The government are already talking about using trainee doctors for the critical period. In addition there is another huge resource which is easily available and that is the large army of vets.

Vets are trained to work on any animal species, and the only thing stopping them treating humans is the law. And if I were faced with no doctor or a vet, I would pick the vet any day (indeed it’s arguable they are better than doctors as they have far wider experience and can be more innovative with treatments).

Finally, we’re getting the truth from the gov:

“Half of coronavirus cases in the UK are likely to occur over just three weeks, and the NHS does not have enough beds to cope with them, the chief medical officer has warned.”

“Depending on how high the peak, this could be anywhere from a rather bad winter for the NHS but in spring or summer for the NHS through to huge numbers way overtopping the ability of the NHS realistically to put everyone in beds and that obviously would have big pressures on the service,” he told the Health and Social Care Committee.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/05/half-coronavirus-cases-uk-likely-occur-horror-three-weeks/

Although his “overtopping the ability of the NHS” sounds like a gentle wave getting someone’s feet wet on the beach, if 4% of the population need hospitalisation, 80% get the infection and half get it in these critical three weeks we are talking ~1million patients.

There are something like 150,000 beds in the UK with suggestions that ~90% are occupied. If we assume an average hospital stay on 10 days, then there are up to 600,000 patients trying to fit in 150,000 beds or 4 patients to a bed.

But at least we are starting to get realistic numbers and there is obviously some thought going into them as:

Medical students could be asked to perform roles on hospitals normally done by doctors, in the event of a coronavirus epidemic

Apparently CV has already mutated into two forms, a later L which is more virulent and an original S which is less. However, being more virulent is not necessarily worse. Because it tends to be picked up quickly as people fall ill and so it is more rapidly removed from the population. That’s why we don’t have the  SARS which killed a very high number of people, but we do have flu, which kills many orders less of those people that it infects, but because it’s not enough to take the action to stop, the result is that it yearly kills more than SARS ever did. So, paradoxically the less virulent and deadly form of CV may end up being much more deadly (in terms of total deaths).

And it is too early to know whether immunity from one form gives immunity to the other or whether a vaccine can be developed for both.

Based on early stats, I was expecting the UK to have had its first death by now with about 1 death for every 30-50 cases. And although there was a Brit died from the cruise ships, there has not been one in the UK yet. But more intriguing is that Germany have now identified 349 cases with no deaths. That compares with about one death for each 30 infected in Italy right now. Either Germany are finding almost all cases so their detection rate is astronomically high, OR I’ve not factored in a delay between the stats for cases and those for deaths OR perhaps there a new treatments being trialled that are significantly reducing the death rate.

Looking at information on the pandemic in China, the first death was on the 9th Jan. There’s no data for the number of cases before 16th Jan. But if we project back the known cases, then it would be less than ten. The first death in S.Korea was reports on 20th February when they had 104 known cases.

Thinking this through, one possibility is that German (and UK) are currently dominated by people who have recently come in. Because they know they are an “at risk” group, we may be catching a lot more of these people at an earlier stage before CV has had a chance to push them toward death. In contrast, where the virus is spreading, people will not know they are infected until symptoms get severe, which means they self-report a lot closer to the point where the illness gets critical.

If that is true, then the collapse of the NHS may be delayed by up to a week (so 18th-25th March). Because March is the time when flu is naturally decreasing, this extra delay could dramatically increase our ability to cope with the early “wave”.

Addendum

It is possible that what we are seeing is the tip of the ice-berg of cases who have arrived in the UK/Germany. These cases are then “maturing” and infecting others. Those coming back are likely to be fit and healthy, with relatively few needing hospital treatment. But they will infect others with a much higher risk. The result could be a very sudden and dramatic upswing, going rapidly from 100s to 1000s over a few days.

I was reading today an article which was “How does coronavirus compare to flu, Sars, and other diseases?”. Before looking at what the “experts” say, lets look at the simple stats comparing CV with SARS.

CV increases by about 10x each week. SARS increased by about 2.5x in a month. In a month CV would increase by about 10,000. So the scale of difference is about 4000:1

So, lets now look at how the experts compare the two (link):

According to WHO, the average reproductive rate (r0) of coronavirus ranged between 1.4 and 2.5. That meant, on average, each confirmed case of coronavirus would infect between 1.4 and 2.5 other people.

It is more contagious than some of the most deadly airborne viruses, however. Mers has an r0 of between 0.3 and 0.8.

Someone has totally cocked up here! If the “experts” are saying “it’s not that much different to SARS” and SARS approximately doubled each month, and there are only currently 85 cases in the UK, of course the “experts” are sitting on their fat arses content that they’ll be able to look at it in another month and maybe consider informing the government that maybe they ought to think about doing something.

But in a month we won’t have
160 cases, but nearly a million
not “a death” but nearer 10,000

At first glance the news today in the UK looked good as only 2 new cases were being reported, but then I realised that was only for Scotland. And instead of the 70 cases I had predicted yesterday, I saw 85. I had been hoping the 70 was me spotting a false trend, but apparently not.

This brings forward the day when I expect to get 3000 cases to 18th March which is now just 14 days away.

One bit of good news is that I would have expected 2 deaths by now. That might mean we have just been lucky, but it also might imply a much higher rate of detection. But even at the highest rate of detection I expect deaths to start occurring in the UK by the weekend.

I estimate there is now one person infected per 160,000 people, which means if they were evenly spread, then there is a good chance of there being someone any large town. By Saturday 7th March I predict one person in every 80,000 will be infected which means roughly one person in an average premier league football crowd, but only 4 deaths. But by the following Saturday I estimate one in any crowd of 10,000 people, a 1 in 20 chance of being on a train with someone who has CV and 30 deaths.

Worldwide

S.Korea

I see S.Korea continues to find new cases, however their detection rate is falling from 180 down to 160 cases per death. That means that either many people are being missed, or there’s a lag in the death rate. One bit of good news had been that the rate of rise in the number of cases had dropped at about 10 days after they implemented a new pro-active policy, that had given hope they were finding almost everyone and had it under control, but it may now be climbing again.

But it’s difficult to konw whether the increase is due to higher effort being put into finding cases or whether it’s an underlying increase in infections.

It’s now pretty certain that even the S.Korean pro-active searching out for infected people is missing huge numbers and so I suspect that the 180 cases per death may be an underestimate. Over the last few days the rate of day-to-day increase has halved. That suggests they are catching half the carriers. So perhaps 350 people infected per death and nearer to 90% of people are not being caught by self-reporting.

The bad news that brings, is that it will spread like wildfire and the lacklustre “plans” of the UK will do almost nothing to halt it. The good news is that the total death rate and peak of hospitalisation could be half what had been previous thought. So, the health service will still fail in about 14 days, but the peak of the disaster could be half the carnage that I was expecting (but remember I’m expecting scenes far worse than Wuhan – perhaps an order of magnitude worse).

Iran

On a brighter note, Iran has hugely upped its detection rate. It’s still a 32 compared to S.Korea’s 160 but it was closer to 8 when they started.

Italy

Unfortunately, Italy’s detection rate remains low at only 31, however, in the next few days we should get an idea what effect the quarantine has had.

United States

The detection rate in the US is only 14, which is about as bad as Iran when it started. That is immensely worrying. They have found 129 cases. With 9 deaths I would expect at least 1800 cases and probably closer to 3500 cases. As such, it’s extremely likely it is already out of control and will hit the US extremely hard in the next couple of months.

Germany

One odd country is Germany with 244 cases and no deaths. That’s a massive difference compared to the US 14 cases per death. I don’t know the reason, but it seems that for some reason a higher percentage of cases are being found in Germany.