Incidence Rate

Tobi Hughes·
Madeira News

Thanks again to Harald for this week’s numbers, still pretty good at the moment.

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Tobi Hughes

18 Responses

  1. A number of changes have been made to the incidence rate report:
    1) The number of weeks reduced to 5 (current and 4 previous weeks).
    2) The line distance and character size increased.
    3) I searched back to week ending 13 June 2021 and separately recorded “Local” and “Import”.

    The resulting incidence rate is 7.7 – I think this is the lowest we had for a long time.
    It is amazing, and worrying at the same time, to see the weekly changes expressed as a %age relative to the lowest rate (7.7 in week 7-13 June 2021).
    Until now it’s not the imported cases but the local cases that should cause concern.

  3. Current 7-day incidence rate in Mallorca: 169

    Current 7-day incidence rate in Canary Islands: 130

    Only Harald and RKI think % changes are any relevant in this case. Probably went together in same school.

    The numbers are growing exponentially in every south Europe holiday hotspots: Algarve, Southern Spain, Canaries, Balearic, Greek Islands, Malta, Cyprus. But they are stable in Madeira. Of all these, Madeira is kept in a “high incidence area” by the corrupt German Govt. Investigate how many members of the corrupt German govt have been on holidays in Mallorca in the past two weeks and you’ll see I am right. When Germans can finally travel to Madeira they will all be locked down in their apartments by their own government because they allowed travelling to high incidence areas in Europe to serve their own wallets.

    1. DR. MERKEL (yes, she graduated) SENDS HER BEST WISHES AND OFFERS YOU A FREE COURSE IN MATHS.

  4. Oh, I would not take that not even for free. I had a good background of maths thank you, we have learnt to always look at percentage variations based on the absolute numbers we are talking about. I think it was in primary school but probably RKI staff skipped that lesson.

    1. It was you who advocated to separate “local” from the combined new cases. And right you were/are. But it appears that confronted with the realities you don’t seem to like it. After 13 June the “local new cases” have been on the increase (dramatically, one could say). It’s probably due to the so-called home or self insulation that should be changed into mandatory supervised insulation, away from home.

      1. Your table is perfect, the problem is the way you are interpreting it. You table has it all, you can take from there a lot of useful information. But you added a row based on percentages which is meaningless.

        I am not here to like or dislike numbers. I am here to interpret numbers as they are and to put them in context with reality.

        Your table shows that 4 weeks ago there were 20 weekly cases. And this week there were 58 local cases. So, what you mention as dramatic increase is actually (58 – 20) / 7 = 5 cases per day. The Delta variant is spreading fast all across Europe, there are regions where incidence rate is much larger than 200, however even though Madeira is now getting lots of visitors, the impact on the local community has been more 5 cases per day. And you say that is something dramatic. I am sorry, you can try to put the numbers as you like, put thousands of percentage increase, if you don´t put that in context with real numbers it is meaningless and you are only using it for scaremongering.

        1. The reality is a bit different: in the first week we had 20 new cases or 3 per day on average; in the last week we had 58 new cases or 8 per day on average. A significant increase! – You are merely averaging over the 5 week period thereby distorting the true picture.
          Do the percentage calculations start to make sense now?

          1. I am saying the exact same thing. 8 average daily cases – 3 average daily cases = 5 average daily cases.

            That is the effective difference between this week and 4 weeks ago. 5 daily cases on a 50% vaccinated population. No matter what you do with your percentages, it still shows a perfectible stable condition. You can show that from 1 daily case to 10 daily cases the increase is 900%, it will still be just another 9 daily cases…

            You seem to forget that in January Madeira even recorded 150 daily cases and the health system was never near overwhelmed. An by then people were not vaccinated. And even with those numbers, the death rate is 5 times lower than Germany. 5 times lower!

            The situation now is controlled no matter what bad maths shows.

  5. Antonio, The report is based on “7 (seven) days”. Your calculation, however, is over a period of 35 (thirty days). This does not make sense at all. I close my case!

    1. So much confusion…

      Looking at your own table:

      Week 7-13 June: 20 cases (average 3 cases per day)

      Week 5-11 July: 58 cases (average 8 cases per day)

      The Delta between the two weeks gives an AVERAGE of 5 cases per day. In other words, each day of last week recorded more 5 days per day than that week in June. There is nothing concerning in these numbers, this is a linear increase after a lower limit was achieved in the beginning of June.

  7. There’s a quote about statistics that says “facts are stubborn, but statistics are pliable”.
    It is a fact that case levels remain relatively low. The data also shows that cases have risen, though one can argue they are still low when compared to the daily case level seen over the past year. These are facts but whether they are statistically important, i.e. worthy of importance, that they have a real world significance, is another question.
    You may see a doubling of cases, a 100% increase, but if the initial incidence is extremely low, it may be premature to assign the increase any significant real world importance. That being said it may be the beginning of a new upward trend. Only time will tell.

    1. Precisely. In epidemiology we call this a basal level. The cases follow a downward trend until they reach a bottom level which is not zero because it is not possible to eliminate the virus. This basal level in Madeira can be 3 or 4 cases, or 7 or 8, we don’t know. All we know is that when you reach the lowest level you can get, then after that you can only go up. It is the rate of climb in terms of R(t) that matters not the the % changes. Going from 1 to 2 is better than going from 100 to 120 although the percentage variation of the former is much higher.

  8. While we can have a reasoned discussion about the implications of the data sets organized by Harald, there is no doubt that he is providing an invaluable service by pulling all the data together in a way that allows for analysis and for potentially identifying worrying or positive trends. The next 2 to 4 weeks may be instructive of where Madeira may be heading.

  9. “Because the at-risk groups are vaccinated, a high incidence doesn’t automatically mean an equally high burden on intensive care beds,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Twitter. “The incidence is increasingly losing significance, we now need more detailed information on the situation in clinics.”

    This is what the German Health Minister said today after incidence going up in Germany for 6 days in a row. So, with incidence going up it seems not to be a big problem. His own words. But Madeira has 2 people in hospital and is considered “very dangerous” to German travelers. Can anyone even try to understand the level of stupidity of these people?

  10. @Antonio Lamas
    Just ignore the Germans. Their “arguments” are not worth a thought.

  11. I agree with Antonio that percentages can be misleading when applied to small absolute values. An increase from 3 per day to 8 per day over a relatively short period of time needs contextualising. You both agree on the base numbers but not on the interpretation. I prefer Antonio’s version.

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