Actually, you would.

1. Weather. More sunlight means more UV light to destroy viral particles means more difficult transmission, which translates into a lower R0. I'm not sure if this matters much to UK, but I'm sure there's more sunlight in the summer months.

2. Aquired immunity. The more people that have antibodies against the virus, the harder it is for virus to spread. We don't know how long the immunity lasts and we don't know the titer of antibodies needed to fight against the disease, but fact is people who have antibodies against the virus are at least less at risk than those who do not.

3. Infectious dose. There is a strong correlation between the severity of disease and how contageous it is on one side and between the number of viral particles you're exposed to on the other side. If you manage to reduce the number of viral particles in the air - whether by quarantene, stay at home orders, face masks or any other means - there will be fewer severely ill patiens who will shed significant amount of viral particles. This will mean fewer infected and reduce the R0.

Change in behavior is, of course, the quickest and most effective of them all. If R0 is staying put for a significant amount of time (several weeks) that implies the adherence to social distancing is slowly eroding too.

McHrozni

Yay ! :rolleyes:

Our wonderful government has steered us successfully through the Coronavirus pandemic. :nope:

Any subsequent waves of infection are the fault of the underclasses who have clearly failed to be sufficiently alert. :mad:

Well, that's my summer holiday plans well and truly scuttled.

The Danish government has announced that from June 15th, the borders will reopen to tourists from Germany, Norway, and Iceland, and likewise Danish tourists will be able to travel to those countries, as long as they stay away from the major cities. It is also suggested that those travelling subject themselves to a two week quarantine on their return, but it's not made mandatory. Dialogue with the Swedish authorities are ongoing.

Tourists will be permitted to visit Copenhagen, but overnight stays there won't be permitted.

Given we have estimates for infectious period, and % with symptoms, then you can backcalculate, even if you have to use wide error bars.

The important question is what proportion of cases are within care homes and hospitals, as these cases should be far easier to track. Unfortunately that analysis is not being made public, and will have a big impact on the R-number in the community. "Likely to be below 1" covers 0.1 as well as 0.9.

My suspicion is that retrospectively we will find out that the outbreak in Wales was initially driven by hospital based transmission (certainly around me from the local press), and then it spread into care homes.

Or that columnists are free to write what they believe. :)

She believed she was in London when she was in Durham?

I would say that that's covered in the former. Unless your assertion is that she commissioned the article or had knowledge of it being commissioned and thought "well, this will likely damage my husband, but I'll let it happen because that's the fair thing to do", which I have to concede is possible, but seems unlikely to me.

Isn't it possible blocking the article would be a bigger / worse story than publishing it?

Maybe her eyesight wasn't so good either ;)

I'll assume the smiley means you are familiar with the British press!

Some clue as to why the England and Wales' infection and death numbers are depressingly high:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52852498

Interestingly:

Whether that represents increased compliance or reduced enforcement is a good question IMO.

With England relaxing the lockdown restrictions further, fines will drop again IMO. Then again, if you made shoplifting legal, there would be fewer people fined for that as well ;).

Possibly, but it's not like papers and magazines don't kill stories all the time.

Restrictions are being lifted even though the threat level hasn't changed.

Judging by my local park/Lidl, I'd say it's due to reduced enforcement. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't even know there was a lockdown, based on the number of picnickers, sunbathers, etc.

They can't tell us how many people have tested again ... is that because they don't know (how is that possible when they knew before) ... Or is it because it's below 100,000 and they promised it would be that or higher every day?

"The UK has the second highest rate of excess deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in the world. In the WORLD. It’s a funny sort of world-beating achievement – but it’s evidently what you get with the boy who grew up wanting to be world king."

The magnificent Marina Hyde, again.

Anecdote alert:

I had to pay a trip to a Greek hospital today, to get the official opinion on a chest CT scan. The place had its entrances all locked and rearranged, so I ended up going in via a 'goods inwards' delivery entrance, by mistake. Bloke there spoke good English and helped me in the right direction, but not before confirming I was British and saying "Ha, that Boris Johnson! What an idiot".

The UK is a laughing stock.

This is madness ... the Prime Minister himself said they wouldn't ease lockdown until the alert level had dropped. The alert level has stayed at 4 and yet they're easing lockdown.

They don't know what they're doing, do they?

So let me get this right
The app doesn't work
Track and trace won't be up and running until July
The risk level has been raised to high by PHE
They've stopped telling us how many tests have been done
R remains very near 1 (above some areas)
And they're reopening schools and allowing Barbecues?

Sure, but pragmatically... if you kill the story to save your husband while he is the centre of a journalist feeding frenzy.... I can see that being cosmetically more unhelpful than simply adding one more article to the heap.

Well, sacrifices have to be made.

Utterly clueless leadership plus a population that has, to a significant extent, given up caring and just wants to have a nice time.

If they do, then it's something very different than what they claim they are doing. But then we've always known that the Conservative Party's principal aim isn't 'improving the life of everyone in Britain regardless of wealth or background' haven't we?

Covid-19 and Politics
 

We are are rapidly approaching holiday time for the MPs, so of course they need to change the lockdown so they can go to pals villas and their own 2nd and 3rd homes.

And they need to distract attention from Boris and his boss.

Could be worse. You could be American.

It's the principle that counts.

In terms of deaths per million population, the US is doing better than the UK. The following table shows the top countries by death rate, for countries with over 1,000,000 people:

Country	Deaths/1,000,000	Population
Belgium	814	11,585,252
Spain	580	46,753,246
United Kingdom	562	67,854,937
Italy	550	60,469,262
France	440	65,261,155
Sweden	431	10,093,745
Netherlands	346	17,131,629
Ireland	333	4,932,806
United States	316	330,832,890
Switzerland	222	8,649,038
Ecuador	189	17,618,288
Canada	185	37,712,703

Source: worldometers.com, last updated 30 May 2020 at 07:08 GMT

Yes, the US is catching up to us, but very, very slowly. I doubt they will have caught up by the end of the year, even if both our trajectories remain exactly the same. Which they won't.

They're trying to bury Cummings's embarrassing flouting of the law.

By burying people instead.

Johnson doesn't think past the immediate problem. Sorry, his immediate problem.

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news...omment-2865338

Four too many words in that sentence.

If you can see them they are not transmitting virus.They are outdoors.
Oh the tragic irony.

I'd not put much importance into those numbers given how reporting of deaths varies between countries. Those showing excess deaths tend to be a much more reliable indicator of how many people are dying directly and indirectly because of the pandemic.

My guess is that the UK is one of the better and more timely countries at reporting such figures too, so we might be looking slightly worse than we actually are. We isn't saying much, I suspect, unfortunately.

That’s incompetence, and given who heads this up it is wilful incompetence.

Mind you one has to consider the accuracy of the article when it says we will be asked to handover our “zip codes”.

Sadly you'd be wrong. According to analysis by the Financial Times, the UK has the world's highest excess deaths rate.

Sorry for the Google link, I'm on my phone.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft....2-648ffde71bf0

Meh, no-one important.