The virus is only airborne in as much as it is spread by coughing/sneezing. This expels the virus in the form of droplets which are heavier than air, and hence will fall to the ground, usually within 2 mts. Hence the distancing limit. Although I would guess, if outside in a strong wind it could carry further, however this would still be in a downwards trajectory.

Relief, or if your entirely logical about it and not been brainwashed by the media fear mongering, just getting what you entirely expected??

I mentioned the prevailing winds with the speed with which this virus has gone round the globe ,although i should think air travel has probably done a lot to spread it.

Yes it needs people to spread. The droplets won't be carried for miles across the oceans on a prevailing wind as they are too heavy.

It will have spread via international travel. Also there are people who catch it and don't develop symptoms (18% of those who tested positive on the Diamond Princess cruise ship didn't develop symptoms) but still spread the virus to others, so these people would never know to self isolate and will have been spreading it around.

Tell that to the families of the young people who've died from it? If it weren't for the lockdown, there would hundreds of thousands dying from it in this country. It's definitely worth taking seriously.

I'm not disputing a proportionate response. We haven't made a proportionate response though.

First time for an adequate appraisal will be year's end, when we can compare average death numbers from previous years with what unfolds this year- just the other day I saw an official graph showing death totals with no change from this year to the recent average, while, just by coincidence, this year's flu deaths are down in number, but been replaced by covid19.

The next time for an adequate appraisal will then be in about 20-30 years when all the deaths from mental health and the austerity aftermath can be thrown into the equation.. I'll wager good money those numbers will outdo any death from covid19 figures.

The latest data on overall deaths from all causes only goes up to 20 March so far, at which point there were fewer than 200 deaths attributed to covid. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 0march2020 In less than two weeks since then we've seen more than 2,000. When that data is updated in a few weeks/months time we will start get an idea of the impact of covid on deaths. We're coming out of flu season now to a point where weekly deaths usually fall so we would expect to see that number fall. As you say, to get an estimate of the short-run impact in terms of deaths from covid, you would take the figures over the course of the pandemic and compare the death rate with previous data on deaths by age/gender over different parts of the year like this: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 2009to2018 You would have to adjust for population growth if you are using a time series like that.

The latest data on overall deaths from all causes only goes up to 20 March so far, at which point there were fewer than 200 deaths attributed to covid. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 0march2020 In less than two weeks since then we've seen more than 2,000. When that data is updated in a few weeks/months time we will start get an idea of the impact of covid on deaths. We're coming out of flu season now to a point where weekly deaths usually fall so we would expect to see that number fall. As you say, to get an estimate of the short-run impact in terms of deaths from covid, you would take the figures over the course of the pandemic and compare the death rate with previous data on deaths by age/gender over different parts of the year like this: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 2009to2018 You would have to adjust for population growth if you are using a time series like that.

And you have to also take into account that while there may indeed be a 'cluster' of deaths for April/May this year, which may be an increase on previous years, many of those deaths will have happened spread over the next 8 or 9 months anyway - So there is a chance that deaths in the last quarter of this year could actually be less than when compared with previous years?

Yes that is a good point - as this virus is preying on the old and vulnerable it is bringing forward some deaths that may have happened over the next 1 to 2 years anyway, so to really get at the impact effect of covid you would need to do this a number of years in the future and observe how long it took patterns to return to normal. You'll get some displacement effect where deaths attributed to covid replace deaths that would otherwise have been attributed to other underlying conditions maybe in the near future. The health economists would measure this in QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) to effectively reflect "life shortened" due to the pandemic. They use that measure in reverse when making purchasing decisions for different treatments and drugs in the NHS - what will give the maximum increase in QALYs to the population to improve overall quality and length of life.

There could be a displacement effect with economic activity too as some of the fall in activity now is going to be just decisions that are postponed (you see this with purchases of sofas, cars etc) and so you will find an increase in activity after the pandemic is over. I expect when pubs and restaurants reopen we will see similar pressures to what we saw in supermarkets at the start of the crisis - all it takes is about 20% increase in normal footfalls and you end up with huge queues. There will also probably be a big rush on buying holidays as well when travel restrictions are lifted. So in some sectors you will get an overestimated effect of the downturn in the short run because transactions are just being delayed from now to later.

The big risk with the economy is that households and businesses that are receiving no or lower than average income now, but still have outgoings and overheads to cover, are going to be running down reserves or getting in to debt, which means when the pandemic is over, although the underlying factor that started the recession is gone, household consumption and business investment will be much lower because belts are having to be tightened, so they don't end up buying the sofa/car/holiday. That's why the government's strategy, expensive as it is, has been to try and keep households and businesses afloat as much as possible so that things can return to as normal as possible when it is over.

What would happen if it was a normal year ?

We normally vaccinate for winter flu, then accept the number of deaths it brings. The CMO said last year the number of excess mortality due to flu was around 8,000.

There is no vaccine for Coronovirus, so we don't vaccinate and allow the thing to run through the UK. How many deaths will it claim ?

Firstly we know its twice as infectious as winter flu (R0 of 2.5 compared to 1.3 for flu), so it would sweep through very quickly.

Secondly we know the mortality rate is 1%, which is 10 times that of winter flu at 0.1%. And the numbers requiring critical care will be around 5% (current UK model).

Coronavirus would need to infect more than 60% of our population before we reached Herd Immunity and the outbreak started to peter out ( standard calculation, used in our current model, uninfected fraction = 1/R0).

So 60% of the UK becomes infected which is around 41 million. 1% die which is around 400,000.

Unfortunately, the mortality figure assumes we can treat the critically ill ( IC beds with ventilators). How many of these will there be ? Well that's 5% of 41 million = approximately 2 million patients. And the virus is highly infectious and sweeps through very quickly, so can the NHS deal with 2 million critically ill patients over a short period of say 4 months ? We know they can't, so we will have a huge number of people that will simply not get to hospital, let alone be left on the floor in a hospital corridor. Even the army will not be sufficient to truck away the dead (as in Piedmont, Italy) and bury them somewhere.

So we would have deaths in the millions, and the UK would look like a war zone. The only advantage is that the economic shock would be spread over a very short time period and the Uk would be able to get back to work much more quickly. Is that an acceptable trade off though ?

Boris Johnson on 18 March: “We’re moving up to 25,000 (tests) a day."

Matt Hancock on 2 April: "We're committed to getting to 25,000 tests a day by the end of April."

Hancock 10 mins later: "I am now setting the goal of 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month. That is the goal."

Gone from 25k to 100k in 10 mins.

This government really don't help themselves. An absolute shambles from the start of this pandemic.