For no particular reason ...

A Sunday thread highlighting just a tiny sample of the brilliant women whose tireless work has shaped my understanding of Covid-19
To kick off, who else but @chrischirp — staggeringly clear, accessible science communication throughout the pandemic, sharing critical data and charts virtually round the clock! Half the time I'm scrambling to catch up with my own work
@nataliexdean — creator of some of the most powerful, accessible visual communication on Covid that I've seen, certainly far more effective than anything of mine! Just consistently outstanding
@mugecevik — Muge's brilliant, detailed, clear threads have been teaching me everything I know about the virus since early 2020. Nailed so many critical points before anyone else
@kallmemeg — vital work breaking down the UKHSA reports into language the person on the street can grasp. An invaluable skill that is belatedly being recognised
@firefoxx66 — working almost 24/7 to distill enormously complex data into clear summaries of the variant situation at covariants.org. We would all be in a much darker and more uncertain place without Emma and her team
@Rukmini — tirelessly and almost single-handedly telling the story of India's pandemic, tracking data that the authorities wouldn't and showing the world what was coming with Delta. Buy her book!
@EpiEllie — brilliant science communication as Covid took hold in the US, and on several occasions rightly pointed out issues where my charts were potentially misleading
@flodebarre — striving to unpick the variants puzzle in a country that doesn't make it easy, and casually dropping outstanding graphics along the way
@dgurdasani1 — an unwavering voice highlighting the risk Covid poses to the most vulnerable, and an invaluable sparring partner for me who has opened my eyes to several key issues
@statsgeekclare — oh no biggie just running the UK's Covid dashboard team that presents far more information, far more clearly and accessibly, than any other country's dashboard in the world. Without that data I'd have made about four Covid charts in two years
@mgmgomes1 — a razor-sharp mind and brilliant mathematician whose insights are leagues beyond most others' and has completely transformed my understanding of the pandemic's past, present and future on multiple occasions
@SarahDRasmussen — another world-class mathematician who has time and again come up with analyses that would never have crossed my mind, and have completely changed my thinking
This list is obviously only the tip of the iceberg so I'll end with
• A call to follow @DearPandemic, who highlight the invaluable but often unsung work of women in not only communicating the pandemic but doing the science that fights back against Covid and saves countless lives
• A call to fellow-journalists to do better at featuring women's voices in our coverage of Covid. This is something I strive to do in my stories, but I've certainly fallen short far too often kcl.ac.uk/news/women-hav…
An observation to finish:

A response I often get from women experts on Covid when seeking comment: "thanks, but I don't think I have much to add to what has already been said"

From blokes? Not so much

Please give us quotes, you have just as much to add as the men, if not more!
But to be clear, this is about far far more than [some] women being less eager than [some] men to weigh in, and it's remarkable how often structural gender inequality also plays a big role in who is available to chat and who isn't.
Just to be clear folks, this list was never meant to be exhaustive — really the full list is about as long as there are women in Science — but a few particularly glaring omissions that I am mortified about are:
1) @devisridhar who has time and again calmly and clearly set out where we are, where we're headed and what we should be doing about it, all while remaining even-handed and unfailingly positive
2) @VirusesImmunity who has been delivering clear and comprehensive immunology courses for free on here for 2 years (read this one in the context of third doses as well as seconds)
3) @SMHopkins of UKHSA who has been a consistent and clear communicator throughout the pandemic and has expertly led countless technical media briefings that have left us all infinitely more informed
4) How on earth did I write this list without including @zeynep, who has time and again been right about Covid where others have been wrong, and is probably my single most recommended follow on Twitter (both for Covid and everything else)
And again, this list is not and cannot possibly be exhaustive. Please add your own names, and check out the threads and lists that dozens of women have written today

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More from @jburnmurdoch

15 Dec
NEW: here’s a chart showing daily cases by specimen date in London, broken down by variant.

This is what is coming to ~every country across the world in the coming weeks.
Let’s go deeper:

First, how are cases suddenly shooting up this fast?

