s_dog

Think the graphs in the financial times are the closest you get to that (think they've already been posted on this thread). If you look at their coronavirus tracked page: https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 the second and third graphs on that page give indications of the excess mortality from Covid-19.

9 deaths and just 90 new cases this Sunday. That compares to 10 deaths and 181 new cases last Sunday & 12 and 170 the Sunday before. There's always a dip at the weekend, but there is a clear trend in the number of new infections going down from figures in the 300's each day near the end of April, to 200's a day in May and last week we've been in the 100's. The death rate isn't going down quite the same and those figures are still very up and down. But we've had over a month of there being well over 100 people in ICU beds in Scotland ( and over 200 at its peak) and its heartening to see that figure dropping down regularly. There were still over 100 in ICU at the start of this month, and today its dropped to 59. Edit to add: Travelling Tabby travel blog is the place to look for Scotland's Coronavirus stats - https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

Just wanted to quote this as I think it's probably the best post on this thread to date. People can argue all they want, and we'll all have various opinions about how things should be done and how good or bad we think our politicians have dealt with it up to now, but this is the important reality. Just quoting this because it doesn't appear to have gathered much attention on here. The British Medical Journa's editorial on the "Too little, too late, too flawed" response to Covid-19. It's scathing, and well worth a read, and I'd interested to find anyone who can disagree with much of what is said it in. The Scottish Government definitely need to do more to increase their testing capability, they are still testing far to few people, and still have a long way to go to increase the capacity to the required levels (and yes, they are doing better with testing numbers down South than we are), but because they decided early on to not stick with the test, trace & isolate strategy, they've been scrambling to deal with the pandemic and now they've accepted and changed their decision on testing, they can't just conjure up the capacity and staff to do it in a couple of weeks. That Daily Record article even mentions in it "13 days after the initial strategy document was published the Scottish Government has admitted that nobody has been given a job". Ignoring the fact that they didn't start advertising for contact tracers until after the document was published, and that who in their right mind would think they'd manage to advertise and employ staff in the space of a week or so?! It might sound good in theory that the UK Gov has already hired staff, are they a bit further forward in setting up contact tracing, are all these already employed actually working yet or are they still trying to set up the infrastructure to do the job? Also as we're all so interested in the statistics of the pandemic, nice to see that the Scottish Gov (Welsh too) gets a wee nod from an article by the UK Statistics Authority ( an independent organisation who promote and safeguard the publication of official statistics). https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/the-armchair-epidemiologists/ "Let’s end with the area where we’ve made our strongest interventions. Statistics cannot do their job to inform people’s understanding and to be a source of trustworthy insight if they are not publicly available. One of our core principles is that when information is used in public discourse – by Ministers, for example – it should be fully, openly and freely available. By and large Governments in the UK have sought to comply with this (the Scottish Government stand out here for their open approach to publishing management information)".

In Scotland the capacity was 350 to begin with, now up ten times that, so prob not even anywhere near the capability to test enough now never mind two months ago. I wonder how Belgium for example are testing 10-20,000 daily (pop 11.5m), whereas we (pop 5.4m) are nowhere near half of that? I don't object to it, as long as its only tracking you during the pandemic and all data is deleted once its over, why not? However, I read something about the take up of the app in Singapore (launched in March) is only a fifth of their population while they've said three quarters need to use it for it to work effectively.

madwullie has nailed it. And I've never understood why on earth didn't they attempt to do something about international travel to limit the spread? All these people flying back from China for weeks after it had got bad there, as well as those returning from Italy at the same time we were watching the horrific news stories from Italy? If they'd tested & tracked vigorously then, the lockdown could have been less strict and certainly the number of deaths would be far fewer. Pity those would have required a bit of planning & a quick response from the Government. Instead, two months after the first cases in the UK, we have the UK Gov failing to get their act together with PPE and lying about it, have went from testing between 10-20,000 people for the first three weeks of April, to those figures jumping from around 18,000 on Apr 24th to 75,000 a week later, so that they can claim to have reached their target of 100,000 tests and not see anything suspicious. And a Scottish Government that have been slow to increase the testing capacity, also struggled to provide PPE, but have at least been far more honest & transparent. Edited to add: Bottom line is though, we have hundreds of people dying in care homes because there wasn't enough PPE and the Gov were slow to recognise that the spread in care home is far more difficult to manage, and just yesterday the Scottish Gov still only carried out 2000 tests, which is a scarily low number.

