paddyfool

Vaagheid was paying so much attention to Covid19, he neglected to keep a weather eye out for assassins. All hail King Sir Creep! (Or else!)

8 vs 6

The thing is that it isn't going to stay at 10 confirmed coronavirus deaths per day. We're about 2 weeks off the current Italian situation of 250 per day (1750 extra per week). Plus whatever the unconfirmed total is, plus whatever deaths occur from lack of the usual resources to treat every single other health condition. Wouldn't be surprised if total uk weekly mortality was around 14 or 15k rather than 11k by the end of the month, overall.

I think that a big part of the gap in case numbers between the UK and Italy is down to luck, with a further portion down to our not testing enough people (for instance, the gvt just stopped community testing in the UK entirely). Kissing on the cheek may be a small factor too, but it's hardly the only way to catch this. You can't tell me people in the UK are especially hygienic - handwashing stats etc are OK, but not drastically different to other European countries https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/revealed-dutch-are-least-hygienic-europeans, and other countries with better stats than us, e.g. Germany and Sweden, have apparently been hit harder by Covid19 so far. Meanwhile, the UK's population density is higher than Italy's (274 vs 200 people per square km), and we have many fewer doctors, nurses, hospital beds and ITU beds while also having a very elderly population. We're having the same numbers of new cases per day now that they were two weeks ago... and there's nothing about the current response that reassures me we won't be in similar straits or worse to the ones they are in now before the month is up.

Italy has nearly twice as many ITU beds per capita than the UK... https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-countries-with-the-most-critical-care-beds-per-capita-infographic/#2e7f043d7f86 As for being "tactile"... this virus lives very well on surfaces. How often do you think that the handrails on public transport get cleaned?

5375 confirmed deaths now, with 250 confirmed deaths in Italy. Seems pretty certain it'll be over 6000 before Monday, and pretty likely to be over 10000 by April.

There are so many issues with this plan. If the UK ends up taking over from Italy as the epidemic's epicentre (and the figures show we're only about 2 weeks behind them), healthcare as we know it will basically collapse. And, of course, we'll be a pariah state. But at least we'll know who to blame...

March 9th to 13th is 4 days. No argument with that prediction. And wtf is Johnson playing at...

With 4989 deaths so far reported, and both Italy and Iran among the countries yet to report today, it looks like today's the day we pass the 5000 mark. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Question: Will it take another 4 days to hit 6000 deaths, or fewer?

The whole response is predictably shit. Two weeks from now, many will wonder why the hell the gvt didn't start the lockdown sooner.

Murphy's razor may apply here though... best not to assume maleficience when simple incompetence will explain matters. Although the view that this will simply kill some of the old and the frail may well have led a lot of people, politicians included, into complacence.

We've just passed 4000 deaths. Only took 2 days from when we passed 3500 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

I wish I hadn't hit - RIP Max von Sydow

True. It looks like they didn't put up figures per million for countries with a total population of fewer than a million people - both San Marino and Iceland would have ranked highly otherwise.

Indeed, and imho, the UK testing rate is also likely to not be high enough

This raises a good point re the total confirmed cases per capita nationally. Currently, the ranking is as follows: Countries ranked by cases per 1m population: 1 S Korea 137 2 Italy 97 3 Iran 69 4 China 56 5 Bahrain 50 6 Switzerland 31 7 Norway 29 8 Singapore 24 9 Sweden 16 10 Belgium 15 11 France 15 12 Hong Kong 14 ... 30 UK 3 ... 41 USA 1 Etc https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Ineviably, of course, cases in the UK and USA have featured very strongly in the British news cycle.

Global confirmed cases have just passed the 100,000 mark, and deaths the 3,500 mark, with over 500 deaths worldwide in the last 6 days. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Switched my vote to Tom Smith.

Eh, the point was to reward guessing the correct number of deaths independently of whether the individual guesses are correct. It was a nuisance to update, though, even though it didn't interact with the joker... maybe leave it until the end of the year and update that bonus all at once?

You're going to hate me YoungWillz... but have you updated the scores by removing the -2 penalty for being more than 5 out from the total for those who've got within 5 of their total? Because, for instance, dean1991 should probably have gone up by 2 when Mubarak died... unless you're waiting for the end of the year to factor this in? (I apologise for having designed an excessively complex scoring system).

Hyun Soong-jong please.

In a moment of madness, I clicked on Valery Giscard d'Estaing. He probably won't be next, however.

King Eesti has left us, with these historic last words: "Curse you, Covid-19!" King Vaagheid takes the throne, and locks Eesti's entire court and household in quarantine.

Not so sure about Africa having an especially high mortality rate from this. Relatively young population with a low smoking rate. Equatorial sun and heat (present in much though obvs not all of the continent) are also not good for viral survival on surfaces and hence onwards transmission. On the other hand, large church gatherings and densely packed cities with poor quality health infrastructure may be problematic, and where high rates of malnutrition, TB or HIV are present survival chances will likely be impaired. Syrian refugee camps in the middle east are a clear risk area, as is much of the Indian subcontinent.

That's another miss for me. Also, 5 hits so far is a good outlook for those betting on a high total... so also not a good outlook for my guess of 13 in total. EDIT: Very impressed by Radguy's 5 for 5, however.