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5 Oct, 5 tweets, 3 min read
In the UK the number of cases rose rapidly.
But the public – and authorities – are only learning this now because these cases were only published now as a backlog.

The reason was apparently that the database is managed in Excel and the number of columns had reached the maximum.
Here is the article dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8…

Glad that they are apparently now working on a solution. Not one, but several Excel spreadsheets…
It is now also the main headline at the BBC: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-544125…
At the end of last week confirmed cases were "actually nearer 11,000" – about 4,000 more than reported.

This is very, very bad and also means that the outbreak is much more rapid than thought.
Poorly managed is not just a huge problem in the COVID-19 pandemic – and helping to improve this situation is one of our main motivations to build OurWorldInData.org

The BBC has now published details on how the Excel screwup happened: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-544225…

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More from @MaxCRoser

Max Roser Profile picture
22 Sep
Economists are not known for agreeing much with one another.

Regarding the challenge of how to achieve the required reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a majority of the most widely respected economists agrees however: carbon taxes.

igmchicago.org/?s=carbon+tax ImageImage
This here is a survey of 365 economists who have published papers related to climate change “in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal” and the result is the same.

[link policyintegrity.org/files/publicat…] Image
This survey also finds that compared with the general public (pie chart at the bottom) a much larger share of economists believes that climate change is a serious problem and that it is time to act now.

(Very much contrary to the caricature of economists in some media outlets.) Image
Read 5 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
16 Sep
One of the weirdest things about this pandemic are the crazy claims that some people make about Sweden.

This guy is getting back to me with a claim that very obviously contradicts the very tweet that he is replying to.🤦‍♂️ Image
I expect that Sweden will do well in the longer run –– it is one of the richest countries with one of the best health systems on the planet.

But to say that Sweden has done well in the first months of this pandemic is absurd (8.3% econ decline and one of the worst death rates). Image
If you are looking for a country to praise (and learn from) my suggestions are Korea, Germany, or Vietnam.

[Here is the research on they managed to do so well:
]
Read 4 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
11 Aug
Years ago Lant Pritchett suggested an additional higher poverty line:
Back then the extreme poverty line was $1.25, he suggested to add $12.50 per day.

Now I want to update it:
I’m suggesting int.-$30 per day.
(arguments in the next tweet.)

What do you think about $30 per day?
This was how Pritchett arrived at his additional poverty line.

He followed the same logic that the UN/World Bank applies to arrive at the International Poverty Line (for extreme poverty) Image
I’ll share the calculations in the next tweet, but this is my overall thinking to get to $30 per day.

$30 per day is a very low poverty for one of the richer countries in the EU (Germany) and in line with the poverty line in a country a bit below the EU average (Spain). Image
Read 6 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
21 Jul
new paper by Leigh Shaw‐Taylor in the Economic History Review:
An introduction to the history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the long‐run decline in mortality

free-access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… Image
From this paper. A survival curve for Londoners and people in the countryside for the 1730s.

Less than half of those born in London lived to see their fifth birthday, and 80 per cent failed to make it to 45. Image
This chart shows that mortality was so bad in London that deaths consistently exceeded births.

London was only able to sustain its population because of continuous immigration of healthier young adults from the British countryside. Image
Read 6 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
20 Jul
Humanity’s history is a battle against the microbes. And for most of our history we were losing very decisively.

My new post – and visualization – on how vaccines allowed us to make progress against recurring epidemics of infectious diseases:
OurWorldInData.org/microbes-battl…
For most of our history we were losing very decisively against the microbes.

No matter where or when they were born, around half of all children died. Billions of them died from infectious diseases.

[in detail here ourworldindata.org/child-mortalit…]
The world today is obviously very different. Infectious diseases are the cause of fewer than 1-in-6 deaths and as we learned how to protect ourselves from germs life expectancy doubled in every world region.
The global average is now 73 years.

[see ourworldindata.org/life-expectanc…]
Read 23 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
7 Jul
What share of Spain’s population has antibodies for the new coronavirus?

Even in Spain – one of the very worst-hit countries so far – only 5% have antibodies.

The big (sample 61k) serological study of Spain is now published in The Lancet thelancet.com/journals/lance…
The fact that 95% of the Spanish population do not have antibodies is very bad news for the hope to reach herd immunity any time soon.

Or as the authors put it:
The study also confirms again why it is so difficult to fight COVID-19: The authors found that around a third of seropositive participants were asymptomatic.

This meant hundred thousands of people who spread the virus without knowing.
Read 4 tweets

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