COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Tim of the Oak]

Saying it's a hoax and it has been exaggerated are nowhere near the same thing. It is clearly very real, had it been overestimated again it's pretty obvious that is also the case. It had to be though as it was totally unknown, but now we do know more about it we should be moving quicker. I can't see how furlough can end in October as it stands.

FWIW, I supported the changes in the daily reporting when they had an exaggerated affect on the figures. I go off the ONS data for the total number of deaths etc.

We are making progress but it is uncertain at the moment. Schools are back up and running next weeks (And I know they already were for the kids of frontline workers). Several boroughs in the North of England are having restrictions eased. There has been advances in the treatment of more severe cases.

The furlough issue is complex and the reduced pay subsidy from Government could reduce demand for it. Where people work for viable businesses that have furloughed staff, more imaginative solutions may be needed eg reduced wages in exchange for shares in the business and / or for agreeing to normalise working from home. Nobody wants reduced pay of course but it’s better than being out of work (in most cases). To help to compensate people’s expenditure could be cut eg by reductions in Council taxes in areas where local authority services have been reduced.

 

[Healdplace]

Wales data first up today. Happily 0 deaths but 56 new cases at 0.9% of tests.

Last week it was 2 deaths but just 20 cases at 0.4%.

 

[Healdplace]

Scotland happily 0 deaths too but scary case numbers again.

123 cases. Though Scotland is doing a lot of testing now so that is only 0,7% of them which is an improvement on the 0.9% last week when only 83 were found.

Shows the importance of the number that England has chosen only to tell us a week later nit daily as everyone else does.

Still 5 in intensive care on ventilators and 251 (good news down 7) in hospital. Though there were last week only 245 in and 2 in icu ventilator beds.

 

[Healdplace]

If we get data from Ireland (hard to find at weekend as their dashboard publishes it on Monday) we might have another over 200 case total from the nations with England still to come. As we are at 179 already.

 

[Healdplace]

England hospital data - just 3 deaths. This is Saturday data so always low but it is OK.

Last week - however - there was only 1.

One of the three is from the NW.

 

[Healdplace]

The England data is interesting but weekend reporting always compromises this so wise not to base much on it.

29 Aug adds 0 = 0 after one day.

28 Aug adds 0 = 1 after two days.

27 Aug adds 2 = 5 after 3 days.

26 Aug adds 1 = 8 after 4 days (but was 6 after two).

So 25 Aug (also 6 after two days) stays at 9 after 5 days.

This keeps the run since the last double digit number of deaths after 5 days (that number was 10 and two weeks on is only 11) to fifteen successive single figure deaths as recorded after 5 days of add ons.

 

[Healdplace]

I will do my weekly tally of 5 day England death numbers to see if there is any obvious up/down/stalling in them.

Week 5 - 11 Aug Five day numbers add up to 39

Week12 - 18 Aug Five day numbers add up to 35

Week 19 - 25 Aug Five day numbers add up to 34

Rather surprisingly the number IS still going down but as you can see it is plateauing somewhat around an average of 5.


As usual I will show the numbers with the 5 day total and in brackets the number as it stands now after all the deaths have been added on since. No bracket meansthe number is unchanged since the five day total.

Bear in mind that deaths from 3 weeks ago self evidently have had more time to increase than those from the past few days so this is less helpful beyond a guide to how add ons are going up and down than the data above which is ALL based on a common denominator - the number of deaths after 5 days.

Anyhow here they are:

5-11 Aug 3 (5), 6 (8), 4, 5 (6), 5, 6, 10 (11). So 39 at 5 days and 45 after add ons over up to 3 weeks.

12 - 18 Aug 4, 3 (4) , 4, 8 (10), 2, 8, 6. So 35 at 5 days and 38 after add ons over up to 2 weeks

19 - 26 Aug 0 (2), 3, 5, 5, 7, 5, 9 . So 34 at 5 days and 37 after add ons over up to a week.

Nothing here is bad news that I can see. Though it confirms the sense of a stall in the rate of fall which at the level we are at with these numbers is all but inevitable.

 

[Healdplace]

If anyone has a relative going to Uni next month this might scare you.

The University of Alabama allowed in person learning from mid August and by now 1200 students and 166 staff have tested positive.

This is what we might see happening here. Though you my not think that is necessarily a bad thing - younger people catching it if they do not get that sick (though not a given obviously) - and the situation in the US is much worse than the UK as to prevalence of the virus. So you cannot assume like for like being at different points in the pandemic.

Alabama only had 1561 new cases out of 10, 812 tests yesterday - but pro rata that is much worse than the UK at about 15%).

They had 42 deaths yesterday out of a total of 2059 across the pandemic. That's about 2% of the total in past 24 hours.

The UK had a total of 1108 cases from a guesstimate of 170,000 tests (so well under 1% and far less than Alabama) And 12 deaths out of a total of 41, 498 which is many times less than Alabama. As 2% would be over 800 here.

 

[Healdplace]

The three England hospital deaths today were aged between 51 and 93 and all of them had known underlying health conditions.

 

[Healdplace]

In the Scottish data of the 123 cases 6 are from the Grampian area, 7 in Tayside and 39 in Glasgow area.


Again Nicola Sturgeon stresses in her comments the importance of the testing percentage at 0.7% and that they are striving to keep it below 1% by doing more tests and catching outbreaks early.