Crisis Averted (For Now)

The cumulative death figure is shocking and dismaying - we're the highest in Europe, although not per capita. But at least the trend is firmly downward. The graph above is from The Guardian and shows the deaths up until the 8th of May. 

On the 11th of May the restrictions were lifted a bit, and we've noticed much increased traffic and footfall. But it's still much much quieter than normal. Birdsong seems very loud, and I've now been working from home for the longest period ever - 10 weeks.

The worry is now that as the restrictions are eased a little we'll get a rise in cases. Some of the kids will be back in school in early June. Children are traditionally the viral reservoir that feeds everyone else, so this, like so many other government decisions is a partially calculated risk.

Personally I think we'll get away with it, but then I also thought we might get away with under 5,000 deaths, which seems like a sick joke now.  

More Data

The United Kingdom has now overtaken Italy to have Europe's highest number of virus deaths.

Now of course we have to be very careful with crude numbers like this. Not every country counts the deaths in the same way, there are misdiagnoses and miscounts and false positives and all the rest of it.

But none the less I feel very disappointed that our country has had so many deaths compared to say Germany. I don't what the reasons are, and no doubt one day there will be a lengthy and very costly public enquiry that will examine the data in minute detail. For now here are my guesses, in no particular order:

High population density - South East England has some of the most densely populated parts of Europe, if not the world.

London - London is one of the world's largest cities with an extraordinary ethnic mix of people, all crammed together and using a large but very crowded public transport system. 

Minority groups - some minority groups, notably Blacks and Asians seem to have an unfortunate vulnerability to the disease. Despite The Guardian's  best efforts, it looks like this is due to genetics more than discrimination.

Care homes - lots of our elderly people go into care homes when they're fragile and vulnerable. This may be in contrast to other countries with more common extended families such as Italy.

But all the above points are really educated speculation; we need more data, and lots of it to be able test theories. At the moment, at least to the general public, this data isn't available.

Unreliable Statistics

There's a brilliant article in the Guardian this week by David Spiegelhalter.

At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Keir Starmer said he had added up a total of 27,241 coronavirus deaths so far, leaving the UK “possibly on track to have the worst death rate in Europe”.

Even if we reach some sort of stable situation – if we can imagine it – will we ever know the direct and indirect health effects of the epidemic, taking into account reduced road accidents, the benefits of reduced pollution, the effects of recession and so on? Many studies will try to disentangle all these, but my cold, statistical approach is to wait until the end of the year, and the years after that, when we can count the excess deaths. Until then, this grim contest won’t produce any league tables we can rely on.

You can read the whole thing here.

The popularity of Boris Johnson

There have been a series of baffled articles in The Guardian recently, speculating as to why the Prime Minister remains popular.

The latest article on this theme has been by the excellent (except for Israel) Jonathan Freedland who lists a number of persuasive factors including the insanity of Donald Trump which makes anyone look good in comparison. This was my comment beneath one of the articles:

I think Boris has done OK, not great but OK.

This crisis would have taken any government by surprise. The United Kingdom is one of the most densely populated countries on earth, and major transport hub. It was inevitable that we were going to suffer from this epidemic.

The initial strategy, that of herd immunity, made logical sense, and who knows it may have even worked. But the modelling and experience of other countries meant that the government showed some flexibility and abandoned it.

Of course, when you criticise anyone or any organisation with the clarity that 100% hindsight gives you, you're going to find mistakes. A sharper more switched on government might have anticipated worldwide shortages of PPE. They might have initiated the lock down a week or two earlier.

But some of the response has been impressive. The Nightingale hospitals appeared within two to three weeks. The lock down was started just early enough to avoid the horrible scenes in Italy where doctors had to decide who got a ventilator and who was left to die. The government's finances were in comparatively good shape, which meant that we can go on a spending spree without dangers of default.

So overall, the government had done OK, not great, but OK, and I'm glad that the Prime Minister has first hand experience of this disease, it will help his decision making in future.