Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) – Slugger O'Toole

The twin surges of the Alliance Party and the TUV threaten to redraw Northern Ireland’s electoral map

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on February 1, 2021, 8:25 pm

| Readers 8837

Today’s LucidTalk poll for the Belfast Telegraph shows the Alliance Party and the TUV are continuing to gain support with the Northern Ireland electorate, with the DUP suffering a significant decline in support following the fallout from the row over the Irish Sea border. The latest LucidTalk NI Political-Party poll scores – LT NI 'Winter 2021' NI Tracker poll (2,295 responses NI-Wide – poll-period: 22/1 to 25/1/21), as covered in today's @BelTel.. pic.twitter.com/xoCdacCKOg — LucidTalk (@LucidTalk) February 1, 2021 The …

Northern Ireland currently has one of the world’s highest COVID-19 vaccination rates

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on January 14, 2021, 8:00 am

| Readers 7595

Northern Ireland continues to rank among the world’s highest for the number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered per capita. The chart above, from Our World in Data, shows that if Northern Ireland were an independent country, it would rank third in the world for the number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered per person, behind the Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and fractionally ahead of Bahrain. The Northern Ireland Department of Health released this week a programme outlining its plans for vaccinating …

Northern Ireland is lagging far behind Great Britain on the wearing of face masks

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on July 27, 2020, 3:56 pm

| Readers 1309

Over the last four months, the percentage of the population in Great Britain wearing face masks in public has steadily increased. However, data from YouGov suggests that the percentage of the population wearing masks in Northern Ireland has remained flat over the last few months, and as a result the percentage of the population wearing masks in Northern Ireland is now lagging significantly behind England, Scotland and Wales. The chart above shows how mask wearing rates by region in the …

Northern Ireland records its first day with zero new COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the outbreak

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on June 20, 2020, 5:29 pm

| Readers 4847

The Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard has reported that today, the 20th of June, is the first day since the 10th of March with zero new COVID-19 cases. Over the last 7 days, 25 individuals tested positive out of the 5,964 that were tested, giving a positive test rate of 0.42%. This is low in an international context. For comparison, the chart below shows Northern Ireland’s positive test rate compared with the most recent data available for a range of …

Mask wearing rates in the UK are among the lowest in the world – it’s time for #MasksForAll

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on June 15, 2020, 7:30 am

| Readers 3949

As social distancing measures are relaxed in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, it is vital that everything possible is done to attempt to prevent a secondary wave of Covid-19 infections. Of the actions that citizens and policymakers can take to mitigate against the risk of another wave of the coronavirus, Northern Ireland and Great Britain are amongst the world’s laggards on what has been found to be the most effective intervention against the virus; the universal wearing of masks. The chart …

Northern Ireland is about to learn the cost of lies

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on June 6, 2020, 9:12 pm

| Readers 15679

“What is the cost of lies?” This is the question posed by Valery Legasov in the HBO mini-series Chernobyl, about the lies of the Soviet authorities in the lead up and aftermath of the 1986 disaster in what was then the Ukrainian SSR. The British government has stated that it will not be seeking an extension to the transition period with the EU following the UK’s exit from the union in January. It therefore appears likely that Northern Ireland will …

With the R number across the UK and Ireland less than one, what lessons can be learned from the United States on re-opening safely?

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on June 5, 2020, 7:30 am

| Readers 2932

The Northern Ireland Executive announced that there will be further loosening of lockdown restrictions next week, following the Department of Health announcing that the R number (the average number of people an infected person will pass the virus to) in Northern Ireland is currently between 0.7 and 0.9. It appears that R is holding steady at less than one across the UK and Ireland. The chart above shows estimated values for R across the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, …

The COVID-19 R number in Northern Ireland has drifted back up towards 1 since the partial lifting of the lockdown restrictions

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 30, 2020, 7:30 am

| Readers 84252

The COVID-19 basic reproduction number, or R, has become the most crucial metric for policymakers as they start to tentatively reopen the economy following the lockdown measures that were implemented in March to halt the spread of the disease. Lockdown measures will only be relaxed when the R value is below one. To attempt to calculate the R value for Northern Ireland, I used Imperial University’s EpiEstim app, which provides estimates for the reproduction number from daily case count data …

Sewage monitoring could be one of the most effective weapons in the battle against the coronavirus

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 26, 2020, 7:26 pm

| Readers 1319

A recent paper from Yale University has raised hopes that monitoring of sewage could provide a key early warning indicator of a community outbreak of the coronavirus. Researchers compared the amount of virus RNA found per mL in primary sludge collected from a wastewater treatment facility in New Haven, Connecticut in the United States, with the number of positive new cases in the community from mid-March until the end of April. The chart below shows the amount of virus RNA …

The United Kingdom now tops the global table for weekly COVID-19 deaths per capita

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 25, 2020, 7:30 am

| Readers 22010

With the Dominic Cummings saga dominating the front pages of British newspapers, data from Our World In Data indicates that the UK has overtaken Sweden and Belgium to become the country with the most COVID-19 deaths per capita for the week ending the 23rd of May. The chart below shows deaths per capita by week for countries that have been most severely impacted by the pandemic. Data for the most recent week (ending 23rd May) was estimated for Northern Ireland …

