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Richard Murphy says:
March 7 2020 at 2:20 pm
The likelihood is the U.K. death rate might double

That is a pretty staggering statistic

Note that’s it’s not some vague possibility if truly pandemic. It’s “likelihood”. 50k deaths a month that is.

This is colonic sourcing of assumptions isn’t it?

18 thoughts on “Gosh”

  1. I know what he’s done – take an 80% infection rate, multiply by 1% death rate you end up at about 600,000 dead, which is about the annual death rate in the UK. What he hasn’t done, in his usual slapdash analytical manner, is to factor in that many of those who will die (from what we know so far) will be elderly and/or have existing health conditions, and so would likely die anyway

  2. So far for UK it is 2 deaths from 200 cases, reported, and one of those deaths sounds like other causes. So actually not that different from normal flu.
    And apparently it is on the down curve in China.

  3. Gamecock bought a month’s worth of toilet paper at Walmart yesterday. To guard against hoarding. By other people.

  4. To guard against hoarding. By other people.

    Heh.

    I always keep a two or three week buffer on essentials in case of any sudden panic. As soon as “Coronavirus” became a story I upped that to four weeks. So I’m hoarding, but on the quiet and without preventing others from getting what they need. I can ride out any panic blips and even bail out friends and rellies to some extent. Not really a prepper, just prudent.

    Note that 16m in northern Italy are now in “lockdown”. Government can help you into hardship really fast.

  5. I lived car free for a while, except for a Christmas car rental as there’s lots of relatives to see and public transport closes for 3 of the days in question when I also filled the freezer and stocked up on bulky and heavy items not suitable to carry on a bicycle. I researched average toilet roll usage in the UK – it came out around 23 per year, higher for women, lower for men. I applaud Mr and Mrs Gamecock for buying 4-6 toilet rolls to get them through a month, ‘cos it’s the internet, and this is what the social side of the internet is for, for sharing normal purchasing habits and joking about it.
    I can’t help sniggering though about the people who buy both toilet roll and low protein staples such as rice which reduce your need to shit.

  6. What, people spin out a bog roll to last about a fortnight? Clearly they’re not taking the medicines I take.

    Hm, maybe people are ignoring Doing Their Business at work.

  7. Mr Carey, Gamecock hasn’t seen Mrs Gamecock in ten years. She lives up in Virginia, last I heard.

    Gamecock purchased 36 rolls. Though “rolls” is not a uniform unit of measure, I think he can confidently claim his arse is cleaner than yours.

  8. On marriage my father insisted that my mother always keep a plentiful supply of loo rolls. This after dysentery which kept him in Egypt while the rest of his regiment were killed or captured at Tobruk. I grew up believing that a well run household always kept a shelf of toilet paper.

  9. “The likelihood is…might double.”

    If it’s “the likelihood”, then it ‘probably will’ double, not “might”.

  10. Normal: In the UK there are 1,668 deaths per day
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/vitalstatisticspopulationandhealthreferencetables

    Covid-19 +1, 10, 100 pd mostly ‘with’ not ‘by’ premature – nothing burger

    Keep calm and carry on

    @Gamecock the hoader

    Did you have a fight?

    ‘Toilet paper madness’ a poor defence against virus outbreak
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp7e7FCetmc&spfreload=5

    Panic purchasing of toilet paper shows “people are going through completely poorly thought out and ill-conceived way of protecting themselves and their families”
    Same insanity iin UK and MSM encouraging with “Toilet paper” shortages – Toilet paper more important than food & water for women

    Hoarding:

    Tesco today:
    No UHT Milk, No Anti-Bacterial soaps, Low Pasta, Loo Rolls increased stock
    “Limit 5 per cutomer” notices on above and more. Didn’t want any so NP for us

    PJF

    Similar with us

    @Andrew Carey

    23 PA sounds low, my mother uses ~10pm. 2 girls I knew went through 1 every 3 days in their flat, maybe they didn’t use work loos?

    @All

    “Best Before” is not “Use By”*
    “Use By” errs well on side of caution; ready meals and vacuum packed safe for weeks/months longer stored in fridge and seal not punctured. If concerned heat to >120c for 5 mins

    * http://www.clearancexl.co.uk

  11. – Toilet paper brawls are a ‘wake-up call for this mighty nation of ours’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL7yyCXzDbs

    Good YT comments

    – ‘Carry on, like Australians, not headless chooks’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDPRs-Dl9Mo

    This is the result of bringing up kids without any experience of the slightest hardship, they’ve grown up to be snowflakes ready to panic at the drop of a news article. Unfortunately they are raising their kids without letting anything stand in their way, referred to as being snowplough parents, so expect the next generation to be no better

    – ‘We are living in the age of hysteria’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUrnYZiKZkA

  12. At any time you might be told to hole up in your home for a fortnight. You won’t get a chance to shop first. You can stock up on the kind of food you need according to your own taste and habits from every aisle in the store, but you are going to need loo rolls and so is everybody else. That’s why they are running low. Sensible precautions. You don’t really want to be stuck without TP unless you are a Guardian subscriber.

    I will carry on taking sensible precautions while everyone else panic-buys.

  13. 10% of those infected need ICU care in Italy. They are skewed towards the older end of the scale, but there are an awful lot of elderly and not so elderly people in the UK. Italy went from a few hundred cases to over 7,000 in a week, and climbing.

    Let those facts sink in. Without serious measures to control it this thing will grow exponentially. “Just like flu” and a “nothingburger” it ain’t.

  14. Rob

    “Italy went from a few hundred cases to over 7,000 in a week”

    Not to take away from the validity of the wider point (“it’s not just flu etc”) – in Italy, it was clearly spreading in the community for a fair old while before anyone actually noticed (as Ken said elsewhere, they dropped the ball completely), evidenced by deaths suddenly and unexpectedly being declared at the same time.

    And it can’t exactly help – re both speed of and percentage contagion rates – that Latins tend not to be able to say hello without pretty much snogging each other first.

  15. These days you don’t even get a free local paper through the letterbox to use in case of need. It seems wrong to buy the Guardian solely to perform that function

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