I think you’re right!  If we’d locked down sooner, people wouldn’t have seen it as serious enough and would have been less likely to comply.  We can already see there’s a relaxing of lockdown starting to show after four weeks.  

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As I keep criticising the govt, I should also mention their successes:

• They managed to scale up ICU capacity quickly and avoid getting the NHS overwhelmed


• They recognised their wrong approach and changed course on 23 March (too late IMO, but still better than never)


• The slogan 'stay at home - protect the NHS - save lives' has been absolutely brilliant and has probably saved many lives


• They probably have got the balance on the lockdown right (not too draconian) and carried the people with them


• The Nightingale hospitals - even if they are never used or if they were only meant to be used as (inferior) emergency overflow units

I don't think that argument is valid, there are many countries which locked down very early (even when they still had no deaths) and people there observed the lockdown religiously. The public was way ahead of the govt on this.

 

Whoops, although probably more common round here 

Edit: Hmm - I'd assumed it was a typo but I see you changed my text. Should have realised knowing what a perve you are 

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Yes me too and I agree with those points. I don't think the employment side has been to bad either, assuming people were able to get all that stuff.

You can't argue that this Government isn't good at slogans 

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Interesting extract from an article in the Spectator. A bit of confirmation bias as this agrees with my views - that the government took the most likely scenario too much to heart and didn't pay enough attention to the risks associated with things being worse than the most likely scenario.

 

Notable observations from @JGForsyth in this week's historic 10,000th edition of The @Spectator on how politicians deal with "the science" (and scientists) of Covid-19 pic.twitter.com/Ilwj9itZGt

— Jonathan Isaby (@isaby) April 23, 2020

Postcode in Gloucestershire with the most hospital admissions by April 3rd was next to Cheltenham racecourse. Second highest number of admissions was by the station. A lot of the attendees would have been from out of town but workers at the racecourse, eg caterers would have been local. Should be noted though that there is no 'control' in this sample, we don't know what the hospital admission rate would have been had the festival not taken place.

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/leaked-map-shows-postcode-next-4071259

Interesting podcast here on the impact of Covid on the rest of the health service. Frasor Nelson from The Spectator with Alastair McLellan, Editor of Health Service Journal.

I suspect there is an element of that taking place.

Don't know whether or not any of the models attempt to factor in declining levels of compliance over time. However, I have read that compliance has generally been higher in the UK than the government expected so presumably there is some leeway regarding the dreaded R0.   

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I wonder how many members of the Jockey Club developed corona virus? Perhaps they will become our herd. 

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We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.  I think it helped that our public were lead into wanting a lockdown, rather than being forced into it.   Whether we timed it right or not and whether other countries had better strategies, only time will tell and I think it will be a long time. 

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That's the nub. You can also throw in that there's a special devotion to this government and a yearning they will survive, due to the desperation they have of leaving the EU and knowing this is the only government possible who could and would deliver it.

The only price is objectivity.

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Yep, and we have provided a valuable service to other countries in showing what happens if you don't lockdown quickly enough....

I agree that public approval of a lockdown helps but our number of dead would have risen somewhat regardless, people had the scenes from Lombardy and Madrid to show what can happen, and then the mounting death toll from the US. All of these would have helped public approval of the measures.

17,615 in hospital with Covid-19 down from 18,189 on April 21st

That's not true. We do know we timed it wrong.

Whatever happens, we were wrong, and NZ/Aus/Greece/SK were right.

If there is a vaccine, they will have lost fewer lives, and had a lesser impact on their economy.

If there is no vaccine they will have bought more time to increase capacity and take advantage of better treatments on the back of more research into and understanding of the virus, and had a lesser impact on their economy.

This is not something 'only time will tell'; it is something we can say with certainty right now.

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The lockdown continues to ease. A day after opening B&Q in Gillingham, 5 more branches have opened in Kent.

I suspect there'll be much more of this to come, with a creep of businesses claiming to be "essential".

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Daily slides

Cases

Hospital admissions down 10% on last week

Critical care bed usage is starting to fall

Deaths a faster decline likely in a week or two

Time will tell whether these places have re-opened too early 

 

Did they put up a slide for traffic? Did they leave it off because it shows an increase 😉

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Really encouraging numbers coming out of the daily briefing.

The number of people with Coronavirus in hospital is down, critical care usage down, fatalities down.

Sir Patrick Vallance is right - it is heading in the right direction.

— Professor Karol Sikora (@ProfKarolSikora) April 23, 2020

Italy

• 2,646 new cases


• 464 new deaths

It’s quite possible that after this current three week lockdown period, we’ll need to tighten measures further, rather than relax them, if the R0 figure is not low enough.

I’ve found the answer to my previous question and indeed there was no traffic slide. I find that quite suspicious and believe it is showing a large spike.  They’ve been showing this slide for weeks now. 
Maybe they’re hoping it’s a blip?

Hancock also ducked the question on traffic that was asked. 

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I completely disagree, we may have been wrong but we will not know until this is over. We have no idea what may happen re 2nd waves etc. 

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You can’t say it’s not true for certain Nick.  You can only say in your opinion it’s not true and you may well be right.  But we can’t possibly know the outcome yet as we’re a long way from the end and we don’t know whether other countries have really beat this.

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Intrigued by the lengthy fall in London (although from a high peak). Is this due to numbers initially being high in London so Londoners felt more at threat (either just by numbers or being more likely to know someone infected) and were therefore more likely to socially distance at an earlier date? Is it that certain groups of people, by say occupation, hobbies etc, have a higher R0 number and these people have largely been infected now and the people being infected now are other parts of the population with a lower R0 number?