As anticipated, the Coronavirus outbreak has definitively entered new phases in both the UK and the US, in the wake of ‘lockdown’ restrictions limiting non-essential production and consumption and encouraging populations to stay at home. These policies are centralised in the UK and State-wide in most of the US. As we can see from Chart 1 below, the log curve of cases and deaths is steadily flattening to the extent that we no longer have exponential growth of cases and deaths. It seems fairly clear that significant bending of the case curves took place after widespread social restrictions were imposed, and that the death curves followed with around a 10-day lag.

It’s too early to lift restrictions
It is utterly irresponsible to suggest, as many are doing (Trump supporters in the US and the usual Brexit suspects in the UK) that this means that we are in the clear and can now start to contemplate lifting restrictions on gathering socially, for work and on public transport. We do not have exponential growth, but despite all our efforts we still have steady linear growth in cases and deaths as indicated in Chart 2 below, and more clearly for deaths in Chart 3. Linear growth means that roughly constant numbers of people are acquiring the disease and are dying from it daily.
Continue reading Coronavirus Update 25/04/2020 – It’s Too Early to Lift Restrictions