Yesterday’s figures were not one off. The number of casualties is ever increasing and it’s now obvious and clear the figures for infected people is but a fraction of the reality. UK’s deceased due to Covid-19 is now 4 times those of Germany, but Germany has 5 times as many infected. The difference is, Germany actually know how many infected are within their borders, the UK doesn’t have a clue, other than the insane number of fatalities.
Then, there’s a telltale indicator something is terribly wrong. UK’s fatality rate (new cases vs fatalities) now stands at 4.48%, which roughly means that for each fatality 20 others become infected. However, on Germany, which is testing people, all people, people showing symptoms or people not showing them, has 0.22% or roughly one per 450 infected. Assuming healthcare into the UK is at least as good as in Germany, it means that there are 46800 infected people in the UK, not the infamous 2600 value.
This is what sets competent governments from blatantly incompetent ones. Competent governments know how many people are infected so preparations can be made in advance. Incompetent governments refuse to realize there’s a problem, then that there’s anything to be done, then that we can just let the epidemic die out due to herd immunity, and finally rush for salvation. In the meantime more than a month has passed, and the number of infected people is now unknown and out of control. We can only estimate the number of actual infections by the number of the deceased, just knowing that no matter what we do, the number of fatalities will increase during the next 17 days. By then the UK will be morning the death of 1100 people, victims of poor government.
Figures are now starting to stabilise, so we can have a better forecast for the number of fatalities, and I won’t even bother forecasting the number of infections. If tomorrow is a good day, we’ll only morn between 178 and 201 victims.
As usual the source spreadsheet is available here.