Sorry for your loss Steve_Wilkos, it's tough losing a member of your family, and right now I can barely imagine how brutal it must be. The amount of people dying without being able to see and be visited by their family is simply horrific. I can only imagine how horrible it must be for the people in care homes, the residents, the workers and the families of those in them. As much as I love the appreciation for the frontline NHS workers, I know a few poorly paid, and over-worked care home staff and especially when you read of those who have pretty much moved in and locked down with the care home residents, my heart goes out to them.

Physical contact is an issue because of it can be transferred with direct person to person contact (someone sneezed before putting their mask, then brushed their hand against you, you automatically wipe wherever they touched you and a few minutes later rub your eye). Wearing gloves just means it's alive on the surface for even longer than it would be on your skin, and we must all be well aware by now how much we touch our faces without even realising. Also, these surgical masks are only good for limited use (about 15 minutes) then the limited protection they offer starts to degrade. They are supposed to be disposable, single use masks, yet people are likely to feel 'safer' if they and others are wearing them and will stop social distancing. Then you have the people that wear them walking about outside, then walk into a shop and stand next to you, if they have coronavirus and cough, how effective is that mask at stopping droplets? It was never 100% effective to start with, and it's certainly not going to be after they've been walking about with it on for an hour or two beforehand. So no it won't do the same job as staying 2m apart. However, if you do all of the things, maybe wear masks on public transport and in shops, as well as maintaining the social distancing as best you can, and continuing to wash your hands whenever you go back into your house, will all add up to make sure you either don't infect others, or don't get it yourself. The problem with contact tracing is the effect on privacy, and enough of the population being willing to install the app on their phones. The individualistic nature of many people in the UK, compared to the more collective outlook in Japan for example means there's likely to be less take-up of the app here. And that's even without the privacy concerns. Good, I only hope people will listen to her. I am out regularly for work, and I thought it was just the warm weather that had more people out and more cars on the road, but this week has just been ridiculous in comparison to the first few weeks. It's great for us north of the border because we clearly see both, and the difference is night and day - and yes there are still questions to be asked of the Scottish Gov, particularly about how they've been dealing with care homes, but Sturgeon has definitely done fairly well. She's no Jacinda Ardern though (NZ Prime Minister). The sad thing is, most people south of the border see wee clips of her on the national news and just think she talks rubbish, and don't seem to think Hancock, Johnston etc are doing much wrong. I laughed at interviews the BBC did with Trump voters after his disinfectant nonsense, two of the three supported him and said it was obvious he was being sarcastic. Some people in England aren't much better with their fawning over Johnston. One of the issues with testing is that some people who are symptomatic are testing negative when first tested, and only showing positive when being re-tested a few days later (retested because they are still showing symptoms). So are they passing it on to others in the meantime? And is this seemingly small testing window going to be even more of an issue for those who aren't showing symptoms? Until someone tests positive, are they going to need to be tested on a daily basis to make sure they aren't carrying it and passing it on? How on earth do you ever get capacity for that, even if it is just for people in health & social care. Which is why them getting a reliable anti-body test is going to be a big part of the testing too...... oh wait, they are now saying it might not make you immune, and even if it does, they don't know how long for. It's a nightmare.

Footballers in the EPL going back to training (on their own & with no gym, indoor training or changing facilities) while we are still in lockdown just seems pointless and unnecessary. But then again, why should this surprise anyone?

Serco doing some of the testing, why would anyone think that would go well?

Which unfortunately we don't have yet. none so far have been reliable enough to use. And now the WHO are throwing it all into doubt anyway by saying ""Right now, we have no evidence that the use of a serological test can show that an individual has immunity or is protected from reinfection." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52335210 They don't even know for certain that if you've had it you can't still carry the virus and pass it onto others. Maybe it's the vaccine that we are going to need to wait on? Some hope of September for that but most experts saying it'll be 12-18 months! Jeez, I'm still out working and it's starting to get to me now

Those stats I linked to are just for intensive care, and doesn't go into any further details on the numbers, but do have the stats on outcomes from patients that have been admitted to ICU with Covid (chances of coming out alive are roughly 50/50 (compared to 78/22 if you are in with non-covid pneumonia), survival chances of those that require basic respiratory support (oxygen, CPAP etc) is roughly 80/20 but those that require invasive ventilation its only 34/66.

