slug:england_special_28Apr

Across Europe, Covid only kills the under 60's in very small numbers. For example in Italy which has had a relatively high number of deaths overall, less than 3% were under 60 years old. In England and Wales the corresponding percentage is around 7%. This difference shows up …

Euromomo advise that the latest figures may not be reliable and should be treated with caution. However, so far so good for their less stringent lockdown policy according to the Oxford University Coronavirus Government Response Tracker

Blogmire analysis

An excellent analysis of Sweden has been written up at the www …

In the last release of mortality statistics from the ONS (data to 2014-04-03) showed a sudden increase in deaths. Unsurprisingly, many of the excess deaths are attributed to COVID-19, about 3,000. What was very surprising is that,compared to the five year average, 2,500 additional non-Covid deaths occurred …

The Government should not place too much confidence in any one model, or …

The COVID-19 Response Team led by Professor Neil Ferguson, has been a major influence on UK Government COVID-19 policies.

Imperial College model predictions have influenced UK government COVID-19 policies without sufficient challenge and peer review. This is surprising given past forecasting failures and the enormous costs of the policies in …

Sharing indoor space is a major SARS-CoV-2 infection risk. All identified outbreaks of three or more cases occurred in an indoor environment

By early April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had infected nearly one million people and had spread to nearly all countries worldwide. It is essential to understand where and …

An academic paper from 2020-04-15 models various scenarios to investigate time-dependent strategies of handling the epidemic taking into account the needs of the elderly and those with special medical conditions. Main findings include:

Very little gain, in terms of the projected hospital bed occupancy and expected numbers of death,of …

Stability issues of RT‐PCR testing of SARS‐CoV‐2 for hospitalized patients clinically diagnosed with COVID‐19

False negative results from the standard test for COVID-19 mean that more people probably have the virus than might be expected. This would mean that a smaller proportion of the total is …

Sweden has not opted for a strict lockdown yet their curve looks flatter and deaths per million are about half the UK's

Here is a comparison of news headlines from the past week in 2020 and the headlines from a time in 2018 when mortality rates were peaking due to a bad flu season.

Make up your own mind. Do the headlines reflect the gravity of the situations in an equivalent way …