Corona Virus
A series of write ups on the virus

State of the Nations

28/6/2020

England is coming out of lockdown and will be followed by Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Here is a comparison of how the four nations are performing and I have added in some other countries too.

The number of deaths per head of population since the pandemic started shows that while England has had the most, the other countries are not far behind (with the exception of Germany)
BUT when we look at the current death rate, taking population into account, a different picture emerges.

All of the other nations, with the exception of the USA are leading England and by quite a margin. 
When we look at the trends, the situation is much worse for England.

Note:- Spain has modified the way it reports data, and these very low figures are very suspect.  It may be desperation to get the tourists back.

So England not only has the worst death rate, but it is actually getting even worse.  In other words, the R0 figure is greater than 1. BUT this is the death rate, so the R0 figure for infections must have been over 1 around two weeks ago.

I believe the government's strategy is to open up the economy while keeping the virus at a constant level (R0=1) until a vaccine is found. 
Local lockdowns will be used to attempt to keep the virus under control.

 Update 30/6/2020
Local lock downs have started with Leicester. Boris Johnson is calling this the "whack-a-mole strategy".

Whether this will work and whether other countries will be happy to go along with us remains to be seen.

It's a numbers game. 134 deaths per day at 1.4% mortality means almost 10,000 infections per day.  Mean incubation period is around 6 days, so 60,000 people will have the virus without knowing. That is about 1 person in every thousand, or 1 every 5 full plane loads.
This is when they get on the plane: but when they get off? How many have they infected.
Some will catch the virus on the way out, and pass it on on the way back.
Some will start to get symptoms abroad causing local lockdowns.

Will other countries accept this?
It is interesting that Portugal are annoyed that they are not on the UK's "approved countries" . Their current death rate per million population is under 3 (but it is rising)  Ours is 16!
Spain's current published death rate is very low, but around 11th May when they were in a similar state to Italy they stopped reporting any meaningful date, and when they started again the data showed they were now leading Europe!