Having seen your thread in the FA I would recommend strongly taking very little that's posted here at face value and certainly not being swayed by a poster's comments unless you know they have expertise in the field or are offering calm commentary.

On a more optimistic note people on forums (us!) are usually very interested and very well informed. But like people who complain about a product on line, people don't often write in and say they didn't have a problem. The worst case scenarios are often the most discussed. The risk of infection is relatively low for people following the lock down. What is the sample size on here? How many of us have had it so far? There, that's cheered you up a bit! Of course outside it is a lot higher. The aim would be in the medium term to try and get the risk as low outside as it is in lock down to keep buying time. That might take a lot of lock downs and a lot more sensible people than we have but I think it can be done.

If 50,000 die in a year it is terrible. But that is approx 0.1% (if my maths is better than some!). You wouldn't bet on a horse at a 1000/1 and expect to win.

The ONS data today finally gives an indication of a crucial number - how many extra people is the virus actually killing at the moment? Eyeballing at the graphs it looks to be around 40% up. Not good.

The UK still appears to be tracking Italy very closely in terms of cases/million. If that's the case then 20,000 is a lower bound on death toll and we'd expect to hit it in around 14 days' time.

Endgame still seems unclear. We don't know enough about the virus yet as far as I can tell.

I remember reading "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance" by Laurie Garrett about 10 years ago now. Good book - I recall finding it pretty convincing, but then of course I forgot about it and went back to life. It's now seeming rather prophetic.

Again, thanks Michael.

Quoting from that article

"These results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may enter MT-2 cells at 6 h post infection, but does not replicate, and then the viral RNA degrade."

So, fundamentally different to the HIV mechanism.

The triple lock is a disgrace. The pensioner group it benefits are on average far better off and have benefited from decades of economic boom, leaving them in a far better position than other sections of society.

This was from 3 years ago, and it remains correct.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/06/triple-lock-pension-should-scrapped-mps-generational-inequalities

Why are you defending it, Gavin?

I have never read this from a German source, its more likely to be hearsay in the UK. 

813 UK deaths today. That's higher than I was expecting.

I'd say the biggest problem is a convoluted and bloated management structure, which has been exacerbated by decentralisation into small Trusts - which, through idiotic political dogma, are often in competition with each other.

Too often, it seems, the greatest control is given to beancounters and career 'management executives' who work to their own agendas, instead of to clinical staff who know what resources are needed and how they should be allocated. 

Apparently it is to do with the initial source of infection. 90% of Germany's initial infected were 30-40 years olds returning from skiing, they in turn infected the same age group, and therefore had a higher chance of recovery, then they locked down.

Over here by all accounts the initial source was older people returning from Cruises and overseas holidays, thus infecting the same age group and being much older, a higher death rate, then we locked down.

So it looks like it due to the initial spreaders being a different demographic between the countries and much higher testing also bringing their death to infect ratio down as well.

Regional breakdown of the deaths. The North West seems to be a bit of a hot spot at the moment.

• London 206


• North West 143


• Midlands 109


• East of England 95


• North East & Yorkshire 93


• South East 73


• South West 25

You only have to look at how the UK state pension compares with much of the rest of Western Europe.

The last section of that article is the best -

"But pension experts warned that pensioner incomes will start falling within the next decade, even with the triple lock. David Sinclair of the International Longevity Centre, said “While it is right to debate cuts to pensioner benefits, we must take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This debate cannot be about young versus old.”

Tom McPhail, of advisers Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Politicians are chronically compromised when making any policy decisions [that] might be detrimental to older citizens. You only have to look at the turnout in general elections to understand why: 78% of the over-65s voted, compared to just 43% of the eligible under-25s.

“The triple lock has served an important function in bringing pensioner incomes back into line with the rest of the population. It is also important to recognise that pensioner incomes will change again in the future, we are about to hit ‘peak DB’ after which successive pensioners will be increasingly reliant on the state pension and on defined contribution arrangements. Any measure to curb either of these in the next few years could rapidly push more pensioners back into poverty.”

This is most certainly not a subject for discussion here but you've only put one side of the story. A decade of absurdly low interest rates has given those with mortgages a huge benefit whilst reducing the income from savings of the generation you say benefited from 'decades of economic boom'.  For those reliant on a money-purchase pension scheme the collapse in annuity rates, linked to low interest rates and increasing life expectancy, has had a significantly detrimental effect on their retirement income.

I would have expected a less one-sided view, given your evident intelligence.

Well, 1 in 5 pensioners are millionaires and no, they don't all live in big houses in the SE (or smaller houses in London!)

Those who are millionaires could easily manage without an extra few hundred pounds a year.

Breakdown of the 744 deaths by date in England

• 122 on April 13th


• 319 on April 12th


• 132 on April 11th


• 164 between April 1st and April 10th


• 7 in March with one on March 23rd

I agree, Gandalf, but what the "natural history" of this pathogen will be once it reaches an equilibrium remains to be seen. We do not yet know the long term reliability of any immunity resulting from having CO-19. Nor do we know where the virus will be able to "hide out" in the human population or perhaps some reservoir host. We will be ill advised to let up on the present strategies for  reducing transmission before we have something effective in place to protect us, a vaccine or other medical treatment. That will take time and the prospect of a sequence of CO-19 peaks if we relax our present efforts is deeply worrying. Roger

A pension discussion for another thread I think, do you ?

You're quite right - My apologies - I only brought it up as I saw it in a business section of one of the papers referring to the overall costs of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Yes the Robert Koch Institure president confirmed last month that any deaths where the patient had Covid-19 were being recorded as “Covid-19” irrespective of whether it was the direct cause of death or not. So the lower rate (as discussed by Warren) is likely to be for other reasons.