Today we were not advised to stay indoors, we were instructed to stay indoors this weekend. Is that a bit OTT? What would one day matter?
I’ve seen lots of graphs plotting trends with nice curves. I must admit to being a bit puzzled over the choices of what different newspapers and TV news have decided to show. People seem to be trying to match up the lines to see where we are going based on the history in other countries.
Truth is, matching the past data is likely to mean the future of the lines will diverge. There are so many different variables that plotting a graph on your number counting software just will not work. This is why it has taken a complex model by Imperial to get a realistic prediction for the UK. That isn’t to say plotting the data is bad – the problem comes when you try to match one country to another. Different countries have very different infrastructures, different traditions, different responses, different population profiles and even different genetics.
So what does the UK data show? Well, the death rate is growing at a fairly steady rate. And the numbers are on a fairly steady curve. The daily death rate is doubling about every 3 days. The reason for this is that the lockdown takes time to show in the death figures.
The new case figures also are showing a steady increase. A couple of weeks ago this was also doubling about every 3 days, but the latest data is showing it is doubling every 8 days – much better. Our actions seem to be working. We just need to wait to see that translate to a slower increase in death rate.
But the numbers are still increasing. Yes increasing slower, but still increasing. We need to get the number of new cases to reduce.
The big question now is whether we can have a day to relax – to see the sun. What harm can that do?
Our “best case” scenario is that 20,000 will die from this virus. Just one day relaxation could result in an additional 4-5000 people dying. Two days of ignoring the stay indoors rule could see the number of deaths increase by 10,000 overall.
That is how the numbers work. Right now we need to really work hard at keeping a lid on things. The numbers are still increasing – we need to keep the pressure on and turn them round. So stay indoors and count the sheets of toilet paper. No messing!
I’ll be sending out invites for a few on-line meetings for Sunday. You might get an invite, you might even know some of the other people in the meeting – but I will not guarantee it. But here is a really crazy idea. I have paper, and I have lots of pens. If I were to write things on the paper with the pens it would give me something to do – and I could even send it to people to give them something to do. I think it could be called “words” – or maybe calling it “letters” might be better.
Well, I am now off to do a post midnight stroll to get exercise when there is very little chance of meeting people. The advantage of walking at night is that it is so quiet that you can hear the toilets flush – so you get an idea of where the toilet paper stashes are.