So lots of important people seem to have some confusion around how deadly Covid-19 is - I went through the data we have to work it and it's clearly very bad https://link.medium.com/K4Fm8Dedo5 

Being optimistic can always feel like a good thing. However, optimism in the face of real danger is really dangerous. Lots of senior public figures have, over the past few days, advocated big policy changes based on a view that Covid-19 isn't as bad as "the experts" think

The best work on modelling exactly how dangerous Covid-19 is - by the excellent team led by @neil_ferguson at Imperial - puts the death rate at 0.9% in the UK. This was based on Chinese data, and was an excellent estimate given it came so early in the crisis

For the Pollyannas of the UK establishment, apparently "estimate" means "probably wrong", and for the ones who were most focused restarting the engines of commerce ASAP (clearly a worthy goal if safely achievable), this meant that it was surely too pessimistic

Unfortunately for them, but mostly for society, we now have clearer data from a number of places, including Korea and the Diamond Princess - and this data indicates that if anything, the Verity et al estimate was correct, maybe even optimistic itself

In Korea, the disease appears more deadly than thought among the older generation, and mapping back this death rate to the UK would imply a death rate here not of 0.9% but of 1.4% - not statistically significantly different, but *not lower*

I have no real conclusion to this thread, except that this weekend it really is important to Stay Home so that everyone else can Stay Safe

Thanks to the wonderful NHS staff and all the other essential workers who are out there putting themselves in harms danger so I don't have to