12th April 2020

BJ is out of hospital, though he’ll have to take time off to recover we’re told.

Meanwhile Priti Patel, deputising at the daily press conference, made what can only be described as a complete car crash of it. Gibberish, avoided answering questions, came across as a thoughtless, heartless bitch. Which she is so not a surprise but…

John is still in hospital. Everyone else much the same.

The UK topped 10,000 dead this week. People keep saying that its not that much, people die all the time. Yep, typically about 1500 people die each week. 90% of them die of ‘old age’ though. And to put it in perspective, in the last two days more people died of this than normally die in a week. Yes, some of those might have died anyway but most would not, at least not yet.

The authorities here reckon the UK may shortly be the worst hit country in europe, with over 20,000 dead. By my reckoning that will happen in a week. The worst is, this weekend has been lovely and sunny, so people have been visiting relations and going for trips out. FCOL. I am concerned that in two or three weeks there will be an upsurge in deaths, once this weekend’s cross-infection makes itself felt.

Assuming that doesn’t happen, the shape of the curves suggests we’re two weeks behind Italy which puts us on track for 20,000 deaths by the end of the month. If the curve doesn’t flatten as expected, that could easily be 30,000. The peak, after which case numbers ought to start falling, is still a month away.

Over in the US, things are drastically bad. There are 550,000 people infected, 21,700 dead already, and they’re weeks off the peak. Trump’s casual estimate of 100,000 seems quite realistic now, and their chief medical officer has gone on record as saying they acted too late. They’re optimistically hoping to return to normal in May, which seems both stupid and deadly. The current slope of the curve puts them on track for a million cases by next weekend, and their other curve shows no signs of flattening at all. Comparing them to Italy, they’re about three weeks behind which puts htem on track for 140,000 dead by early May, and the curve flattening two or three weeks later. However if they relax restrictions at that point, new cases will spring up by mid month, and new deaths a week later.

UK – blue – cases, red – deaths

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