For the first time in this pandemic the UK will be leading the way....

The first to achieve a disasterous second peak.

Apparently the cabinet are raging that the message was pre recorded allowing for no discussion.

The PM clearly wants an early finish to his day.

I wasn't aware that the FT has started plotting excess mortality data. It's obvious that we have a faster reporting system as the data for some other countries (e.g. Italy, Germany etc.) only reach the end of March and early April. It does look pretty bad for the UK though and like Greece, there seem to be other countries too, where all cause mortality has actually dropped below normal during their lockdowns! It's still too early though for proper comparisons.

Another interesting finding is how much worse the excess mortality has been in NYC and Bergamo compared to London and even worse in a specific area of Equador.

Sweden’s approach that was gaining plaudits is not looking so good now (they’ll probably overtake us soon)

Indeed and same in Equador, the official numbers of deaths from Covid are much lower, but their excess deaths numbers reveal a significantly worse picture.

No room for dissenting opinions. Not even in a COBRA meeting.

"The Covid-19 pandemic may have started as early as October, according to a new joint study of its genetic make-up by researchers at University College London and the University of Reunion Island.

The pathogen wreaking havoc on the world, known scientifically as SARS-CoV-2, is thought to have made the jump from its initial host to humans at some point between October 6 and December 11.

The findings – based on analysis of more than 7,000 genome sequence assemblies collected from around the world since January – will be published in a forthcoming edition of scientific journal Infection Genetics and Evolution.

Researchers studied the evolution of the mutations since they jumped to humans in order to work back their molecular clocks to a common starting point.

Separately, Chinese government information, seen previously by the South China Morning Post, suggests one of the first patients to emerge was a 55-year-old resident of Hubei province on November 17. "Patient zero" has not yet been confirmed.

The theory the virus was circulating earlier than had been thought came after a French athlete who fell ill after competing in Wuhan in October said she had been told by doctors it was likely that she had caught Covid-19.

The claim by Olympic silver-winning pentathlete Elodie Clouvel bolstered theories that coronavirus may have been carried around the world by people who had taken part in an international competition in the Chinese city.

Ms Clouvel, 31, said that she and her 27-year-old boyfriend Valentin Belaud, also a pentathlete, had fallen ill after the Military World Games, held in Wuhan between October 18 and 27 and featuring 9,308 athletes from 109 countries. "

---------------------------------------------------------

Falling ill during and after big sporting events is quite common and I would like to see proof that it was Covid-19. It is a scenario that could explain it becoming established before it was noticed because any infected athletes would be going back to different Countries so maybe just one or two to each different locality. This would then take 30 days or so after that before it might start to show up in that local population.

As a 7 day rolling average that graph could be slightly misleading as it doesn't allow for trends.

Belgium still at the top in deaths per million of pop. Not that we might not overtake them. 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter on Marr for anyone who missed him.

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1259409480347004928

It should be noted though that Belgium is one of the few countries that include probable deaths (without a test).

That's not quite right, though, is it. The virus is a threat to everyone but the threat level increases with age. Then you are to factor in the other risks associated with gender, certain pre-existing conditions and genetic factors, particularly but not solely to do with race.

'Staggeringly small' is fine until it's someone in your family that turns out to be in a higher risk group. 

'Staggeringly small' is also fine until you recognise that those people are still carriers and will pass the virus to others than may not be in the 'staggeringly small' group. 

He is so spot on.

In Greece and some other countries, the daily briefings have been done by scientists only and they attracted huge audiences with very high levels of trust. The PM and other ministers only did occasional press conferences. They are stopping the daily briefings there now anyway as they have contained the epidemic (at this stage).

Would one of our resident Tories (a saner one like lanky) please explain the purpose of this "address to the nation". We know what he is going to say anyway. 

Why can't he just make a statement to the Commons tomorrow?

Just been watching  "Click" - yes I know

... however,  they had an interview with  an Icelandic scientist who has been tracing infection origins  He said most  of Icelands infections originally came from the UK.   He also  reckoned that a lot of Italy's early infections came from the UK.

This raises  many questions.  Just when did this   start in the UK ?   How many people have been infected  in the UK ? Just what is the  true death rate (given it looks like this may have been circulating  for a long time before the death rate /  serious cases  reach a threshold  where people started taking notice) ?

Good Lord! I never thought I would see the day I'd be praising Warner and the Torygraph!

The Barclay brothers are clearly not happy with their former pupil. They wanted a proper ending of lockdown, not this half baked crap, but we end with worst of both worlds and falling between two stools

There are papers which claim to show that US cities that took aggressive early action with the Spanish flu had a much better health *and* economic outcome (their economies recovered much more quickly). However, that virus was killing mainly younger people, so I don't think it applies necessarily to the current pandemic. 

This Tweet has a clip from the Spiegelhalter interview. "Far more people have died" than the official government number.

The government’s daily briefings on #Covid_19 are "not trustworthy communication of statistics" says Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge#Marr https://t.co/TTJMcT0lgb pic.twitter.com/BEKFRhg23H

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 10, 2020

It is a threat to everyone but it's not unreasonable to want to recognise the level of personal threat. To a young healthy person the threat certainly is staggeringly small, less in fact, than seasonal flu. Primarily this is a disease that is dangerous for the over 75's. 

See the interview with the Prof on Marr.

Not on that extract but I thought his take on the number of UK cases was very interesting

He did bemoan the fact (quite rightly) that the survey to establish the real number of cases still has not been completed and that this number is of importance.

He worked back from worldwide stats showing a mortality rate of between 0.5 and 1 per 100 cases to conclude that since we have about 35000 deaths in the UK, the real number of UK infections is in the range 3-6 million as compared to the published figure of around 200,000

Yes, many experts seem to think that only 5-10% of our population has been infected.

Wales has reported 223 new cases and 12 new deaths

That's all good, but my point is that (unlike other countries) we didn't adapt quickly:

• there was no modelling done of the impact of a lockdown until March


• even in mid-March there were UK govt officials saying that this cannot be contained. This is despite knowing at the time of the success of South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam etc. The mantra was (and repeated by some here) that ~all countries will have a ~similar outcome at the end. There are many more countries now that have managed to contain the virus, but of course it's still early.


• The decision to stop community testing and tracing on 12 March was also a big mistake. The main reason was lack of capacity, but the strategy could continue in areas with small numbers of infections. There has never been a single UK epidemic, but several local ones, all with their own different timelines, local characteristics etc.


• And the biggest mistake of them all is what happened in care homes, despite the pandemic preparations and exercises and despite Whitty's early warnings back in Jan/Feb. This is just unforgivable.