A few conflicting reports with the data today

Michael Gove said 14,248 in hospital whilst the graph shown from Professor Powis had 14,220

Michael Gove also said 315 all setting deaths in the UK whilst PHE announced 327 deaths in England alone just before 2pm

The talk is all about the easing of lockdown measures now, with positive musings about the stats. 

Will be really interesting to see how this will work, and just how many people will download the NHS app. I genuinely think we’ll be surprised and I suspect vast vast numbers will download it. Hopefully, despite its hazards, it will go some way to help. 

PHE have revised England's death total down to 246 new deaths they earlier reported 327.

Last Sunday. NHS England reported 336 new hospital deaths

While stats seem to be revised all the time for one reason or another, that's a significant change Gavin. Can only be good for those wanting some relaxation of certain restrictions. Not such good news for those who like things as they are and want the tighter grip on things to continue. We shouldn't look at one day in isolation however.

Good grief this Telegraph journalist...

”how many years will it take for the UK to return to normal”

”what exact date and time did the UK pass the peak”

”what is the exact R number now”

”were the Nightingale hospitals built in error?” 

For crying out loud stop asking pointless, stupid questions - some of which don’t have a hope in hell of being answered. Infuriating. 

Italy

• 1,389 new cases


• 174 new deaths.

I saw that - absolutely stupid. He must hold this Government in some sort of God like status if he thinks they can be answered and shows a complete lack of understanding of Science.

If what is reported in the article below is true, it is an absolute disgrace. What the hell is the point of a lockdown and social distancing if the bloody borders are still open and people still allowed to arrive without a healthcheck?!

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18392092.snp-demands-uk-action-8-000-week-still-arrive-scotland-without-health-check/?ref=fbshr&fbclid=IwAR0g8XEuWWEFEitUuMOgINwlGLIyNEHkRpFVgLi1eZDt18A8tR8xgFGf2E8

No wonder the UK is on track to have the second-highest death toll of any country in the world. One couldn't make it up.

Idiotic questions especially asking for the exact time?! Come on! Was he expecting them to say something like it occurred at 2.34am? 

Really, really, really dumbass.

How many of those people were UK residents returning from overseas?

Well only if the rest of the world had done it straight away at the same time and they didn't did they? Some were already out of the Country before it was known. 

Exponential growth given its contagious level was inevitable if nobody else did anything. I totally agree if they had closed their borders straight away and everybody else did the same it would have made a hell of a difference. But flash back to January, even February, the attitude of most Countries at the time was that it's only a few cases so we will be okay. If they had locked their international borders sooner the apathy would have probably been greater and there would have just been a longer lag before the exponential growth made everybody wake up.

Regional data for new cases today in England

The 7 English regions 

• London +128 (0.5%) 24,828


• Midlands +246 (1.2%) 20,652


• North West +690 (3.4%) 20,125


• North East and Yorkshire +428 (2.3%) 18,967


• South East +213 (1.2%) 17,537


• East of England +158 (1.4%) 10,943


• South West +84 (1.3%) 6,489

The 10 local areas with the highest cases

1. Kent +39 (1.1%) 3,418


2. Birmingham +35 (1.2%) 2,904


3. Lancashire +54 (1.9%) 2,878


4. Hampshire +34 (1.2%) 2,861


5. Essex +35 (1.3%) 2,650


6. Surrey +20 (0.8%) 2,608


7. Hertfordshire +22 (0.9%) 2,341


8. Sheffield +21 (1.0%) 2,191


9. Cumbria +40 (2.0%) 1,954


10. Staffordshire +21 (1.2%) 1,787

The 10 local areas with the lowest cases

1. Rutland 20 - No change


2. Isle of Wight +4 (3.1%) 127


3. North East Lincolnshire 135 - No change


4. Hartlepool 197 - No change


5. Torbay +3 (1.5%) 206


6. Bath and North East Somerset 212 - No change


7. Bracknell Forest +3 (1.4%) 217


8. Calderdale +7 (2.8%) 252


9. North Somerset +8 (3.1%) 254


10. ​​​​​​​Windsor and Maidenhead +3 (1.2%) 256

Indeed. What I find interesting is no one seems to be talking about the possibility of a second wave developing this summer as lockdowns are eased. The fear seems to be next winter. I don't know why the experts are so confident there won't be a surge in cases before then. 

Edit: Cases in Russia seem to be surging despite the relatively warm weather.

The way I see it, the onus was on the Chinese authorities to act before anyone else did, since all the available evidence indicates that Covid-19 originated in their country. I totally agree that many countries were too slow in taking the threat of it seriously and thus acting accordingly. That said, whatever complacency and incompetence other governments around the world may be guilty of (and I include HMG in that), it should not be seen as a means of getting the Chinese authorities off the hook.

