Moving on to the table of data.

You will see on the left, it has a column for R0.

From Wikipedia
In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number (sometimes called basic reproductive ratio, or incorrectly basic reproductive rate, and denoted R0, pronounced R nought or R zero) of an infection can be thought of as the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection.

Various assumptions are then made for the value of R0, and they are used to provide numbers of deaths, peak demand for ICU beds, and with the length of time the proposed measures are in place dependant on the measures that have been implemented.

If we take the top left section, concentrating on deaths only, and at trigger value 400, the model generates the following number of deaths:

No measures implemented : 410,000
Implement care isolation + household quarantine + social distancing : 44,000 deaths
Implement closure of schools & universities + case isolation + social distancing : 30,000 deaths
Implement closure of schools & universities + case isolation + household quarantine + social distancing : 26,000 deaths

If you then look at the table describing the various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI's) or measures, you will see a number of assumptions that have been built in.

For example, with case isolation, there is an assumption that 70% of households comply with the policy.

It's quite simple really. If the flu overwhelmed the health service every year, the death rate from flu would be a lot higher as people wouldn't be able to get treatment. There would be restrictive measures taken to protect the most vulnerable every winter, just like there are now.

It is almost a given that the health service will be overwhelmed at some point and for as long as that continues, the death rate from coronavirus disease is expected to be at a level far higher than flu. The goal is to minimise the length of time that continues for. These measures are not reactive to the current death rate, they are preventative measures ie to prevent the overwhelming of the health service and thus to prevent the death rate rocketing, or at least to reduce the length of time that goes on for.

From next winter there should be a vaccine and immunity built up in the population. Then it won't have the capability to overwhelm the health service, just like flu doesn't. Then it will be comparable to flu. That's when you can compare it to flu and compare death rates, not before then. It is idiotic to compare the death rate of a new virus for which lockdown measures are taken to the death rate of an old virus for which lockdown measures are never taken. This new virus will be an old virus and will be directly comparable to flu by next winter.

Winter 2021 might be a bit too soon to say it's not new.

But the theory itself seems sound to me as this will now be an endemic virus in human populations.

Should have closed the ports when it became clear what was happening in China.

it was all to do with money .... every man and his dog knew the issue  ,that's why i stayed away from pubs at least 6 weeks ago when those first cases came to light in Brighton  10/02/20

i was laughed at when i said the virus could be in the community undetected  under the radar

screaming from beneaththewaves 27 Mar 20 22:53 
it took 4 months to record 300,000 global cases. It has taken 6 days to record the second 300,000.

It took 4 months to record 13,000 global deaths. The number of global deaths has more than doubled in the following 6 days. Today 3,000 recorded deaths there were only 4 times that in the first 4 months.

In a weeks time we will be past a million cases and pushing 100,000 deaths - you can then keep doubling until we hit the peak which in the uk terms is expected to be in around 3 months times.

Eh? If we have a million cases in a week's time, and the number is doubling every six days, well over 8 billion people will be infected in three months' time.

Which is a problem, because there are only 7.8 billion people in the world. A virus from which the average person recovers after a couple of weeks can't possibly infect everybody, because it runs out of hosts way before then. That's what herd immunity is.

And that's assuming only one million are infected now. The true number is way higher, with most infected people being told to stay at home and not get tested.

So, as long as you're correct, and the number of infections doubles every six days, the virus has to be gone in less than three months.

Million cases passed with a day to spare

Health Secretary Matt Hancock:
163,194 tested
33,718 positive
Best scientific analysis: rate of infection doubling every 3-4 days
12,949 admitted to hospital
2,921 have died

Taken literally, that means that in 30-40 days every single person in the country will have caught the virus (and obviously less than 30-40 days if more than the 33,718 positive cases have currently had it).

This isn't a prediction. It's an illustration of the futility of assuming numbers which are currently doubling at a certain rate will continue to do so.

An exponential expansion is easy to understand (numbers of cases are currently doubling every 6 days, so will obviously continue to do so until 6 times the population of the planet is infected in three months' time). It's obviously baloney when applied to our actual, finite world when you actually do the calculations, but hardly anyone does. But, as I said, it's easy to understand, so everyone goes along with it.

A Gompertz function (or a biological growth curve as it's called these days) is hard to understand and harder to calculate, because it needs way more data, which we don't have, largely thanks to the Chinese Communist Party being in charge of initiating and measuring the disease. It's a curve which looks exponential, then gradually levels off. It describes the growth of everything in our natural, finite world (think of how a puppy grows exponentially for the first few weeks, yet doesn't become as big as an aircraft carrier after three months). It describes the way a virus spreads before levelling out and being controlled. But, because it's hard to do the maths, and we don't have the data to calculate it accurately, nobody is interested in it.

I agree that I don't think the government could have done anything too much differently. They waited as long as possible to impose lockdown, in order to get the virus spreading to the extent necessary to reach the flattening point sooner rather than later; and did so without (so far) overwhelming the emergency services. There should be more testing to protect NHS workers, but the lack of that is down to the NHS itself, and its bitter refusal to allow private testing. Germany, without a Nationalized Health Service, cheerfully uses the private labs and gets the tests done. It's not hamstrung by ideology.

