Let’s look back to March 14th when Europe had become the centre of the COVID-19 pandemic, France had locked down and the UK had not. The number of cases in the UK had reached 1,140. Number of deaths had doubled in one day from 11 to 21.
1/n
1/n
More than 200 people had died in Italy between 13th and 14th March. At the time, this was shocking. 1268 people had died in total of COVID-19 in Italy. The first reported case in Italy had been on February 23rd and March 7th for the UK, about 2 weeks later.
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2/n
By now the WHO had declared Pandemic on March 11th, already several weeks after they had declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30th when the outbreak had gone international. The spread of disease was rapid and deadly between these two dates.
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3/n
On March 11th 631 people had died of COVID-19 in Italy. Deaths had doubled in 3 days in Italy. In terms of cases there were 10,149 in Italy on March 11th, 17,660 on the 14th and 21,157 on March 15th. Thus doubling time was a little under 4 days. What about the UK?
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4/n
On March 11th there had been 373 cases & by March 14th 802. Doubling time was less than 3 days. On March 17th the case number was 1,547 approx. doubling again. On March 20th case numbers had doubled again at 3,277.
What does this mean in the context of an earlier shutdown?
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What does this mean in the context of an earlier shutdown?
5/n
Imagine if the UK had locked down when France had or even a day or two earlier, prompted by the WHO declaration, not the 23rd. Would the doubling time still have been 3 days? Let’s look at actual case numbers for the 1st week of April a little time after lockdown.
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6/n
On April 1st case numbers were 25,154 in the UK. They did not exceed 50,000 until April 7th at 51,612 cases. Doubling time had increased from 3 to 6 days. With this simple illustration you can see the potential impact of earlier lockdown, a great reduction in cases.
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7/n
Locking down 10-11 days earlier on March 12th or March 13th would have reduced doubling time greatly, reducing the total number of cases and the total number of deaths. There can be little doubt that govt’s decisions have caused a huge number of unnecessary deaths.
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8/n
This is simple mathematics indeed. Anyone can understand this. Because the UK acted so slowly to lockdown on top of its other mistakes, such as ending testing and contact tracing so early, people died. They didn’t need to. Our friends. Our relatives. Our neighbours.
9/n
9/n
I started seriously to social distance/lockdown on March 10th. Many other individuals, companies & organisations did the same at around that time. Why did the government not lock down sooner? Every single day not locked down meant more cases and more deaths.
10/n
10/n
P.s. Also here for U.K. numbers on March 13-14.
google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…
google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…
