The world may be in the grip of a horrific pandemic with untold social and political consequences but...

... members of the Labour Party on Facebook are far more concerned with launching an enquiry into some internal party messages from the 2017 election

https://actionsprout.io/089CB0

Its kind of comforting in a way that internal political infighting goes on anyway despite social isolation... but then again I'm not sure the lockdown has made these people any less self isolated than they already were...

UK rises to 3rd place in the rate of death leagues...

Nearly 3 weeks into lockdown and nearly 0.3 per cent of Croydon confirmed as infected ...I've updated my graph of Death rates of Confirmed cases divided by number of confirmed cases to see how we're doing relative to other countries...

... again I've removed any countries with less than 20,000 cases as they don't have enough throughput of data yet to give an accurate picture.  As can be seen Britain is now in 3rd place in the death leagues - pretty much level pegging with Italy on 12 per cent.  France takes the morbid top place with a shocking 15 per cent rate.

Is this all the politicians fault?  Well you would expect that it's more difficult to control the spread of the pandemic in countries with higher population densities  ... but if I change the Y Axis of the above graph to population density I get this...

...showing very little correlation.  And in case you're wondering ... if we were to divide one graph by the other in a VERY CRUDE ATTEMPT to weight the Death Rate by Population Density one gets this graph...

...which suggests things are actually worst in Canada.  Which indeed they are...

Just heard a Policeman on the BBC News strolling through a park shouting at the pubic "It's a lockdown not a holiday!"

To which the correct reply is "Actually it's both, officer."

Lisa Nandy MP - Catch 22

Saw Labour's Lisa Nandy on the BBC being interviewed about the virus today...

She's obviously gone for the spartan you're-not-judging-my-home-furnishings look.

However one book has crept into the frame... Catch 22.  Perhaps not the best choice if you want to inspire belief in any exit strategy.

So how ill is Boris...?

Well, according to the BBC he's sitting up in bed but he's now on day 12 or 13 which is the critical phase of Covid-19 infection...  For the curious the Lancet provides this flow diagram ...

...of the various possible "paths to death" (or not).  The BBC are very quick to say that he's not on ventilation but it sounds most likely he's having non-invasive ventilation via a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine)...

...these are usually used for people who suffer from sleep apnea and can be nasal or full face... but he doesn't yet need mechanical ventilation ... the most extreme type of which is ECMO (ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) which looks like this...

...in between the above and the bottom diagrams are various other types of less invasive ventilation techniques that can be deployed.  The next couple of days will be the most crucial ... he will either turn the corner naturally or end up on more invasive ventilation.

But even if Boris does not end up at this extreme end of the invasive ventilation scale... which is usually the province of premature babies and the people possibly nearing the end of their life ... the road to recovery to quote the man himself "is hard" (see the Guardian)  ... so should we perhaps be preparing for him to stand down sooner rather than later...?


Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that when the media says Boris is "receiving oxygen but
does not require ventilator" ...this is slightly deceptive language ... if you're receiving oxygen you're being ventilated by definition.  It's just not highly invasive ECMO ventilation requiring sedation.

0.2 per cent

There are 689 confirmed cases in Croydon, out of a local population of 385,346