If the Chinese had acted fast, then the job of trying to contain the spread would have been made so much easier for other countries.

Going forwards though and particularly if you're trying to avoid or minimise further waves of the virus letting people in without checking them is massively dumb. No point ramping up home testing if you're just going to let people wander in/back in to the country at will. A cynical person would suspect that we're ignoring it due to lack of resourcing, having run on the bare minimum for years we just can't cope with anything other than letting people in unchecked.

All hindsight now, but I would have been expecting, relying on mechanisms to shut up shop straight away once it was discovered there was something deadly on the rampage out there. The World Health Organisation, in a way you would expect them to take 'control', order if you like countries to close borders completely. I assume they are there for advice only now, not good enough in my books there should be a stronger body out there with more clout. Still to be proved of course but they are being called out for being too easy on China, and this is the problem because it let the nightmare rip.

There's a huge story, or cover up waiting to be 'discovered' out of Russia. Or they have found a way to keep a lot of people alive contracting the disease totally out of sync from most other developed countries.

I have a fair bit of sympathy with the Chinese on the spread side of things. Ignoring for a minute the initial cover up, given the virus is relatively communicable and there's quite a few asymptomatic individuals, by the time you realise that this isn't just an odd respiratory outbreak a few bods have got it was probably already too late.

Transpose Wuhan in China for pretty much any city in Europe and you're going to have the same issue. A few cases would make it to hospital leading to a bit of puzzlement, then enough to be a concern and authorities would start looking at things and then you realise you have a problem. I rather doubt anyone at that time would have said "you know what we need to immediately cease all travel within the country and to or from it", people doing so now are judging by hindsight. Even if they had at that stage decided to do that the chances are the genie would have been out of the bottle already, with the only way to try and contain it to have co-ordinated global shutdown of all travel, which frankly wasn't ever going to happen.

Now if you want to look at the fact the Chinese cities (and a fair bit of Asia) are worrying good breeding grounds for novel viral strains given the farming/food practices and population densities then there's definitely a case to answer. You're never going to be able to eradicate animal to human transmission given modern farming practices but you can minimise the chances and stacking cages of live wildlife on top of each other in crowded markets needs to be something that's stamped out. Similar things can be said about encroaching on wildlife habitats although that's a thornier issue given the reason it's less likely to happen in the West is we've destroyed large parts of the eco-system already  so preaching to others doing the same now is a bit tricky.

In terms of official cases*, urban areas of NE England are increasingly being the most affected areas, 4 out of the top 5 now.

Local authority  Number of cases  Proportion per 100,000

Sunderland                 1206    434.7

Gateshead                    875   432.1

Brent                          1355   409.6

Middlesbrough              566    402.7

South Tyneside             595    396

Cumbria                     1954    391.7

Southwark                  1209    381.1

Knowsley                     566    378.4

Sheffield                    2191    376.1

Harrow                       939     375.4 

*Yes, i know we can argue about what the real number is all day but as it has often been the worst affected people who have been tested it probably gives a good guide as to how many people have generally been affected (although health of population will affect the % of people infected who go into hospital etc.

It shouldn't let  China off the hook for not preventing whatever practices might have been going on to let it jump to humans. But the point I am making is it was not possible whatever they did to have had zero people leaving the Country who were not infected. The starting number is irrelevant. Once there is just one person you have likely started a pandemic unless every one of them was tracked and isolated. That's how exponential growth works. The lag would have just delayed things a bit.

I think that even if the Chinese had acted quickly and had it not been for the initial cover-up, it is still very likely that the virus would have spread beyond China's borders. However, there is little doubt in my own mind that the cover-up and the refusal by the Chinese authorities back in December/January to acknowledge that something very serious was on the loose, even after some of their own doctors and medics had tried to warn them about it, greatly exacerbated the spread of the disease to China's neighbouring countries and then further afield.

It's all water under the bridge now though, but the rest of the world is now paying a hell of a price for China's mistakes, and in more ways than one.

As an aside, it was also noted that the North West has now 'overtaken' London with more hospital beds in use??

The same applies to the UN though. It's like saying if it were mandatory there would be no wars. The USA ignores the UN largely and has even withdrawn money to the WHO in the middle of all this!! 

You say China "let it rip". But the maths of an exponential contagious outbreak, as I alluded to above, mean you just need one person to start a pandemic. With what they knew at the time zero exit of a contaminated individual from China was impossible. What should have happened as soon as the first cases were reported all Countries should have locked their borders and started social distancing, tracking and tracing. This might have been feasible then. As it was only a few Countries did this. It might be hindsight but China were no worse than anybody else in this aspect and better than many.

To me the China should be targeted to do much more (although I understand they have started) in stopping the practices that most likely allowed it to jump species. That's what started the pandemic- not failing to stop International flights.