The coronavirus remote working boom has made many modern offices obsolete and the impact on the economy will be profound

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 23, 2020, 5:40 pm

| Readers 2319

The announcement this week by Facebook that they would begin to allow most employees to work remotely was among many this week from technology companies announcing similar moves towards remote working. The coronavirus outbreak has seen a massive increase in the number of people working from home. In 2019, only 5% of the UK workforce worked exclusively from home. In April 2020, 39% of workers worked only at home, and whilst this has fallen to 33% over the last couple …

Establishment of biosecurity zones could allow different regions of Ireland to safely emerge from lockdown at different speeds

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 12, 2020, 11:08 pm

| Readers 2501

The Northern Ireland Executive announced their roadmap to relaxing coronavirus restrictions today, following similar publications for England and the Republic of Ireland. Unlike the Irish government’s plan, no dates were released with the plan, although there is an aspiration to progress through the plan’s five stages by the end of 2020. Progress on lifting restrictions depends on the all-important R0 figure, the number of people with Covid-19 who subsequently infect others. However, calculating R0 is difficult and necessarily imprecise. An …

If the UK doesn’t change its disastrous contact tracing app strategy, Northern Ireland should align with the Irish government approach

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 5, 2020, 7:16 pm

| Readers 4424

As trials of the British government’s coronavirus contact tracing app begin this week on the Isle of Wight, serious questions have been raised about the design of the application and its potential effectiveness. There are two broad categories of contact tracing app: the centralised approach, where data from phones is sent to a central database where contact data can be analysed, or the decentralised approach, where in order to protect user privacy contact data is analysed on phones without the …

Mobility data suggests that Northern Ireland is traveling more than any other region in the UK or Ireland

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 3, 2020, 11:39 pm

| Readers 15276

Data provided by Apple on levels of mobility by Apple Maps users suggests that Northern Ireland has seen less of a drop in motor traffic levels than any other area in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The chart above shows average motor traffic levels by week, compared with the week commencing Sunday the 19th of January, for the regions of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Italy and Spain. The data suggests that this week motor traffic levels in Northern …

Ahead of the Stormont budget, should the Executive be rethinking its priorities?

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on March 6, 2020, 9:45 pm

| Readers 1367

With the first budget of the newly reconstituted Northern Ireland Executive expected shortly, there will be an opportunity to consider whether public resources are being directed appropriately to deal with Northern Ireland’s priorities for the decade to come. The table above shows UK public spending per person in each UK region for various expenditure categories for the 2018-19 fiscal year, in both monetary terms and expressed as a percentage of the UK average. For example, health spending in Northern Ireland …

Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales rank amongst the lowest countries in the developed world for the number of intensive care beds

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on March 4, 2020, 5:39 pm

| Readers 58366

The response to the Covid-19 coronavirus has raised questions regarding the capability of health systems to deal with an influx of patients requiring intensive care. It is estimated that one in seven of those who get Covid-19 will require hospital treatment, and out of those one in five will require ICU care. A widespread outbreak of Covid-19 would therefore put an unprecedented strain on intensive care facilities across the world. The chart above shows the number of ICU beds per …

High speed rail to the northwest would help alleviate Dublin’s housing crisis and Ireland’s severe regional inequality

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on March 1, 2020, 11:31 pm

| Readers 30666

Among the problems facing Ireland in 2020, two of the most pressing are the housing crisis in Dublin and severe regional economic inequality. Far removed from Dublin or any of the prosperous regional hubs such as Limerick, Galway or Cork, incomes in the northwest of Ireland (on both sides of the border) are amongst the lowest on the island. By contrast, despite the buoyant jobs market in Dublin, housing in the capital has become extremely expensive in recent years, with …

The mystery of the ‘shy nationalists’ – online and face-to-face polling on Irish unity continues to give different results

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on February 19, 2020, 11:49 pm

| Readers 8003

The results of an opinion poll organized by Liverpool University and Britain’s Economic and Social Research have been published this week. The poll, carried out by Social Market Research, showed 29% of voters would vote for a united Ireland, with 52% against and 19% indicating that they don’t know or wouldn’t vote. Polling on Irish unity over the last couple of years has painted a confusing picture. A poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft last year was the first to show …

The cost of living either side of the border

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on February 16, 2020, 10:58 pm

| Readers 11773

The issue of the cost of living either side of the Irish border received renewed interest today, following Senator Ian Marshall’s comments on the Sunday Politics that a single person in Northern Ireland is left with about £16,000 [at the end of a year], whereas the same person in the Republic would be left with €1,900 in their pocket. The Senator’s logic was that the cost of living is higher south of the border, and to an extent this is …

The Northern Ireland Secretary of State league

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on February 13, 2020, 11:38 pm

| Readers 6636

As part of today’s cabinet reshuffle, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dismissed Julian Smith from his post as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland after 204 days in the role. Julian Smith has proved a popular Secretary of State with people from all areas of the community. His efforts were crucial in getting power-sharing re-established at Stormont following the collapse of the Executive in 2017. Former Conservative party chair Brandon Lewis has since been announced as his successor. It …