If I'm not being too nosey, can you please PM me who did this for you, also same to mathematics & silverton end. I am definitely going to get one of these done (if I can afford it). His commentaries of his dogs have been one of the best things ever on twitter, this is probably one of the best because its not them running about though Definitely a good boy!

It's still in general the more elderly and those with existing health conditions that die, but it has been reported that it's middle aged men (between 50-70) that are most likely to be in intensive care (https://www.icnarc.org/About/Latest-News/2020/04/10/Report-On-3883-Patients-Critically-Ill-With-Covid-19 ). This may be down to the fact that more of the elderly are already in hospitals or care homes and don't even get moved to ICU, don't think anyone knows why its more men than women though. The figures given don't include Scotland, but it's likely to be the same here. Edit: was going to link to the BBC report on these figures but if you can be bothered to look through them, the actual figures themselves give you a clearer picture. It's funny the way the media chooses to portray things. Take the recent Office of National Statistics figures (for Eng & Wales). The same set of figures has been headlined quite differently. Same set of ONS figures, two different angles from the media. BBC: Nine in 10 dying have existing illness. "In 91% of cases the individuals had other health problems. The most common was heart disease, followed by dementia and respiratory illness." The Guardian: Headlines on more men than women dying & it also mentions this 91%, but different focus - "For the first time in England and Wales, the figures also show that most people who had coronavirus at the time of their death died because of the disease rather than with it being a contributory condition. Of the 3,912 registered deaths involving coronavirus in March, Covid-19 was found to be the underlying cause of death in 86%." Nothing would surprise you with this Government (UK). No wait.... it would be more of a surprise if they didn't do something like this.

I forgot what time it was and wondered what the fireworks and banging was outside (to be fair I'm really tired after a long day). C'mon the NHS and all the other people that are on the frontline, but really not getting the love for this clapping malarkey.

Just noticed this in the live section of the BBC news:

Yep I get the first part of that, where death occurs there is sometimes as much as a 2-3 week period between someone first showing symptoms, then becoming really ill, and dying. Not always though, I was quite alarmed to read about a 20-something year old woman who lived on her own and her whole family appear to have been infected (think they'd all been on holiday in Turkey the week before). They were all keeping in contact by phone until one day they tried to phone their daughter and didn't get an answer. The next day the police came to inform them she'd died, apparently she'd become increasingly ill at the end of the first week, phoned an ambulance that night and left her door open for them, but had died before the ambulance came. The UK government have also been talking about reaching the peak this weekend, whereas the Scottish Government have been saying they don't know when it will be reached and it could be longer. It's early stages yet but its starting to look like the Scottish figures are showing the lockdown is taking effect and slowing how quickly the numbers of infected are rising. They are still rising and we need them to slow a lot more though. And like you say, even then we're still a way off coming out of it. This was the whole idea though, flattening the curve to stop the NHS from becoming overwhelmed the way the health systems did in parts of Italy & Spain. I'm sure I've heard Nicola Sturgeon say they were starting to include care home deaths in the figures in Scotland and was under the impression that was part of the new process for counting deaths that they started with the National Records of Scotland? Looking at that site it doesn't specifically mention care homes, it just talks about the Governments previous figures only including deaths of people who had tested positive for Covid-19, whereas now they are including any deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate. And as all deaths have to be registered to get a death certificate, regardless of whether they happen in hospitals, care homes or at home, that must mean they are included? Edit: link to NRS https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/covid19stats

A one day decline in deaths is pretty meaningless, good all the same but it could be up again tomorrow. Don't forget it's only the beginning of this month that we started to get regular double figures of deaths, so it's not likely to suddenly tail off just 10 days later. The same with new infections, they've got to be taken over longer period than even just a few days to show any kind of trend. The good news is that the while the infection rate is still growing on a daily basis, it's possibly not growing quite as fast as it was. 'travellingtabby's' note from yesterdays figures says "The total number of infections has risen by 9% from yesterday, and 25% from three days ago", . And don't forget, its the number of infections that will slow first, the death toll will take a bit longer to slow. That's not an indication of reaching a peak and starting to decline.

