Just noticed that the Republic of Ireland has 1,125 cases, which at 228 cases per million is 2.5 times higher than the UK. Yet only 6 people have died, so the death rate is only 0.53%, nearly 10 times lower than the UK.

I can only assume, given that culturally ROI and UK are very similar, that they are doing much much more testing than here?

Why does the number of deaths depend on the amount of testing or am I am reading your statement incorrectly?

A suggestion that viral load plays a large part in severity.

Perhaps those infected by contaminated surfaces had a minuscule amount and therefore slight or no symptoms. Compare to data in this article where ENT clinicians are ending up in ICU with a high fatality outcome. The majority of cases will be on a sliding scale between those extremes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html

(...)

“There is evolving evidence that otolaryngologists are among the highest risk group when performing upper airway surgeries and examinations,” said a notice posted on the academy’s website on Friday. “A high rate of transmission of Covid-19 to otolaryngologists has been reported from China, Italy and Iran, many resulting in death.”

Dr. Rachel Kaye, an assistant professor of otolaryngology at Rutgers, said colleagues in New Rochelle, N.Y., which has been the center of an outbreak, first alerted her to the smell loss associated with the coronavirus, sharing that patients who had first complained of anosmia later tested positive for the coronavirus. “This raised a lot of alarms for me personally,” Dr. Kaye said, because those patients “won’t know to self quarantine.”

We are only testing people who are hospitalised and those working in the NHS, plus some others.

Perhaps the ROI is testing more widely than that.

After giving it more thought my guess is UK death numbers will dip in the short term before rising again by the end of the week. By the middle of next week I'm thinking around 70 to 120 daily. 

A dip would not be too suprising given the recent confirmed cases data. It may shed some light on that, if we don't see a dip that would imply the wierdness going on in the confirmed cases is just some statistical artifact.

I’ve just read that Lidl and Waitrose are lifting the contactless limit to £45. Is that amount enough? We have been told to limit our visits to supermarkets, and I certainly did anyway, as I hate food shopping, and when I could still go out I used Apple Pay anyway to avoid keypads. So, what constitutes a weeks or even a twice weekly shopping? 

Latest from India:

"Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a complete lockdown across the whole of India for the next 21 days.

In a late-night address to the nation, Modi warned 'if we are not able to manage the next 21 days, we will be pushed back 21 years.' 

Residents will only be allowed to leave their homes in an emergency or if purchasing essential supplies like medicines or groceries. 548 out of India's 728 districts had already been placed under complete lockdown following Modi's trial curfew on Sunday."

• this confirms in my mind that the statistics coming out of countries like India and Pakistan are ridiculously low, an order of magnitude incorrect.

The official figures for India: 519 Active cases.

Absurd - they would not lock down the whole of India for such a tiny, tiny, tiny rate of infection.

Are you Beast in disguise? 😉

Surely the whole point of this is to get in early with tough intervention?

The government is requesting the contactless limit is raised to £45. However, remember that Google Pay and Apple Pay don't have upper limits. I always use Google Pay if it is an option. 

Sounds like Trump is going for it:

Our people want to return to work. They will practice Social Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively & lovingly. We can do two things together. THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM! Congress MUST ACT NOW. We will come back strong!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2020

Oh dear. Let it rip seems to be the official stance of the Federal government, but the states are actually locking down. Could put the Union under strain if some states adhere to the federal government, whereas others stick to lockdown.

It is one approach. To be honest, there are no good options now - if it means destroying the economy, the cure is worse than the disease. Our best hope remains medical science.

The 1918 influenza epidemic led to at least 20 million premature deaths, but life went on and after the pandemic subsided - it opened the doors to the roaring Twenties. Hopefully, the 2020s won't be followed by a world war this time round.

Yes, there is more testing here. About 2,000 tests a day were being done last week and they're hoping to get that up to 6,000 a day this week. Given that UK population is about 13 times higher than that of RoI, 2,000 tests a day here would be equivalent to 26,000 a day in the UK. Just goes to show the difficulties of comparing statistics from country to country.   

Impressive. In the UK we appear to be struggling to getting about 5,000 to 6,000 per day despite being a much bigger country. 

I doubt that it is a "struggle" Brian, it is deliberate policy.

I can understand why too. The real numbers are going to be huge and what would be the benefit to the wider public of knowing them?

All the headline figures are fictive in any case. The official count of worldwide cases is approaching 400K as we speak, yet the real number is going to be tens or hundreds of millions.

However, if Covid 19 is running rampant, that's going to wreck your economy anyway. After all, pubs and hotels are going to be semi closed anyway if the infection rate gets bad enough. The hope is that if we can get it under control, the restrictions can be relatively short lived(even if lighter restrictions may need to remain in place for some time longer).

Nobody knows. The CFR drops dramatically if far more people have it than the stats show. I am not advocating anything at the moment, but I am simply pointing out that we won't know what the best approach was until we look back in a couple of years.

We should be looking at how society coped with Spanish flu for comparison.

These are my thoughts as well. We have seen that in the previous 3 days we have seen 40% of our total positive cases. With a lag between diagnosis and death I suspect that death rates will sadly increase dramatically this weekend and beyond.

422  death figures UK

8,077 cases 

That's a jump

+1,427 new cases (6,650 yesterday), +87 new deaths (335 yesterday)

OMG