Last night I was privileged to be part of the panel on Chris Barrow’s webinar related to the COVID-19 situation in Dentistry, you can sign up for these webinars by clicking here, they run every Thursday night at the present time and Chris is also running an update at lunch time every day.
There is some real sense from people on there, particularly Alan Suggett, a Dental Accountant and Sarah Buxton from FTA Law.
What is clear though from some of the questions, is that people are not securing channels of information that they can trust or rely on to help them make appropriate decisions and so here is just a little bit of information collected over the last few days from me, to send you into your weekend.
Two days ago, Neil Ferguson from Imperial College (the institution that gave us the ‘flattening the curve strategy that has now been adopted in many countries’ suggested that he was reasonably confident ‘that the health service can now cope with the predicted peak of the epidemic which arrives in two-three weeks’.)
He suggested that UK deaths from the Virus are now unlikely to exceed 20,000 and it could be much lower.
Based on the current strategy for the implementation of new ITU beds, he feels we are unlikely to breach national levels on the current computer models. New evidence and data from an Oxford University group, suggests that 50% of the UK population could already be infected and although this is disputed in some areas, it goes to show that the overall infection rates are much higher than we believe and therefore the mortality rates are much lower (higher infection rate dilutes mortality rate).
Yesterday, deaths in the East Midlands stood at 22 and so if we reached the highest estimate of Ferguson’s predictions from where we are now that’s likely to rise to 400, over the period of the epidemic.
While each of those is an individual tragedy for the families involved, it’s a lot less than 400,000.
Information is beautiful updated their stats yesterday and can be viewed here in the Coronavirus data pack, if you look at the informatic's on Infection Trajectories, and you had been looking at this through the period, you will see that the UK infection trajectories is flattening relative to other countries.
It’s also very interesting to track the South Korea trajectory which, at the end of this will prove to be a triumph in how to manage such an epidemic.
It appears that South Korea are so good at dealing with this because they were so hard-hit during the SARS pandemic previously. They were ready for a sever respiratory Virus pandemic and knew exactly how they would cope with it when it began.
You can check from that informatic what’s happening with the cases in Spain but particularly as of yesterday, what’s happening with the USA.
If we are correct in thinking that many, many more people in the United Kingdom are infected and have been tested, the mortality rate of 5% for the UK that is quoted, is more likely to be 0.5% or 0.05% or 0.005%. The nine deaths per million people that have already occurred in the UK (lower than Italy, Spain, Iran, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium) are pushed up dramatically due to the close confines of people living in London.
The future now looks something like this going forwards (unless there is a significant swing and return to reinfection in China).
The majority of people living in the UK, will be untouched by it.
By untouched I mean at worst having mild or moderate Viral symptoms, from which they will fully recover.
The vast majority of people will be asked to sit at home in the March sunshine for a few weeks, reconnecting with their families, spending an hour a day doing exercise and contingency planning their finances going forwards to become better savers.
People at the lower end of the financial curve of society will be helped and protected by the government, people at the higher end will be expected to fend for themselves.
Many people’s lifestyles will change, but most people’s lives will not.
While I completely appreciate that this is a fluid situation, running backwards and forwards and a significant reinfection rate in China could change the picture altogether, as far as I’m concerned that’s the state of play today and so when I wake up tomorrow those are the assumptions I will be making, as I spend some time with my family, in a state of calm and not panic.
Blog Post Number - 2319
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