Simple: just as we saw with Alpha and Delta, we’re now seeing two epidemics alongside one another. The recent steady rise of Delta masked the take-off of Omicron beneath. There’s no masking it any more.
How about the rest of the UK?

Same story, just a few days behind London (the hot new thing always comes to London first).

Record-high UK-wide reported cases today, and that will rise *a lot* in the coming days.
Read 23 tweets
10 Dec
I think we may need to recalibrate our idea of typical case numbers as Omicron takes off.

Here’s what UK cases could look like *in the next week or two alone* if Omicron continues to double every 3 days (some actually estimate faster growth)

Story: ft.com/content/2b309e…
When cases start surging, it will be more important than ever to use the right data to track the extent of severe disease.

I’ll be using this chart: the total number of people in critical-care beds *for any reason, not just Covid*.

It’s excess deaths, but for hospital pressure.
(you may recognise that from this animated version last year, which comprehensively debunked the myth that "hOsPiTaLs ArE aLwAyS fUlL aT wInTeR")
Read 6 tweets
10 Dec
NEW thread: data show South Africa’s Omicron wave is resulting in less severe disease and death than past waves, though health officials say it’s too early to be sure, and severe outcomes will continue to climb.

Story by me, @jsphctrl, @mroliverbarnes: ft.com/content/0ee745…
I’ve not adjusted the dates in that chart, so you can see that admissions typically lag cases by several days, and deaths lag by around two weeks.

So Omicron deaths *will continue to rise* but it’s clear that they’re not tracking cases as closely as they did in the Delta wave.
Now, we need to be careful here, because not only do deaths lag cases, we also need to note that the rapid rise of Omicron means there have been fewer cases accumulated than at the same stage of the slower-rising Delta wave, so we would expect fewer deaths
Read 19 tweets
7 Dec
Okay folks, still lot of uncertainty around severity of disease, but here’s what I’ve gleaned from latest data and many chats that @mroliverbarnes and I have had with the brilliant, tireless doctors & public health officials in South Africa ft.com/content/d315be…

Thread follows
Newest stuff first:

Data from @nicd_sa show that in Gauteng province, the share of Covid-positive patients in ICU or on ventilators is somewhere between 2-3x lower than it was at the same stage of the Delta wave 🤞 Image
This suggests a reduction in severity of outcomes, and we see something similar when we look at length of stay in hospital:

@nicd_sa gave me data today on admissions & discharges, and it’s clear that the gap between the two is shorter for this wave, suggesting milder illness 🤞 Image
Read 22 tweets
4 Dec
Okay folks, time for a South Africa update, focused this time on severity of disease.

First up, the report from hospitals in Tshwane (the district furthest along in Omicron wave) is essential reading, as is thread from @miamalan samrc.ac.za/news/tshwane-d…
If/when you’ve read those, you’ll understand why I didn’t open this thread with the charts showing exponential rise in cases, test positivity & admissions, which I believe risk oversimplifying the much more nuanced picture set out in the Tshwane report.
The charts I’m now going to show are a direct response to the Tshwane report. I don’t believe any of these contradict what the report discusses, but I think they help to contextualise it and think about where things are headed.
Read 20 tweets
2 Dec
NEW: today’s update from Gauteng, now on a log scale to better show current trajectories.

Steepness of lines shows how much faster the growth in cases and positivity is now vs past waves, and hospital admissions are now steepening too as the acceleration in cases feeds through.
Here’s same thing back on linear scale.

The eagle-eyed among you may spot something here: hospital admissions were tracking the Beta wave and first wave in yesterday’s chart, but today they’re slightly steeper. How is that possible, since it still shows data for the same dates?
This is why:

South Africa’s weekly hospital admission counts are back-filled every day as new patient data comes in, so the figure for the week ending Nov 28 has been rising in recent days, from 580 in the data published on the 29th, to 788 in today’s report.
Read 10 tweets

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