Apologies for those not interested but despite my pessimism further cause for "cautious"

optimism in the stats from yesterday.

Subject to the caveat that yesterday's figures for fatalities only covered a 20 hour rather than 24 hour period. Not quite clear why that was but perhaps they are trying to shift to a 9am to 9am time period in line with other countries and so they can report earlier in the day. The numbers for yesterday are therefore a little below the reality but even so not at the level one might expect if numbers were continuing to grow in line with the likes of Italy, Spain, France etc.

Anyway:

In the 4 days prior to the 22nd March the rate of positive cases was increasing by 27% per day and death numbers were increasing by 35% per day.

Since 22nd March the rate of positive cases is increasing by 17% per day and deaths by 19%.

I don't know precisely what measures were introduced around 10th-12th March but perhaps some signs of a positive effect in terms of flattening the curve and/or that the NHS is also coping reasonably well with the numbers so far. Of course as we are not community testing the case numbers are not particularly informative other than I suppose they give an indication of how many people are displaying symptoms which are beyond minor.

In terms of some other slightly reassuring comparisons on the 21st we had almost identical numbers of cases and deaths as Italy did 14 days earlier with 233 deaths. In the four days following that Italy had 594 fatalities whereas we have had 230 (so 39% of theirs).

France (who are testing even less than us) positive cases numbers were increasing by an average of 26% per day until last Tuesday since when they have dropped to 15% (reflecting the impact of their lockdown).

Our positive case increases for the last 4 days are therefore not far off what their post lockdown figures are. Having said that, their lockdown appears to have been much more rigidly enforced and therefore it remains to be seen whether ours is as effective.

Anyway as I've said apologies for those not interested in this stuff. For me, its currently providing some rays of hope and suggesting that (excluding the disgrace of how NHS staff have been exposed without testing/equipment) we "may" not have handled the matter completely disastrously so far (or have been quite lucky). That may of course change if the numbers take a turn for the worse in forthcoming days. They will continue to go up obviously and its incredibly sad regardless of how it now pans out.

Posted By: Jim on March 26th 2020 at 10:32:16

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