Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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COVID19 Deaths #2C – Estimated Excess Deaths in England up to 15th May

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In many countries across the world, the total effect of the Coronavirus pandemic is now being measured using the concept of Excess Deaths.  However, publication of such data by the Office of National Statistics for England is up to 2 weeks slower than the daily deaths published by Public Health England.  In this post, I update my model which uses the PHE series to estimate what the ONS will publish for excess deaths in England on Tuesday 19th May.

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Coronavirus #1 – Useful Data and Links

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Updated on 14th May 2020.  New and modified links are italicised.

The Coronavirus Pandemic is a worldwide challenge many of us will have not experienced before.  It is natural to want to seek information on the risks and in our world today, it has never been easier to find data, analyses and opinions.  Unfortunately, a lot of what you will read out there is either unhelpful or actively misleading.  As an independent statistician with 30 years experience of explaining statistics to non-statisticians, my contribution to this crisis will be to try and sort the good from the bad hence this post. [Read more…] about Coronavirus #1 – Useful Data and Links

COVID19 Deaths #2B – Estimated Excess Deaths in England up to 8th May

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In many countries across the world, the total effect of the Coronavirus pandemic is now being measured using the concept of Excess Deaths.  However, publication of such data by the Office of National Statistics for England is up to 2 weeks slower than the daily deaths published by Public Health England.  In this post, I update my model which uses the PHE series to estimate what the ONS will publish for excess deaths in England on Tuesday 12th May.

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COVID19 Deaths #2A – Estimated Excess Deaths in England up to 1st May

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In many countries across the world, the total effect of the Coronavirus pandemic is now being measured using the concept of Excess Deaths.  However, publication of such data by the Office of National Statistics for England is up to 2 weeks slower than the daily deaths published by Public Health England.  In this post, I explore how the PHE series can be used to estimate what the ONS will publish for excess deaths in England every Tuesday.

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Coronavirus #3 – How many people have died of COVID19 in the UK?

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The Financial Times (FT) has estimated the true number of COVID19 related deaths in the UK as of 20th April 2020 is 42,000 not 17,000 as published by the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC).  In this article, I show that the FT headline is incorrect and is the result of either the FT comparing apples with pears due to a misunderstanding over what the various data sets measure or the FT attempting to estimate a number that can never be verified.

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Coronavirus #2 – What sample size does Boris need to lift all restrictions?

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April Fools day 2020 saw the hive mind of social media asking what the sample size should be to measure the extent of the Coronavirus in the UK.  I could see that many people responding were reaching for standard methodologies which are usually are based on specifying a desired confidence interval.  In doing so, they were overlooking a much more effective and relevant alternative based on the methodology of Acceptance Sampling, first developed by the US Military in World War 2.

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