Search for cuatious optimism from the stats (update 3) - usual apologies to those not

interested and subject of course to the caveat that the loss of lives we've already had and which we will continue to have over the next few weeks is truly tragic. Anyway here is what I am clinging on to at present.

I am aware that "positive cases" are considerably underplayed but they remain of some use because I think they are indicative of the sort of numbers being hospitalised or showing more than mild symptoms and because Italy and France have followed a very similar approach to testing.

We are now in day 7 post lockdown.

In comparison with Italy and France at the same "stage" of their epidemics we have 21% less positive cases than Italy and 33% less positive cases than France. In terms of fatalities we are somewhere between 47% and 18% lower than Italy and between 38% and 8% lower than France at the equivalent points.

Our trends in terms of cases and fatalities are similar to France and Italy but importantly (it seems to me) we are starting from a lower base in terms of numbers so even equivalent % increases will obviously hopefully continue to produce lower numbers.

Since the point 7 days post lockdown cases in France have increased by an average of 14% per day. Since 10 days post lockdown its 11% and yesterday it was just 7%. France is as of today 14 days post lockdown. In terms of deaths they have increased by an average of 22% since the point 7 days post lockdown but the last 3 days have been 18%, 16% and 13% respectively.

Since the point 7 days post lockdown cases in Italy have increased by an average of 11.65%. Since 10 days post lockdown its 10% and yesterday was 7.5%. Italy is 16 days post lockdown. In terms of deaths they have increased by an average of 17.5 % since the 7 day post lockdown point but yesterday was down to 10%.

All of which tends to suggest that lockdown does work and that from now onwards (although perhaps not in terns of fatalities for a few days) we can hopefully expect to see the % increases slowing. Of course 10% of 2,000 is still a larger number than 18% of 1000 so this will still translate to some horrible fatality numbers over the next 2 or 3 weeks but if we follow the same patterns (and alarm bells should really start to ring if we don't) then eventually these % increases should turn into decreases and we will start to get in top of it if we all do what we are told!

If the UK carries on as per its current 10 day average increases then the numbers today would be 23,329 cases and 1531 fatalities (plus 303 on yesterday) but if the last two days becomes a trend then the case numbers should be lower than that (although if we start testing everyone then those stats will become meaningless). Any numbers significantly below these levels will therefore be a sign things are flattening out.

Posted By: Jim on March 30th 2020 at 12:06:04

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