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!
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