Hurrah! Only 446 days after Boris Johnson warned us we should expect to lose loved ones before their time, Heathrow Airport has dedicated a terminal to flights from the most high-risk countries.
(If they're doing it now, they could have done it before. They've not built extra.)
The next thing to watch out for: do 100% of passengers landing at the new "red" terminal get taken directly to quarantine hotels?
In theory, nobody should be leaving the airport except the staff who work there (and eligible flight crews). Everyone else should be hotel-bound.
One more thing to watch out for: since by definition the average passenger arriving at the "red" terminal is more dangerous than a passenger arriving at another terminal, will very strict social distancing be in place across the entirety of the red terminal and up to the hotels?
Also worth noting: Heathrow represents the lion's share of international non-EU passenger traffic. But the other London airports add up to about 40% of Heathrow's numbers, and other UK airports another 10% approx.
But perhaps the volumes elsewhere are small enough to manage?
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Still seeing claims on Twitter that COVID-19 only has an infection fatality rate of 0.1%.
Since 127,782 people in the UK have died with covid (conservative estimate) out of an UK population of 68.2 million, 0.187% of the population died.
So 0.1% is *literally* impossible.
To put it in different terms...
If someone claims there's a maximum of 3 red balls in a bag of balls, and you pull out 4+ red balls, you know with 100% certainty that they've underestimated the real number of red balls (could be more left in the bag, but they're ALREADY wrong).
Most studies suggest real infection fatality rates between 0.5%-1%.
At the low end (0.5%) this implies 25,556,400 people caught covid.
At the high end (1%), 12,778,200 people caught it.
But only 4,487,339 people tested positive for COVID-19 in the UK. We've missed most cases.
- Official policy was to discharge COVID-19 patients back into care homes.
- Not all were tested first.
- Not all those who showed signs of covid in care were tested because of limits on tests.
- Testing of all discharged patients only came in on/after 15 April 2020.
1/n
From 2 April 2020 PDF about hospital discharge & admission of care home residents:
"Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic."
"Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home."
Matt Hancock (15 Apr 2020): "TODAY we can announce that EVERYBODY going from hospital into social care WILL be tested, will be isolated while the result of that test comes through, because that helps to protect people who are in social care."