This is definitely displacement activity. I've had a paper accepted for publication in a journal, and have until 30th April to incorporate the review comments. I've made a start and intend to finish this week - so I'm just about to embark on it, but guess what suddenly seems so important :) Yup - blogging.
Procrastination is the name of the day.
Yesterday I went out for a walk in the woods and saw a neighbour in his garden and started chatting through the hedge (been doing a lot of that lately - I think the coronavirus neutralising effects of privet have been under-researched).
Turns out he is a data analyst working on the graphs that get published by the government and the media. He is in contact with his opposite numbers in other countries. He mentioned Germany and showed me a text on his phone (over the hedge) that he read out. It sort of confirms my suspicions that there is not a lot of transparency. Apparently Germany distinguish between patients who die 'of' coronavirus, and those who die 'with' coronavirus, but of another cause - say a heart attack. So the drop in the German cases may not be as steep as it appears.
Equally, he pointed out that in the UK, we were coping well. The new Nightingale hospital in London was sitting fully manned (he said 600 nurses and Drs but I don't know) and zero patients. He also said that the death statistics weren't actually as bad as they were made out to be.
I would like to see a lot more open discussion about the deaths - ages, exactly what they died of, what underlying health conditions they had, if any, also if they were health care workers (as that seems to place you at greater risk even if you don't have underlying health conditions). On today's BBC news site, there is an article saying that according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 9 out of 10 COVID-19 deaths are patients with underlying conditions. Most common was heart disease, followed by dementia and then respiratory illness.
Young people under age of 40 may contract the disease but combat it somehow without generating antibodies, so the antibody test will not work on them. This goes some way to explaining why the disease is so much worse for older people. Their immune systems go into overdrive - people over age 60 have 3 times as high an immune response as those under according to one article I read. The risk of dying over that age also increased hugely.
When this lockdown was initiated, it was for 3 weeks. Today during the PM briefing (Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary will probably host it as he is deputising for the PM as Boris Johnson recovers at Chequers) they will announce what happens next. All the papers are reporting that the lockdown is likely to be continued for another 3 weeks. Many people are calling for more transparency about what the exit strategy will be.
Most working age people, if they catch the virus, will recover. It may, or may not, be as bad as flu. Older people get it much worse. I really thing that we should get the economy moving sooner rather than later as it is powered by younger people. These people will be shouldering the financial burden of the impending recession, they are the ones losing their jobs as businesses go under and losing their homes as they can no longer afford the mortgage. Let's see what Dominic Raab announces this afternoon.
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