Insight One of the key numbers that many people use to track how well we are going on containing Covid19 is the number of confirmed cases. I obsessively watch it myself. Today (14 April) there are 6,400 confirmed cases in Australia, which is only a 0.5% increase on the dayContinue Reading
Insight Covid19’s death rates are higher at higher ages. In all the outbreaks so far, the case fatality rate for people over 80 is well over 10% (there’s a table below with more detail). Some of the commentary urging early reopening from lockdown implicitly suggests that those people will dieContinue Reading
Continuing with my New Zealand theme, here is Jacinda Adern letting the children of New Zealand know that the Easter Bunny is definitely an Essential worker. The first time I saw this concept was the Premier of Western Australia (who put out a press release), but as usual Jacinda AdernContinue Reading
Today’s Insight Several people have asked me about how we should compare ourselves to Italy. There are quite a few ways, and I’m going to go through them. Yesterday (22 March) the number of confirmed cases in Australia was 1,363. In Italy, the point where that number was reached wasContinue Reading
Today’s Insight Something that I find somewhat cheering in all the news is that here in Australia, we seem to be doing quite well on testing. The graph below, from our world in data (currently my favourite overall source) shows that we are high on the list of total testsContinue Reading
Six weeks ago, I posted about the Coronavirus in China. Reading that blogpost now seems like reading something I wrote years ago. Since then, I’ve been reading obsessively and contributed a bit in the background to some of the Actuaries Institute material, and we now have more than 1,000 cases in Australia (there were 15 when I wrote the original blog post). This post is the start of my series of posts on the Coronavirus from an actuarial perspective.Continue Reading
The shocking murder of a woman and her three children by her ex-husband (and the children’s father) in Queensland this week has led to a lot of discussion of the statistics of family violence. The statistic I want to look at today is the deaths of children. The Drum onContinue Reading
I went to a talk this week at my son’s school by Paul Dillon, from Drug and Alcohol research training Australia. I had heard great things about Paul as a speaker, but not the thing that impressed me most – he had great statistics! So time for a blog postContinue Reading
According to Mexican legend, there are three types of death: The first occurs when all bodily functions cease and the soul leaves the body; the second occurs when the body is interred, returning one’s physical shell to the earth; and the final, most definitive death, occurs when no one remembersContinue Reading
Today’s book review is of I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time, by Laura Vanderkam. Those of my readers who know me in real life will know that I have recently started a new job (hence the lack of blog posts here).Continue Reading