Month: April 2020

Not all masks are the same. Choose the right mask you’ll use during the next 6 months

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Within a number of weeks we’ll all be allowed to go out, unrestricted, to wherever we go. No one knows exactly when, but for sure, we will. With one caveat: we will all wear a face mask. One of the reasons why people are not allowed to go out freely, is exactly the fact you’ll need a face mask, and there aren’t any available, that is, until the health system is properly provisioned with those. And accordingly to recents news, that will still take awhile… In fact, one of the reasons some countries are credited to maintain such a low infection rate (see Czechia and Austria) is the mandatory use of face masks on all public spaces, and apparently there’s no shortage of those in Eastern Europe. So, we’ll need to pick a bunch of them, out of the tens of models available, not all are adequate. Some are just useless, others offer some protection, others protect you and the community, others only you, and all combinations thereof. Let’s have a quick look at them: The cloth mask Many masks fit in this category, but all some characteristics in common: all are made from a couple of layers of fabric. …

Belgium is now the world’s most affected country by Covid-19 (except for Andorra and San Marino)

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Something is very wrong in Belgium. It’s known that Belgium reacted a bit slow to the Covid-19 pandemic, and only entered lock down on March 18th, after 18 people had already died and the number of infected exceeded 1000 people. Nevertheless, 29 days have passed, and things seemed not to have worked, as the following chart depicts: After the initial lockdown, everything seemed to work inline with other countries such as France, UK or the Netherlands. Not that those countries fared extremely well, but were not at the levels of Italy or Spain. Then, around April 9th ( or around March 21st, the date 20 days earlier) something went very wrong. The number of fatalities started to skyrocket. And has continued ever since. From 15 fatalities per 100 000 to 42 fatalities, exceeding those of Italy or Spain, and becoming the world’s most affected country by Covid-19, and the curve is nowhere near becoming flat. This demonstrates that announcing a lockdown is different that enforcing a lockdown. Let’s compare Google’s data from Belgium with other (now) less affected countries, such as Spain. Spain Belgium So, Spain’s lockdown was more strictly implemented than Belgium’s, and not that the figures from Spain are anything …

Updated fatalities chart using NHS England data and where the UK stands

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As the updated NHS England figures are processed, the picture is now a grim one. When adding the HNS England data we clearly see a trend. On all days were we have stable NHS England data, it’s always higher than the value published on gov.uk, except for one. The saddest day was on April 4th, but given the current preliminary figures that record will be broken again, and by a significant margin. Other statistics are now made available. One such cases is the fatality rate, was has consistently been downplayed, but with the updated figures some trends are revealed: actual fatality rate is significantly higher than reported, by more than 10% fatality rate in England more than doubles those of Scotland, Wales or NI Using the updated figures paints a different picture of where the UK stands as compared with other countries. On April 11th, it was thought to be below countries such as the Netherlands, or France. In reality the UK was already far above the level of the Netherlands, and still above those of France.   Lets see how things evolve over the next week.    

What if the figures are much worst than are being touted? Just look at the official figures.

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It seems weird that the entire world is relying on a single private website to know where it stands. Even weirder that on some countries there isn’t even one official portal announcing to the world how many people were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, never mind publishing accurate and on time data on indicators such as number people in ICU (other than the PM), people having recovered from the disease or even fatalities. The UK every single day looks eagerly at the daily figures published on Gov.uk by Public Health England (PHE) and the Department of Health and Social Care. Then, let’s just ignore for a minute how few indicators are being published ( cumulative infections by community, number of tests, number of tests subjects and fatalities). Let’s then focusing on the single most important figure of the pandemic (not because people are nothing more than figures, but it is the only way you size how big the disaster is, and why people should be locked at home): fatalities. The thing with fatalities is the method used to collect that information: you ask hospitals how many people were reported in the last 24hours to have died in hospitals in those …

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