UK Lockdowns

30/01/2021

The first lockdown

New cases and new deaths during the first lockdown.

During the first lockdown the UK did not have a decent testing system. We can tell that easily as the raw figures would indicate a martality rate of almost 20%! And we know it is around 2%.
However we can see that after the peak, new cases had dropped 50% in 4 weeks and deaths dropped to 50% in the same timescale.
The above figures are per million of population so when lockdown was announced at 71 case per million - that was 4700 cases.  The government was criminally late and tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided.  The situation in other countries, notably Italy were simply ignored.

The Second Lockdown

New cases and new deaths during the second lockdown

Testing was more established by second lockdown. The second lockdown was triggered when the cases reached 1100 per million and were climbing rapidly.  The number of new cases had been rising steadily for eight weeks and while this may have been put down to increases in testing, deaths had also been rising from mid September.
Once again thousands of lives were lost to delays.
But the government did not delay in stopping the lockdown. The cases had not even come  down to 50% of the peak before the lockdown was ended. Deaths were only plateaued.

After the second lockdown

New cases and new deaths between second and third lockdowns.

Immediatly after the lockdown case began to rise.  The number of deaths fell only slightly and started to rise two to three weeks later. Attempts at variable local restrictions using the Tier system were made with increasing severity. Only when the death rate reached about two thirds of the peak in the first wave and the number of new cases per day was twice the peak in the second lockdown was a third lockdown called by the government.
Once again, tens of thousans of lives lost due to goverment dithering.

The third lockdown (so far)

New cases and deaths so far in the third lockdown

The tier system must have had some effect as the number of new cases peaked around 5 days into the lockdown, then fell, by 50% in 3 weeks.  Contrary to reports in the media, this is the fastest fall we have seen.  (The reports are probably an example of routine LIES to influence public behaviour which is so common nowadays. It is hard to believe that professor Paul Elliot would not be aware of the governments own figures. Then again perhaps he has more, or differnt data?)
As expected, deaths would peak about two to three weeks later (at the highest figure in the world) which is around now. (the time of writing).

Deaths should now start to decrease, and as deaths are mostly in the older and most vunerable, the effect of the vaccine rollout should make the rate of decrease faster.  The vaccine needs a few weeks to be effective, but we should see the effect soon.

New cases are dropping at an average of 3.5% per day.  As most of the cases are in the younger folk, and as the vaccine has not got to them yet, we will see a slower decline in cases than deaths.

The current officila date for lockdown end is 8th March. At this rate, without the effects of the vaccine new cases will be down to 700 per week per million of population. That is around 7000 per day total. Still very high.
By that time around 30% of the country should be vaccinated, but due the three week delay in the vaccine becoming effective only 20% should have some immunity (66%-80% depending on the manaufactures claims).  These will be primarily among the older and vunerable who are not the main spreaders.

SO, allowing more social contact after the current official lockdown case would be criminally negligent. This has not stopped the UK government before.