They are providing the updated total figures on a daily basis, any news report will summarise it and tell you how many new infections/deaths there are, or you could look at one of the many websites that people have set up to chart it all. For Scottish stats, take a look at (and he has links to UK & International stats pages at the bottom of the page): https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/ I think you are spot on here, so far its only London that has seen some similar scenes of packed ICU wards, but still find it a bit surprising that while there's been horror at the daily figures in Italy and Spain, there's not been quite the same level when our figures are now just as bad. I'm not sure some of the scenes from hospitals in London have been that widely reported either, so do wonder if they are trying to play it down a little so as not to make people panic. I don't understand the age thing and people still saying as its not affecting the young that's why people aren't being horrified by the figures. Have all these people not noticed the difference between what the UK Government originally said about it affecting mostly those over 80, and how ICU doctors have been talking about how surprised there are about the number of younger people that are in intensive care? And I know that it depends what age you are, but in the past weeks there's been news reports about two nurses in their 30's, another who was in her early 20's and worked in NHS 111 (so not frontline) have died, and there's probably more that I've missed. Not sure how many ICU beds they have in Forth Valley, but the Scot Gov breakdown states they only had 7 patients in ICU? It has been reported that last week overall ICU capacity had been increased to around 350 (150 being used, now up to just over 200) and they'd hoped to quadruple the original capacity which suggests up to around 700 by the end of April.

Over 600 including street parties. Bouncy castles, DJ's at some of them! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-52221688

Yeah all those people that have died from Covid-19 clearly just didn't fight hard enough, but our Boris is made from stronger stuff. Totally misses the point that a number of younger, stronger & far fitter people than Boris have arleady died of this so your battling qualities maybe don't count? Though to be fair, if you end up in intensive care they give you oxygen or put you on a ventilator to help your lungs work while your body fights off the virus. Right now they can't do anything to treat it other than keep you going. Something which also boils my piss. I was diagnosed with cancer. I did not "fight" or "battle" it. I put myself in the hands of the NHS who, y'know, have the skills and knowledge to fix this kind of thing. Turns out to have been a good choice. Palliative care doctor told us she hated the use of the word battle when it came to cancer, as its not something you can fight, you can try and treat it with certain medicines/treatment, but even then it can always come back. Plus it reinforces the idea that you've not fought hard enough if it ends up killing you.

They're not as bad as some recently departed eejts on here but you know what. Those footballers can just f**k right off too.

One of a few examples where we seem to be doing a little better, and they do say every little helps.

Which approach is going to work better? Belarus with their football etc continuing and their president saying there is no virus there because he can't see it flying around and suggest that drinking vodka and going to the sauna will ward it off anyway. Or Turkmenistan where the government has banned the word coronavirus by removing it from its health information brochures and detaining anyone talking about the virus or wearing masks in public. The government have apparently denied it but despite them sharing a border with Iran, they say they have no cases of coronavirus.

Maybe have a look at the moneysavingexpert forum for advice on this? Though I think what scw1987 has just posted above me is spot on. Don't think its as much as that, and its maybe only London & South East that we're a week or more behind, but it does mean that we have acted a bit sooner so hopefully it won't be so bad here.

What if you are one of the many people who either don't have any symptoms because its only having a mild effect, or haven't yet developed any symptoms and are passing it on to people? This is why it's spread so much, if you're only self-isolating once you have symptoms, you could already have passed it onto a number of people. That's why places like Germany and South Korea are trying to test as many people as possible so you can track and trace anyone who has been in contact with them, test them and so on. The social distancing & lockdown are a blunt tool on their own, the testing, tracking & tracing along with it are more exact. It also misses the fact that the key workers, especially those in the NHS, but also police, social care (who may have to get in close contact with other people as part of their jobs) plus people who work in supermarkets, chemists etc who are dealing with the public, all have loads of staff self-isolating for 7-14 days when they could be at work if only they could be tested. Agree with you about the anti-body testing though, that will be key too, and will eventually be more important. As well as people who are just generally ill (like invergowrie arab has just posted about his wife having really bad flu), there will also be a number of re-tests included in that figure. So aye, a lot of timewasters, but maybe not as bad as you think.