Just a reminder that this happened on the 10th of March, days after Italian ICU doctors were begging all European countries to lockdown immediately. The next week our govt asked us not to go to pubs and restaurants (only for the PM's father to proudly say that he'd ignore that advice).

I think that most European states will follow similar trajectories with differences arising from demographics, core strength of healthcare systems and the effectiveness of the initial response. The places I'm worried about are the US where there is a major crisis brewing, and India which has very little resource with which to fight this. I think Brazil will get ugly too.

---

 

yes but things changed very rapidly after that.

---

Who knows of course, but I think the drop in the number of deaths in the UK will also be gradual and slow. We didn't use a hammer approach (some countries like Greece did and they have avoided the surge completely) and we implemented physical distancing in a more gradual manner. Many people didn't wait for the govt to act and as soon as they started seeing the images and the numbers from Italy, they started distancing during 10-23 March. The official lockdown only started on the 24th and that will only affect deaths after mid-April.

Agreed, but you omitted Pakistan, which in many respects is even more creaky than India.

---

According to The Times..

Covid-19 risk was deemed moderate by scientists

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-19-risk-was-deemed-moderate-by-scientists-x5lwlztz3

---

Over 700 people have died in London from Coronavirus so far

• London - 727 (34.0%)


• Midlands - 437 (20.5%)


• South East - 251 (11.8%)


• North West - 211 (9.9%)


• North East and Yorkshire - 211 (9.9%)


• East of England - 178 (8.3%)


• South West - 121 (5.7%)

30 deaths are not yet known by NHS trust.

London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust have recorded the most deaths so far with 113

No matter how fair I try to be to the govt, some numbers are truly shocking. Just 2,000 frontline NHS staff have been tested out of a total of ~125,000 who are self isolating. So just 1.6% of frontline medics who are off work have been tested, when many of them could have something else other than covid and they could be working. This is so unfair for their colleagues and their patients and a complete fiasco.

Sweden will also continue to be a country to follow

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sweden-defies-lockdown-trend-bets-citizens-acting-responsibly-n1172781

They have put in place low level restrictions and are counting on people behaving responsibly and other demographic and cultural factors as far as I can see. With primary schools still open this strikes me as very risky, and the report covers a spike in ICU admissions but time will tell. There is clearly a lot of disagreement among Swedish experts on this.

---

We could go on. Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh.....

India and America stand out because of the sheer size of their respective (and different) problems.

---

Didn't you see this article from Sweden I posted the other day - there has been a leak of government information which is quite alarming - use google translate:

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/BRK34E/sa-ska-stockholm-hantera-overfulla-sjukhus--om-en-vecka

"

Healthcare in Stockholm is now entering the "next phase of the pandemic".

This is how the situation is described in previously unknown documents from the Stockholm region .
The documents are a guiding forecast for primary care providers, that is, the majority of care that is not performed in hospitals.

The documents dated March 27 show that it is no longer possible to "keep away the patients in the same way in primary care, must begin to manage the flow of patients with infected patients" because in future it will no longer be possible to refer to the hospitals.

The background is according to the documents that as many as 10 percent of all patients with corona symptoms are expected to need hospital care.

However, as the hospital sites are limited, the Stockholm region has set an expected end date for when the intensive care units and the hospital beds are expected to run out of capacity in the Stockholm region.

According to the forecast described in the documents, the locations will run out of capacity on April 7. The maximum number of healthcare needs, the so-called peak, is expected to fall on April 29.

With the sharpened situation, primary care should now focus on ensuring the highest possible quality with the addition that "lowered quality may need to be accepted, can no longer strive for maintained quality".

The documents also show that plans are being made for fewer staff to handle more patients. In order to succeed, the region also wants to take care of corona patients in the home within the framework of ASIH, advanced in-home healthcare. They also want to plan to establish a new form of care, so to speak, especially residential care accommodation, which is an intermediate step between home health care and the elderly care, where exclusively corona-infected elderly people are cared for "under the same roof".

