I may well be speaking for everyone on this thread when I say everyone would be interested to know where you’ve been, who you’ve seen and what you’ve been doing, Justin. I think we should be told. R.

Nice one son, that was pretty much what i was saying in the first line of what i said. Never mind.

I am not sure I understand this argument. How could a country like the UK take the approach above and risk going deeper into the exponential curve, especially given the significant lags involved? It may work in Sweden, but they have a better health care system there, a healthier population, the highest number of single person households in the world and they had also banned mass events on 12 March. I don't think any responsible government here could take such a massive risk (the risk of completely overwhelming the NHS), especially given that mass events were still ongoing in mid-March.

The mortality rate (0.1%) mentioned by the other Swedish scientist is also completely wrong, or it could apply to Sweden only. Forget about mortality rate, in New York City the confirmed deaths so far is 0.16% of the population and the likely deaths is 0.22% of the population. These are not mortality rates, these are the percentages out of the whole population (not just out of the infected people!) and they are still rising!

With the data we have so far, deaths in the UK have peaked ~3 weeks after the lockdown and the app proxy of infections peaked 2 weeks after the lockdown, which is almost a perfect match and it shows the lockdown as having a big impact on our epidemic.

It’s absolutely heart breaking. 

I saw a piece on the news yesterday from New Zealand, how they are dealing with the crisis under the leadership of Jacinda Ardern. 

I know there are various factors why NZ was less vulnerable than the UK to this disease - physical geography & population density being a couple of them.

That said, I can’t help but feel the effects of COVID-19 on this country, most specifically our horrendous death toll, are symptomatic of bigger issues in our politics and in our society. 

This specific outcome for the UK almost felt inevitable. This is subjective but I feel like we’ve been losing our way for a long while. 

I had heard rumours of that happening but i wasn't sure if they were still sending off samples for later confirmation of infection or not.. likewise if they knew the patient was infected and upon death its a coronavirus death.. no need for post mortem confirmation.

I think it's far too early to make judgements on what was/is the best policy. I don't think we know enough about the virus yet and I'll keep an open mind on the issue. These threads quite often are focussed on the worst case scenarios and I think it's important to take note of other viewpoints as a bit of balance. Which are closer to the mark will only become apparent over time.

'Watch your tone'? For info, Allin-Khan still works shifts at Tooting St Georges hospital and has done so through this crisis.

I will respectfully challenge the Government - I want our country to succeed.

However, I will not 'watch my tone' when dozens of NHS and care staff are dying unnecessarily.

A clip of my Q to the Health Sec today. pic.twitter.com/5jjQRXyIm3

— Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (@DrRosena) May 5, 2020

That is true.  But given the way the number of cases and deaths climbed so sharply I am, frankly, astounded that anyone would try to argue that we should have waited. Remember that it was about trying to avoid the NHS being swamped. The graph shows clearly what would have happened if we’d delayed introducing the measures.

Also, some of the ‘what if’ game playing in that article were questionable. But the bottom line was an implied acceptance of deaths reaching six digits, eg 0.1% mortality rate would result in 65k deaths and the evidence doesn’t suggest it can be as low as 0.1%, given that we’re approaching half that number already.

How can you take seriously someone who insists that the mortality rate (infected people / deaths) is 0.1%, when 0.22% of the total NYC population has died so far? This is not being open minded.

The ratio of low deaths to new high cases, Russia must be recording their deaths 1-2 months after the event, and that's if we ever get to know!

If we ever get to know, Russia will end up having the highest death rate.

Is the lockdown doing more harm than good? - discussion here:

https://unherd.com/2020/05/is-the-lockdown-doing-more-harm-than-good/

Breakdown of the 366 new hospital deaths in England by date

• 66 on May 4th


• 127 on May 3rd


• 54 on May 2nd


• 29 on May 1st


• 85 in April


• 5 in March with one on March 19th

The state not the city.. how many new born have entered the NY state population since the virus? Also had lock down not happened how many would have moved to NY stat?

It's the city, not the state. The city has 8.3 million people, and as of 4 May, it has 13,536 confirmed CV19 deaths and another 5,373 likely deaths.

Edit: they say that they are more likely to underestimate the number of their deaths, so their actual number is probably even higher.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

Ok fair enough..

Roughly 9500 babies are born each month in NYC. So going back to your dismissal of the 0.1% did you also factor in the the new births when coming to your conclusion?

Madness!  

Three family members charged in shooting death of security guard who told a customer to put on a face mask

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/michigan-security-guard-mask-killing-trnd/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3TSA6C53HM-okusNXv_s4v0BbONVdWtyQRNsuXU_xEEEkCZIR51JgK8Kg

An interesting article. His conclusion, of course, was that it isn’t doing more harm than good.

This part made me roll my eyes: “More than that, a growing economy seems to keep people alive. The correlation between GDP per capita and life expectancy isn’t exactly 1:1, but it’s pretty strong, by the standards of most social-science findings. “

Either poorly expressed or just wrong. It is not growth that is the basis of the correlation but wealth, and wealth measured over a sustained period to boot.

It makes very little difference. The 8.3m is the latest population estimate and with that, 0.228% of the NYC population has died from CV19 so far.

If you allow 12 months x 9500 babies (and you ignore deaths from other causes), then 0.225% of the population has died from CV19 so far.

Just another awful story of a paramedic, which shows how much has gone wrong:

His family said that he had been worried since the start of the pandemic: many of the patients he and his colleagues were transporting lived in care homes where the virus was spreading, and his requests for any form of protective gear had been refused by his employers.

One day in March, he was sent with one colleague to pick up a patient from hospital. They found the patient unaccompanied in a wheelchair, and coughing. When they raised concerns, they were told by a nurse she had tested negative for Covid-19. They took her home, only to realise that she needed to be carried upstairs as she had no carer at the time; Gellaledin tried to avert his face while the patient coughed. They were not told that any physical assistance would be required, and were consequently unprepared; they were also not told that another ambulance crew had already declined the assignment on the grounds it was not safe. The patient later tested positive. On 9 April, the paramedic died of coronavirus. He was 53.