Another Friday update: we’re well into our private Beta of our predictive analytics and what-if? modelling system for Covid-19 analytics.
So what is it telling us today?
As of 3rd February our projections are (within their confidence limits, which of course become broader the further out we look, even if the central projection is tracking the reality curve well), that the R number bottoms out about now for the UK as a whole, with case numbers continuing to fall until around the 9th, by which time R number is back to .92 and, by the 13th, it’s more likely to be above 1 again, mostly driven by the SE (Essex particularly) and Merseyside (see header picture).
On Friday 29th January, the Scottish Government announced that Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Western Isles) is being put into Level 4 lockdown, following a surge of new cases.
On the basis of the data available to us and our modelling approach, we’re not convinced about this decision: it appears to have be made on the basis of out-of-date analysis in an area which turned the corner on this outbreak some time ago.
Our emergent analytics, which generate fresh outlooks every day, suggest that the peak of the outbreak here was passed on 19th January and that it has declined, on multiple metrics, since then.
Over the last few months, we have been using advanced data intelligence to improve the sourcing, timeliness and validation of Covid-19 statistics. We then use our emergent and adaptive platform to provide high quality predictive modelling of its likely progress.
Human nature being what it is, people have become somewhat desensitised to raw numbers and to the differences between the first surge of the virus in March-May and where we are now, despite that difference being genuinely scary, as any front line medic will confirm, if they still have the energy. So anything that helps communicate the current situation more effectively can only help – this is one of our alpha stage experiments, animating the rolling case rate per 100,000 population for the UK, from March 12 2020 to January 5 2021.
We – as a society – had the opportunity to prevent SARS-CoV-2 becoming endemic. We largely wasted it, initially by not locking down early enough or for long enough to remove it from the population. Nor did we use the lockdown period to set up effective data collection, testing, tracking and analytic tools to enable rapid and fine-grained response to predicted changes in incidence (it’s a truism that, by the time you’re working with actual data, you’re already behind in your response).
Public policy decisions are therefore based on incomplete and lagging data, partial models and on individual and committee opinion (however well qualified the participants) rather than being informed by data-driven modelling of potential outcomes. We are also behaving as though we’re dealing with a static target rather than a continuously evolving situation, one where an unintended consequence of partial and incomplete restrictions is that it effectively selects for different strains of the virus, as it evolves to cope with changes in population behaviour. This virus, like any other, has been mutating since before it collided head-on with our species, and it continues to evolve as it seeks selective advantage in exploiting its human host population, at any given time. Continue reading Time for a different approach?→
Two Worlds is an AI research consultancy and incubator, specialising in complex, adaptive systems. We create strategies, technologies and services that encompass advanced data discovery and fusion AI/Machine Learning, IoT networks, augmented and mixed reality systems.
