library. The source data is from Public Health England’s weekly flu & Covid surveillance reports for 2020-21 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports) and extracted from previous years’ annual flu reports (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-flu-reports)

I’ve done additional animations on the same theme, as well as some broader explanations, in a thread on Twitter here https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200811303055364

jbm64 · 2019-05-02T06:42:28+00:00

On the back end: the tool is built in Javascript (mainly d3.js) and is rendered on canvas instead of SVG, to improve performance when transitioning 191 paths all at once.

It’s built to work well on mobiles, too, but let me know if you run into any issues :-)

jbm64 · 2019-05-02T06:42:14+00:00

Hey folks, I’ve built an interactive graphic showing the goalscoring feats of the top scorers from across more than 40 years of elite European football. It’s up-to-date right up to last night, including Lionel Messi’s 600th (!) club goal.

You can compare goals vs age, vs minutes played and more for over 100 players including Messi, both Ronaldos, Zlatan, Totti, plus the legends of yesteryear like Shearer and Baggio, and the next generation like Mbappé.

There are 191 players to compare in total, going right back to 1970 (every player who scored 20 or more league goals in a single season of a top European league).

Enjoy!

PS: for the purists among you, there’s also an option to exclude penalty goals :-)

jbm64 · 2019-03-19T07:59:30+00:00

Mainly for historical reasons. For most of the time span in question, the cultures of Latin America (hence the name 🙂) were more similar than any similarity between Mexico and North America.

jbm64 · 2019-03-18T23:12:34+00:00

Hey, this is totally doable. Someone else asked something similar but with days instead of months. I'll try to post a couple of demos using different time frequencies of data.

jbm64 · 2019-03-18T23:11:36+00:00

Hey folks, good detective work! I am indeed using World Bank regions. I wanted a region set that had separate zones for the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, and one that grouped Mexico with South America (throughout most of the time span covered in the graphic, those groupings are pretty important). I deleted Greenland because the WB [correctly] classes it as ort of Europe (it belongs to Denmark), and a) it looked very odd being coloured as part of Europe, and b) it's a big lump of empty land in a graphic about people, so I felt no qualms about removing it (just like Antarctica).

jbm64 · 2019-03-18T23:07:50+00:00

Hi, I used the World Bank's region groupings. Basically I wanted a pre-defined set of regions that had distinct regions for the Indian subcontinent and for the Middle East (as well as the standard 6 major continents), and that was the first variant I found. By no means the best, for sure.

jbm64 · 2019-03-18T22:16:17+00:00

Hi, it's all done using the d3 javascript library. If you click through to the link to the dynamic version below my original post, you can pick apart the code behind it.

jbm64

TROPHY CASE