119 fatalities due to Covid-19 in the UK today. More than ten over the 7 day and weekly trends, about 20 over the trend made up from all days since the decline started. Thats after 7 (more or less on trend) yesterday. Here's the overall graph (1) 
On Sunday I said that fatalities had stopped falling. Now they're rising. Here's a closer look at the 7 day rolling total trend (2)
Daily variation (7 one day, 119 the next) gets ever greater, I suspect that hospitals and coroners aren't working overtime at weekends to keep up any more so we aren't seeing such high totals then. But the variability is huge (3)
...you don't get 17 times more deaths due to an infectious disease on a Sunday than a Monday, so we need to apply a little smoothing to this to normalise. Then our deaths per day looks like this (4)
Now curves like this are always easier to interpret when you put a log scale on. A straight descending line means the proportional rate of drop is constant. If it kinks up at all, the rate has slowed. Here's what that looks like (5)
Althouh it doesn't matter if you use 7 day rolling totals, daily smoothed, whichever metric you used, the death rate has gone past the point of not falling and is going up. (6)
I'm sorry, I hate being right about this, I wish I had been wrong, but I predicted this more or less exactly to the day. How? 23 days. R rises when government policy changes, 23 days ago the hangovers from pubs reopening were being survived the morning after (7)
We can calculate R knowing peak infectivity is 5 days after infection and peak death day is 23 days. They're the centre of two fat bell curves, but thats not especially important to the maths. Here's what R was doing up until 23 days ago (8)
You can see R went up 4 times since we came down from the peak. The first time was VE day weekend, the second was lockdown easing and people rushing to the same outdoor spots, the third was shops opening and protests. The new one plots directly to pubs reopening (9)
You see the steepness of the upslope? Notice that its more or less the same for the last three peaks? Thats the bell curve for deaths up to 23 days I was talking about. Thats the rate of the 'up' part of it. R was, when those reported dead today caught it on average, above 1 (10)
The question now is, as ever, what happens next. It those who caught the disease at the pub spread it within their homes then 5 days from now we'll be looking at the rate of increase having seemed to slow, maybe for two days before going up again (11)
...but if pubs and restaurants being open, and indeed the further relaxation in both lockdown and attitudes leads to infection continuing to spread at that rate, then we're on a new upslope that is going to be quite hard to get off again. (12)
Alternatively the people who caught Covid-19 that weekend may have been responsible and managed to avoid spreading it. In which case it'll start going down. Cross your fingers for that (13)
But we can say that every time we see an uptick like this (and heaven hope thats what this is, an uptick rather than a second full peak) we delay getting out of this mess. This isn't an abstract analysis, this is many more people dead. Its a tragedy (14)
...and a further embodiment of Britains absolute failure (relative to nearly every other major Western nation) to handle Covid-19. We remain in a much worse state than any of our neighbours, and every time this happens we lengthen our status in the sick man of Europe (15)
Lastly for now, I don't need to remind you that if we had locked down 3 weeks earlier we wouldn't be in this mess. This is failure by design. Those who died today died of government policy. Hold our leaders accountable for these failings. Be angry. Never let this go. Never. (fin)
