Self isolation day 6

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March 8th 2020

Sunday Morning. A time to leisurely peruse the papers.

From the Sunday Times - the government has revised its estimate of deaths to 100,000 down from 500,000. Phew. This is now it's "central estimate". No breakdown of inputs used. This is now the new "worst case scenario" apparently and what experts believe will happen. One unnamed official said "Some of those people would have died of other flus". Apart from conflating the Coronavirus to a flu virus, this comment reveals further the callous attitude towards the most vulnerable to dying from this virus. Exam bosses plan to delay school exams. A London lab is looking for paid volunteers to be infected with the virus for research. On Jan 15 28 of 135 NHS trusts had full ICUs.

From The Sun - thousands of prisoners could be released. Ministers are against it but they have been advised this is the best course of action. This comes as Wuhan is dealing with a serious outbreak of the C-virus in several prisons. Iran has also reportedly released 54,000 prisoners. NHS will be forced to cancel routine operations.

From The Independent - a focus on the new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, ahead of his first budget on Wednesday. He has promised the NHS "whatever it needs" to deal with the outbreak. He insisted the UK economy was in good shape and we were well placed to deal with the C-virus financially. Whilst rejecting "bail outs" he spoke of policy levers instead for a temporary period of disruption. He also ruled out an extension to the Brexit deadline. Columnist Janet Street Porter urges Brits to stop stock piling and advocates a return to rationing.

From the Observer (Sunday's Guardian) - emergency laws are being drawn up by ministers. Facilitation of volunteers for the NHS, holding sporting events behind closed doors, banning over 70s from public gatherings, limiting supermarket deliveries and financial funding to support businesses are all measures being considered. Columnist Will Hutton examines whether this global crisis will undermine nationalism in favour of more international governance.

From the Mail on Sunday - A student at Oxford University has tested positive following overseas travel. They took it upon themselves to self isolate. There is no information regarding where they had been, nor if they had been around college whilst potentially asymptomatic. Oxford Uni is advising that the risk to other students is very low. The article also reports that last night pictures were taken of a Hazmat team entering Edinburgh Uni.

From Fergus Brown

From The Telegraph - supermarkets begin food rationing after Brits swept the shelves yesterday. Tesco to limit baked beans. A Chapman's Funland operator in Bridlington has filled his machine with toilet roll.

Credit Simon Kench/Magnus News

From the Mirror on Sunday - One story about a woman whose C-virus prank caused her flatmate and the company she worked at unnecessary duress. As the article states what an "a***hole"! Otherwise singularly devoid of C-virus content. No doubt appealing to the demographic who are being calm and carrying on.

All these numbers being thrown around makes me want to do some number crunching myself, although I am no mathematician.
So, UK population is about 66 million in a fairly densely populated country. Roughly 18% of the population are elderly. This is a new (novel) virus so the key point is that there is no herd immunity, and it is highly contagious. How many people will catch it in a population? The working statistics say 80% of people will only have mild symptoms as a result it is highly unlikely the majority will never even get tested. Meanwhile Chinese data must be regarded with all the suspicion of Soviet Union production figures. So does 80% sound possible, 70% likely, 50% or lower? I am going to use a middling figure of 60%.

60% of 66 million is 40 million (rounded). Widely quoted statistics have 80% at mild, 15% serious and 5% critical. 20% is 8 million. 8 million people who will need weeks off work. 2 million will definitely require hospitalisation for weeks in ICU units. That's a lot of demand on hospital services. It is also assuming best case scenario that none of the other 6 million require hospital care.

As to potential deaths, this is a real unknown. Unfortunately, if the NHS is overrun (as the above figures would suggest) the death toll is likely to be higher than not. Based on 40 million and a case fatality rate of 0.5% would equal 200,000 deaths. 1% would equal 400,000 deaths. At 2% that's 800,000.

These figures sound totally alarming and they are complete stabs in the dark at this point. To get a total mortality rate as taken from the total population to get to the government's 100,000 deaths I arrived at a rate of roughly 0.15%. Even working on 33,000,000 cases (50%) and a case fatality rate as low as 0.5% that still means 165,000 deaths. It all seems meaningless math to me and absolutely no comfort to those who will lose loved ones before all this is over.

Cases in the UK have reached 273. These though, are essentially yesterday's figures. The UK has moved into "delay" phase - starting with the delay of its published figures.