Just took a look at the latest covid data using the government data API
https://api.coronavirus.data.gov.uk/v1/data?filters=areaType=overview&structure={"date":"date","newAdmissions":"newAdmissions","cumAdmissions":"cumAdmissions","hospitalCases":"hospitalCases","ventilatorPatients":"covidOccupiedMVBeds"}
A few things stood out to me:
- There are more than 5000 people in hospital today. According to Dan on TLN, between 1/4 and 1/3 of hospitalised patients will end up in ICU beds. That could turn into 1200 - 1500 ICU beds.
- These beds are not spread around the country. The current situation is (just like March) highly clustered in a few particular locations
- There are currently over 560 people on ventilators in the UK
- Hospitalisations and ventilated patients are both increasing exponentially fast. The data follow an almost perfect straight line on a logarithmic scale (see charts below)
- An exponential rise in hospitalisations means that we have not reached herd immunity yet.
- Together with an exponential rise in “cases” (whatever they are), it seems pretty clear that this virus has not burned through the country yet.
I’ve been holding out hope that there might be enough immunity in our population to stave off another big surge in hospitalisations and deaths. I am getting less optimistic about that.
Hospitalisations
(A straight line would mean exponential rise)
Ventilator patients
dan reckons 250 admissions a day. Presumably not just to London hospitals. Wonder where he gets his figures. I always listen to his accounts with interest, since at least he’s been right in the thick of some of the worst of it, from the outset. A pretty reliable witness, I reckon, even if only for his local scene. Angrily burnt-out, he often sounds; with good reason, I imagine.
Speaking with a nurse neighbour of mine today, I was getting yet another wildly variant picture from his particular grapevine (he’s not actively in medical work right now, but on stand-by for some weeks, in case of emergency need). Mind you, he was high as a kite on hash at the time and somewhat over-excited, so - you know - maybe a bit wayward in his painting of the current status quo.
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Yes, listening to Dan talking about being on the front line is always worth paying attention to, in my opinion.
What did he say?
hahahahah! Quality 
cheers
PP
As a matter of fact, I’m hard put to it now to remember a coherent thread through his remarks; just left with a feeling of ‘Oh christ, no! Not yet another odd thesis to have to try to integrate into the whole chaotic picture.’
Mind you, he’s a divorced man with teeny daughters and obviously a good deal of unslaked sex-drive running riot just now, and there was a personable woman - another neighbour - sitting in on our conversation at the time, so it felt as if he was getting a bit hectic under all the ill-assorted pressures with which he has to cope. Sublimating it into some very nice wood-carving work right now; articles for sale, to do something about the almost total, uncompensated vanishing of his previous musician’s nice little niche income, since Spring; nothing coming in at all. The carving work, like his music work, is a modest earner, but obviously they’re both fatally at risk from all the ridiculous socio-economic upheavals, arty stuff being a dispensable optional in these time, apparently…
Jesus, what a bloody mess! Seems I must be one of the luckiest people around - again! - from having a pension income that hasn’t wavered at all though all this eff-up - not yet…!
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hmmm… you did say that you have moorings up near you didn’t you? I’m not having conversations like that these days!
Might consider a move soon…
There’s one vacant mooring at the moment, couple of spaces below mine. But beware: the live-aboard life is a great sorter of sheep from goats: those who can fix stuff, have a wide range of practical skills, and the tool-sets to facilitate them (carpentry, welding and fabrication, engine fitting and mechanics, etc.); or failing that, you need a good deal of readies to pay others to do it: There’s NEVER a time when boats don’t need anything doing to them at all. There’s ALWAYS something. You have to have the temperament for it.
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