David's Covid Diaries

Well, it had to happen. While Boris’s pygmies struggle with crazy, old strategies like putting all arrivals into quarantine - Rome burns, and soon all will be clear.   Looking back on our government’s ‘strategy’ for dealing with the pandemic crisis, it was ‘too little, too late’. So while the official government website still claims that R values are well below 1, others have been more open with their fears: Dr P. Birrel says “all regions are straddling 1’, Dr Sebastian Funk of LSHTM says the same, and even Sir P. Vallance himself says ‘there is little room for public manoeuvre, R is on the cusp of 1’.   We do not know, and cannot prove, that superspreaders are responsible for the general deterioration in our present position, but it is clear in countries far from the USA, as our figures show. We show that the US has certainly experienced a serious deterioration, but also countries such as Germany, Norway and Finland have experienced changes in th...

This blog will deal with Colombia (an equatorial country on either side of the Andes), Peru and Chile (two countries west of the Andes) and with Brazil and Argentina (two countries east of the Andes). These are countries with fairly high GINI indices indicating inequality, but what might have been just adequate GDP’s per capita to provide a basic health service. The number of tests /K population is generally very low, so the data is not very reliable. The most curious problem in South America is between Brazil and Peru.     BRAZIL PERU         CHILE          COLOMBIA           ARGENTINA         USA (for cf) Popln.     209M 32M   19M 50M 44...

First topic: How the 4 governments set about their task, and the extent they succeeded in it.   In an earlier Blog (7) New Zealand was described as an elimination strategy, while Australia was described as a containment strategy. In fact, the differences between them are minor, as both rely on border security with only returning citizens allowed in, and all quarantined for 2 weeks. New Zealand introduced their lockdown strategies in a phased manner, with the last phase not until 25 th March,   closing all schools, churches, restaurants and museums and workplace closures, combined with the usual hand washing and coughing etiquette. On 8 June the recovery of the last Covid19 patient meant that there were no similar patients anywhere in NZ. All restrictions were lifted, special travel for Australians, only when they were in the same position. Australia had broadly similar policies, but these were complicated by shortage of test equipment between Feb...

Most previous blogs have largely relied on published work, but in order to cover the immense number of papers on Covid-19 this blog includes papers that have not been accepted for publication but are sponsored by Wellcome Open research   SSE’s can either apply to a cataclysmic event, with several people involved, or to an individual who has infected several people. The old idea, that single people passed infection on to single people, went out some time ago. We now have the 20/80 model, where 20% of the population are potential superspreaders , and they spread the virus to people who were near them at the time of the SSE. So, an SSE at a religious service will affect individuals who were at the same service, at a football match the new cases will be among those who were at that match, and so on. The new cases will be just as infectious as anyone else who is positive for the virus.   A recent example of an SSE When 61 people met for a choir pract...