Yes, we managed to spread death more evenly across society.

I'm not disputing the figures, because I don't know what sources & facts they purport to be based on, but two things:

1) The figures do seem very suspect. '% of overall mortality'? Overall mortality of what? All residents? Those that were confirmed to have caught it?

2) The Twitter poster seems to be an Alt-Right, nationalist lunatic, and the replies are almost all conspiracy bollocks about this whole crisis being manufactured/manipulated by liberals and the MSM.

Post is based I presume on this article:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-casualties/england-reports-far-fewer-covid-19-deaths-in-care-homes-than-european-states-idUSKBN22V1VI

The article in its breakdown of the figures however suggests that the other countries are including care home deaths in their figures, not just UK and Belgium.

Agree that the account holder appears to be a lunatic. He even goes out of his way to praise Trump's press secretary

Didn't the SARS pandemic occur back in 2003 or thenabouts?

I've been in 2 minds about whether to cancel our booked Cornish hols or not. I'm not worried about the risk to my family, but do worry about the impact of the usual hordes of like minded bods descending on the SW, which has had few cases to date. 

I don't know what the views of the locals is or will be - would they prefer everyone to stay away to avoid a possible surge in cases or welcome visitors as their economy is quite heavily reliant on tourism?

Equally I don't know what's going to be open at that point - part of the attraction is we can mix up lazy days at the beach (with pub lunch) with trips out to places (with pub lunch or dinner). If pubs/restaurants aren't open and a decent lump of the attractions aren't either I'm not sure there's much point in going.

I've been leaning towards just writing the deposit off and using what I would have paid as a fund to do things locally instead, again assuming places are open by then.

Decisions, decisions.

(Bit of a first world problems post this I know!)

1) My sister and her family live in a coastal village frequented by tourists. I'm told the locals are not keen on having holiday makers staying at the present time. That could change of course. 

2) Yes that is a crucial point. IMO it's more or less pointless going if pubs and restaurants are closed.

I hate all this having to be the "best" and " world beating" nonsense. We have to be the best we can be and we should be working together so everybody in the world is equally as good. It's a pandemic and we need some panstandards to go with it. Johnson sounds more Trump like than ever when he qualifies his statements with "world beating" It seeems like a big insecurity to me.

IIRC while there was support and goodwill towards HMG back in early to mid-March both on this forum and elsewhere, there were also a few people in this place and in the wider public who were warning that a catastrophe was heading for this country along the lines of what Italy experienced. Some were saying back then that HMG didn't do enough back in February, by which time the WHO had declared the disease to be a global health emergency.

I am pretty sure that there isn't a government in the world at the moment that hasn't made a mistake somewhere along the line in dealing with this virus. That said, the fact that the UK now has the second-worst death toll in the world suggests to me that a great many mistakes have been made by HMG, mistakes that could and should have been avoided had they acted sooner.

UK data

• Tests - 177,261


• People in hospital - 9,953 down from 10,025 yesterday


• Positive cases - 2,472


• All settings deaths - 363

1) Some friends who live up in Cumbria report local attitudes to visitors are still very hostile with aggressive "Go Home" notices everywhere and signs getting plastered on visitors cars. One wonders how long this will go on for?

2) Whatever happened to that hallowed institution the Great British Picnic? When I were a lad the idea of spending money in a cafe or restaurant at lunchtime was out of the question even on holiday. And pubs generally didn't serve food (yes - I am that old).

The COVID Symptom Tracker has given the strongest signal yet of R having gone above 1.

Today there are 276,210 people estimated with symptoms. Yesterday it was 252,926. That's more than 9% higher.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/

Daily slides

New cases and daily tests

Social distancing

Hospital data

People in hospital

All settings deaths with rolling 7-day average

Postive tests were low yesterday. Or is this app just those who are reporting symptoms.

I wonder what percentage of those reporting with symptoms have had a test and can confirm if they had/have it or not?

I'm not familiar with the app so happy to be corrected if I'm wrong but given Covid-19 shares so many symptoms with colds, flu and even hayfever, I'd be curious as to how accurate it is. As a barometer for how many people have some kind of illness, that they're understandably likely to feel is the virus, it's presumably fine but I can't see how it can be an accurate gauge of how many people have Covid, given it's much more likely statistically that the people reporting the symptoms just have one of the normal bugs that wander around society?

Hard to tell I guess unless/until testing for antibodies is widespread and people start taking up the 'any one can be tested' option.

Yesterday, there were 248,818 positive tests.

As of 9am 19 May, there have been 2,772,552 tests, with 89,784 tests on 18 May.

248,818 people have tested positive.

As of 5pm on 18 May, of those tested positive for coronavirus, across all settings, 35,341 have sadly died.

More information in the tweet below 🔽 pic.twitter.com/uRtdHU6yU4

— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) May 19, 2020

Today's slide shows this:

So that means the number of positive tests has gone down 525. 

Probably a small proportion. This is primarily counting those with symptoms and extrapolating to the whole UK population. Also, this is to count those with symptoms at the moment, not those who have had it and are now fine.

I'm not saying that it's completely accurate, or that people aren't reporting symptoms which are something else. But from one day to the next, the trend is more useful as an indicator (as it showed the peak on 2nd April, 10 days after lockdown). So this 9% rise is worrying.

177,216 tests

60,744 people tested

Blimey that's a ridiculous difference between the total tests and number tested 

That really does look bizzare 

I still don't understand why the number of positive tests has gone down compared to yesterday. (See my post on Page 10).

EDIT: This shows breakdown by Pillar and explains historical data revisions have been made.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public