Tuesday May 5th

It seems highly likely that the UK lockdown will be eased this coming weekend.

There is little in the way of agreement about what exactly this will mean.

12 countries - including Germany, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Lithuania, France, Nigeria and Lebanon - started to ease their lockdowns yesterday.

In most countries this was to promote economic growth, but only some stores and industries were allowed to open.

In Germany the easing of restrictions included allowing hairdressers and barbers to open.

Both the infection rate (counted by positive tests for those who can get them) and deaths (where Covid-19 is included on the death certificate) continue to rise.

As of yesterday, there were 28,734 deaths and 190,584 positive tests.

Date	Days since first death
04/05/2020	60
Deaths
UK (All deaths)	28,734
New deaths (official)	288
Death Rate (hospital deaths)	15.08
Increase in deaths over previous day (%)	1.0

Tests carried out UK
Total tests carried out	1,291,591
in last 24 hours	85,186
How many less than Governments target	14,814
People tested	945,299
Negative (n/%)	80
Positive (n/%)	20
average per day since first death	15,755
Percent population UK tested	1.44%

Statistics now claim to be comprehensive, but given that the Government was doing all it could to keep the numbers down previously, you would have to be a BBC politics journalist to believe them.

So how many deaths?

This graph shows two different data sets supposedly reporting the same thing. The blue line is the daily announcement of deaths made at the Government's briefing. It starts on March 24th only because that was when I started compiling this blog.

The brown line is the daily deaths as reported to ONS/NHS on death certificates. This data is a moving goalpost as more deaths are constantly being added. However, the trend on both is relatively clear (although admittedly clearer on the brown line). That is that we are past the peak. Whether we are sufficiently past to ease the lockdown is debatable.

At the beginning of the lockdown the Government and its advisers were clear that a death rate of 20,000 would be a success. There is no doubt at all that we are now beyond that number and despite the triumphalism this is a consequence of Government inaction throughout February. That they are not hanging their heads in shame is simply a reflection of how deep the malaise of our journalism has fallen in not ensuring that the Government of the day are not being held to account.

This piece by Laura Spinney from the weekend's New Statesman struck me as both interesting and worrying.

It posits that whilst we may have survived the first wave we are far from in the clear and a second, third and maybe fourth and fifth waves may well occur.