I'm not sure at all about the shutting down of nearly every shop and other business. I think way more businesses should have been allowed to remain open with rules on restricting customer numbers and keeping people 6 feet apart. Really, the transmission of the virus must be almost entirely airborne. I know the virus can survive on certain surfaces for certain periods, but short of licking your finger, rubbing the surface and then sucking your finger, I don't see how the virus can be transmitted to any meaningful extent by that route.

How do we exit from this? It really has to be sooner rather than later. I'd suggest an acknowledgement that touching surfaces is not a danger in practical terms, and using that as an opening to get businesses going again. (There's a school of thought among German virologists that this is the case -

https://www.merkur.de/welt/markus-lanz-zdf-hendrik-streeck-corona-nrw-uniklinik-bonn-robert-koch-institut-rki-zr-13636707.html

(Points out that it's social interactions rather than touching objects which transmits the virus, so why shut barbers and restaurants?)

The other way out is that it simply fizzles out by the end of the month anyway. The virus runs out of hosts and the flattening of the curve clearly begins. Certainly, the current doubling of confirmed cases every three or four days suggests we must be close to that point.

Yes. A readable form of what I said.

To be clear, I do think it's vitally important to keep washing hands and avoid touching your face. But we need to take advantage of doing that, by re-opening shops and other businesses (and some sporting events) with appropriate spacing and limits on numbers.

And we need to take some sort of steps in that direction fast, or there's going to be a wholesale free-for-all at some point, with dire consequences. We have to see some chink of light. Ignore the ban-everything-I-hope-Boris-dies social media storm. They don't go out anyway (least of all to the polling station, it turned out).

Your maths suck drive for...there isn't 600 million in the uk

I think the 3 week lockdown will help reduce the spread but what is the point when people today are flying in on planes from Rome, New York and China?

I think the Government message is muddled and confused like much of its thinking. The fact that the Prime Minister, Health Secretary and Chief Medical Officer got the virus at the same time after a News Conference in a small room at Downing Street packed with Journalists expresses this point.

We are currently still talking about shortages in PPE, Testing and Masks. We should T this stage be in a position where the medical people are getting on with it and the Government is focussing it’s efforts on getting the Country back to work.

I have doubts about the lockdown holding after 3 weeks. People will be running out of money next week and theGovernment will be faced with a Public Order crisis imho at least

We have crops in the field and businesses going bust that will result in people being out of work. We will be in recession and not have enough people spending money to get us out of it cue more social unrest.

Then we will have another wave of virus brought in from overseas and so the story continues

Time for foresight not hindsight

Absolutely

The thinking from the top has been muddled, poor and badly explained so people are confused.

I pu5 my hands up. I was one of those who planned to go to a pub and drink on Saturday 14th March but common sense prevailed and I did not. What did annoy me though was that I had a flight booked to Rome on Friday 13th March then to Barcelona on the15th then home on the 16th. The flight from Rome to Barcelona was cancelled and I got a refund but the other two flights allegedly went without me.

The Government should have stopped all of those flights well in advance. We have seen the damage done by Football in Bergamo.

To tell people they should not be going to pubs but allowing flights to continue sent the wrong message. Well done to the British public for doing g the right thing.

Some people are coming across as callous for calling for business as usual but after this health crisis will come a serious financial crisis incorporating business, unemployment, a recession, food in the fields rotting then shortages of food in the autumn and public order problems.

I fear the Government is continually too far behind the problem to deal with it effectively

Again I say The Prime Minister, Health Minister and Chief Medical Officer going down with the Virus at the same time is symptomatic of the dysfunction of the Government.

The danger isn't food rotting in fields. Everything bar some niche fruit and veg that would normally be imported if it weren't for cheap foreign labour is harvested mechanically anyway.

The problem is not knowing what the situation is going to be at harvest time in terms of the economy and how shops will be operating. Is it worth planting potatoes now, when there is no way of knowing whether supermarkets are going to operating as normal next winter? And whether export markets will have re-opened? The potatoes won't rot, with harvesting involving just two men to drive and run the harvester. But can they be sold?

Agreed the problem is not knowing. The country needs leadership and is being sold short. The Furlough programme had an incredible effect of calming millions of people. We do not know if it will work yet but is a great example of what needs to be done. I hope Little Rishi can leave others to administrate that scheme and get on with reassuring business, farmers and people worried about their jobs. He has made a great start.

liverpool fc joining in on the furlough scheme.surely somewhere there  has to be a legal way to stop this kind of abuse

you can talk liverpool but I am talking belarus and russia  plus a fair few strange friendly soccer ball games while the rest seem to be obsessed by death numbers

spivs keeping heathrow open and the chinese military thinking where to go next with this tactic

It ain't going to fix it in 3 weeks

They will extend by another 3 weeks and then another 3 weeks and then another 3 weeks etc

They might start football back up behind closed doors in June, but you can forget thinking about going back to support your teams for at least 18 months

Is the death rate really only bad in Western Europe, USA and UK? Not withstanding the fact that these countries have big populations, dynamic economies and a lot of international travel. I don't understand why there are so many countries (some with huge populations) that don't seem to have anywhere near the number victims that we and our neighbours have. Is it down to under-reporting/ lying about death stats, unsophisticated testing or general poverty and poor administration? Or are there parts of the World that this virus doesn't reach?
Good to see the death rates falling in Italy and Spain, though.