Today/yesterday marks another great British achievement and triumph for British exceptionalism. Because yesterday, on the main globally published #coronavirus figures we overtook China to reach number 6 in the world for cases and (read on before you @ me)...

...number 5 in terms of fatalities. And on current trends we can only do better!

But, i hear you say, can we trust the Chinese figures and, here's the rub: no.

But nor can you trust the British figures either. Specifically...

...and unlike Germany, say, we are not teting anything like as much so our count of cases seems to be woefully under-stated.

As is our count of serious cases, since on many days the death toll leaps by far more than the serious case number, suggesting either...

...it doesn't need to be serious to kill you or, more likely, our criteria for "serious" are either different to the rest of the world or we are just not publishing the serious figures (in any sense).

As for fatalities...

... it is possible...likely even, that we are already at world no. 2 in terms of #coronavirus. Certainly Europe no.1.

How so? Well, the published counts are:

USA 22,105
Italy 19,899
Spain 17,209
France 14,393
UK 10,612

China is currently at no. 8, after Belgium and Iran

The problem is systemic skews. I don't much believe the Chinese or US figures, because politics.

Elsewhere, as France, figures are subject to lag: depends on how long it takes a report to get through the system. In the UK, we know this can be significant - a matter of days...

Also the minor issue of what is currently being counted. In France, for instance, they are picking up deaths in care homes. Whereas in the UK, as far as i am aware, we are mostly logging hospital deaths right now.

If that is the case...

...then i'd lay money on our toll being higher than France's already...which leaves just Spain and Italy, where i would suspect some skews in the figures but, given the extent to which they have been hit, i would expect to be slightly better/more accurate...