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My current expectation is that the UK will see approximately a quarter of a million deaths by the end of 2020.
The current number of deaths per day looks to be approximately 1,000.(1)
The recent relaxation of English government policy, the VE weekend celebrations and the anticipation of an announcement of much greater relaxation look like we'll see either a continuation of about a 1,000 deaths a day or a second spike (2).
A thousand deaths a day from the current 60,000 excess deaths for 234 days takes us to about a quarter of million deaths.
There are some reasons to think this could be lower. The current death rate includes lots of people who particularly vulnerable to the disease. The rate of spread will fall as more people have had the disease. We will have more effective treatmentw later in the year.
There are also reasons to think it could be higher. There are still lots of care homes that haven't been infected. The excess deaths from avoided hospital treatment for other conditions will happen later in the year. We may have utterly fucked up the return to work and end up with a huge burst of infection in mid-June. The transmission mechanism in schools is not well understood (3)
What is clear to me is that the UK does not have a functioning testing operation or an effective test, track and isolate operation.
My own policy choice would have been to *increase* restrictions across the UK for another 3 weeks, relax them to the levels of the status quo anti for a further 3 weeks. Followed by a phased relaxation along with widespread testing and good test, track and isolate operations.
Even if the current relaxation of restrictions in England goes well I think the UK is already committed to a hundred thousand dead. We are currently at 60,000. We will see a thousand deaths a day for a few weeks. A thousand deaths a day, today, implies a 100,000 infections 2 weeks ago. With an R of between 0.5 and 0.9 there are still hundreds of thousands of colleagues, family and unlucky stranges associated with each of the 100,000 infected persons for another few tens of thousands to die even if we all stayed isolated from today for 6 weeks.
That's all pretty grim.
(1) looking at the Chris Giles excess death to announced hospital deaths there looks to be about a 1.75 ratio between daily hospital announced deaths and the actual number of excess deaths. Hospital announced deaths are falling but still seem to running at 600 a day.
(2) before we've properly finished the first one
(3) medics and science types I know predicted higher deaths than I am when we spoke about it.
The current number of deaths per day looks to be approximately 1,000.(1)
The recent relaxation of English government policy, the VE weekend celebrations and the anticipation of an announcement of much greater relaxation look like we'll see either a continuation of about a 1,000 deaths a day or a second spike (2).
A thousand deaths a day from the current 60,000 excess deaths for 234 days takes us to about a quarter of million deaths.
There are some reasons to think this could be lower. The current death rate includes lots of people who particularly vulnerable to the disease. The rate of spread will fall as more people have had the disease. We will have more effective treatmentw later in the year.
There are also reasons to think it could be higher. There are still lots of care homes that haven't been infected. The excess deaths from avoided hospital treatment for other conditions will happen later in the year. We may have utterly fucked up the return to work and end up with a huge burst of infection in mid-June. The transmission mechanism in schools is not well understood (3)
What is clear to me is that the UK does not have a functioning testing operation or an effective test, track and isolate operation.
My own policy choice would have been to *increase* restrictions across the UK for another 3 weeks, relax them to the levels of the status quo anti for a further 3 weeks. Followed by a phased relaxation along with widespread testing and good test, track and isolate operations.
Even if the current relaxation of restrictions in England goes well I think the UK is already committed to a hundred thousand dead. We are currently at 60,000. We will see a thousand deaths a day for a few weeks. A thousand deaths a day, today, implies a 100,000 infections 2 weeks ago. With an R of between 0.5 and 0.9 there are still hundreds of thousands of colleagues, family and unlucky stranges associated with each of the 100,000 infected persons for another few tens of thousands to die even if we all stayed isolated from today for 6 weeks.
That's all pretty grim.
(1) looking at the Chris Giles excess death to announced hospital deaths there looks to be about a 1.75 ratio between daily hospital announced deaths and the actual number of excess deaths. Hospital announced deaths are falling but still seem to running at 600 a day.
(2) before we've properly finished the first one
(3) medics and science types I know predicted higher deaths than I am when we spoke about it.