To separate the corona patients' coronation patients from other patients, the Stockholm region wants to open up special infection nodes, that 3-4 medical centers merge to receive corona patients in one place.

At the same time, physicians in primary care should be quickly trained across the web in palliative care, that is, care in the end stage of life. According to the documents, the palliative care should also be expected in home health care, that is, in the patient's own home."

 

 

---

 

Yes, the stable door was slammed shut with haste.

Pity the equine residents had already jogged off.

Allowing the Cheltenham Festival was rank stupidity, and smacks of giving the establishment elite one last jolly before shutting everything down. 

---

Had it been the International Darts Championship...

---

I know April Fools are frowned on today, but I liked this one:

---

 

That's a superb and scarily revealing article. 

I just hope the catastrophic errors, misjudgments and bullsh*t/lies are vividly exposed once this all calms down.

This government of liars and shysters shouldn't be allowed to con the British public yet again. But no doubt they'll be able to deflect blame and the plebs will fall for it.

---

At the time of the Cheltenham Festival the position in the UK can be judged from the chart:

H

 

Total attendance was 250,000. With known cases in the U.K. being only a couple of hundred or so, the likelihood was that somewhere between zero and a couple of people might have been there whilst carrying Covid-19.

---

Only for the govt's own scientific advisors themselves saying a few days later in public that the real number of infections is much higher than the number of confirmed ones.

I think this proves that you can't determine very much from daily variations in new cases; you need to look at a rolling average.

This is the number of cases in my local authority, Wokingham, over the last 2 weeks.

19/03/2020	9
20/03/2020	12
21/03/2020	13
22/03/2020	13
23/03/2020	13
24/03/2020	13
25/03/2020	13
26/03/2020	13
27/03/2020	22
28/03/2020	23
29/03/2020	23
30/03/2020	23
31/03/2020	24
01/04/2020	67

The number of cases nearly tripled today. I assume that some areas are only reporting some days?

---

 

and take into account the numbers, who possibly given the audience had just traveled overseas, and it was a recipe...

 

One friend of ours either had it or something similar a few days after going to the whole race meet, two days later their wife went down with the same thing. The brother of the friend who went, had a few days earlier come back from skiing in Northern Italy.

---

The worst for me is that they are not honest. They could say we had that policy in place for these reasons, but we had to change course on the basis of new data we are now doing everything possible, but it's very difficult. Contrast this with the greek PM who went public on the 11th of March and said no matter what the govt did their healthcare system would not be able to cope and the only way to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths was to shut down the economy immediately.

There were more than 100 schools from Greece visiting N.Italy in february and Greece has a very aged population, mostly living in flats and a poor public health care system. Greece now has just ~1400 infections and ~50 deaths.

 

West Berks was the same Darren, today. A comparatively sizable increase albeit from a small base number, although nowhere near tripled tbh. I wonder how it works though in terms of the figures. If someone from Wokingham or a village near Newbury, as we are, was admitted to hospital, surely they would be admitted to the RBH in Reading and then fall under the Reading numbers, or do they take the data based on home address?

---

Hi Gavin. I know it will be very low but are you able to put a percentage of death as part of the population in that region. Wondered though certain areas might be low, as a % of their own base they were higher than the larger regions?

GMC 3172375 calls for Whitty, Vallance and Johnson to be put on trial. 

563 dead today.This figure is in part due to the arrogant,stupid and catastrophic decision to keep schools open and allow public gatherings to achieve the “60% for herd immunity” nonsense. Prof Chris Whitty, Vallance and Johnson should be put on trial. Dr R Allen GMC reg. 3172375 pic.twitter.com/19SKgV8bBX

— Ricky Allen (@mollyallen41) April 1, 2020

---

 

Just becuase he's a Dr. doesn't mean he's not a pillock !

---

I take it you have read his Twitter feed too? 

---