I see Chris Whitty thinks a second wave will be more severe than the current one , not a happy thought 

Has he said that today?

In terms of any measure I consider important, there is no comparison between the perennially excellent Ardern and the self-absorbed chancer Bozo.

Sorry for misleading , I had it sent to me , it was made on May 1st .

Probably still valid ………...I think 

When I used them last in early March I was pressing the keypad with the end of the car keys

One of my close friends was tested positive and developed it with symptoms.

His experience was that it was quite unpleasant, there was alot of aches, nausea and extreme fatigue. He said he developed a dry cough at the end when he was already well recovered from it. He described it as being worse than a cold but not as bad as some of the flus he's had before.

This hasn't aged well. The wheel could turn full circle but at the moment it looks like the mortality rate is higher than 1% and quite possibly between 1.5% and 2%.

Professor Chris Whitty:

UK chief medical adviser: COVID-19 death rate may be 'much below' 1%

"I have a reasonably high degree of confidence that one percent is at the upper rate of what the mortality rate is, to be clear. What the director-general was reporting was essentially dividing the number of reported deaths by the reported number of cases and getting to a number," he said.

..

"My own view is it may well be lower than that, because there may well be a lot of people who are infected and have no symptoms who we can't currently identify. And, therefore, if anything, I think it'll go down from that rather than up."

https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-06/UK-chief-medical-adviser-COVID-19-death-rate-may-be-much-below-1--OCBTGXA0E0/index.html

Daily data

• Number of tests - 126,064


• People tested - 71,644


• New cases - 3,446


• All settings deaths - 428 

 I am not sure that was the general opinion at the time   So with poor healthcare, 99% black, little PPE they have done better yet i think old folk live with their families in many parts of Africa yet that was cited as the reason for Italy,s high deathrate. 

 Lots of unknowns at the moment .

The backdated data today shows the earliest recorded death was April 4th with May 12th the highest single day for reported deaths

FWIW, 'all announced deaths' now has a breakdown by some pre-existing conditions. The percentages add up to more than 100 but i guess that is because some people have multiple pre-existing conditions. The list isnt that exhaustive though - 'other' accounts for 70% of cases. Diabetes accounts for 26% of deaths (could be linked to obesity being a factor?). 

Number of under 40s who have died with no known pre-existing condition now stands at 33.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

Hospital deaths do seem to show a plateau in the first week or so of this month. Might be heading down now (difference from 7th to 9th) although the last week's deaths will get added to over the coming days and it will be a while before we can say if it is a slight downward trend or not.

Even the Australian neocon PM has done much better than ours, the other day he called the herd immunity strategy 'a death sentence for vulnerable people'.

It's even worse than this, at various points in March and early April some UK scientists were speculating about 20-40% of the population having had the virus, that it is unstoppable and that it was just a matter of time before everyone got it. I think the influenza thinking and preparation has biased a lot of thinking and there was a clear failure to see at what was happening in other countries.

I expect for the majority of the population in Africa there are fewer people going on ski-ing hoidays, jollies to international conferences, big stadium concerts, massive sporting gatherings, etc. Therefore far fewer initial spreaders so the epidemic will take a lot longer to manifest itself.

That is the 6th consecutive day of new cases figures being in the 3k's which is an improvement on recent weeks, and with more testing. Shame the cases behind this number can't be 'pulverised' to see what's causing these as we may learn a lot and how to bring down further. The rate is going in the right direction at least, but ever so slowly.

Questions mount over Russia's low mortality rate
From the BBC news ticker:
"Questions are mounting over Russia's extraordinarily low reported mortality rate - only 2,305 deaths with 252,000 infected. Moscow's department of health says it does not include most deaths of Covid-19 patients in official statistics because they had other potentially lethal illnesses. St Petersburg has reported an unexplained spike in deaths from pneumonia - five-and-a-half times the usual number and 10 times the official number of Covid-19 deaths in the city.Meduza, an independent Russian website, says official statistics are doctored and Russians are effectively “not allowed to die from coronavirus”. Many of those who find official numbers hard to believe keep their own tally.

Medical workers have their own list of colleagues they say have been killed by coronavirus. Even Orthodox priests have launched their own list "because official statistics are incomplete". Earlier, the Financial Times said Russia’s Covid-19 death toll could be 70% higher than official figure, but officials in Moscow dismissed such reports as "fake".

You can add a zero on that % figure, and then double it would be nearer the mark.

I think that answers your question about Russia's low number of deaths and there is also the fact that deaths lag infections by as much as 1-2 weeks. Their excess mortality numbers will eventually show what really happened, just see below how lethal the 2010 heatwave was.

On my Zoe Covid-19 app has people with symptoms has plateaued now at 243,500 people currently with symptoms. This has to be expected at some point as we had not changed strategy for two months. We have now though so I would expect a creep upwards from now. Deaths will follow and reach their minimum in about two weeks time then plateau. Then we will be watching closely to see what happens next.

We're starting to get more useful data:

The first national snapshot of Covid-19 rates has revealed that 148,000 people in England were infected with the virus over the past two weeks.

The study, by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), tested 10,705 people in more than 5,000 households and estimated that 0.27% of the population in England were currently positive for Covid-19. That translates to roughly 10,000 people a day across the entire population, between 27 April and 10 May 2020.

The findings will inform the government’s next steps as it considers whether it is safe enough to further ease restrictions on socialising, businesses and schools in the coming weeks. Experts suggest the current rates of infection remain “some way off” what would be needed to lift the lockdown.

The results are likely to fuel concerns about the potential of opening primary schools on 1 June to fuel transmission in the community, as no evidence was found of differences in the proportions testing positive between the age categories 2 to 19, 20 to 49, 50 to 69 and 70 years and over.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/148000-in-england-infected-with-coronavirus-in-last-two-weeks