please empty your brain below
We really have little idea how many people in London already have the disease. But it is certainly more than six and could be in the hundreds, maybe more. Most of whom will be fine in the end. Not so easy to be sanguine if you are older or already suffer from respiratory or other health problems.

Andrew | 05.03.20 - 7:09 a.m. | #

11. Dangleway ride?

dg writes: see 3

Roger French | Homepage | 05.03.20 - 7:10 a.m. | #

Sent number 10 to a friend who challenge the 6 cases number, although they did agree on the other points. Anyone got a link to cases in London.

Tim m | 05.03.20 - 7:16 a.m. | #

Thank you for some sound advice there,DG. 😉 😂😂😂😂😂

Jo W | 05.03.20 - 7:33 a.m. | #

There are definitely 7 cases being treated at the Royal Free. As a specialist centre, there could be more.

Blue Witch | 05.03.20 - 7:59 a.m. | #

9 - don't forget to tape up your letterbox.

What about the recently reintroduced Woodford - Hainault shuttle?

I do worry about otherwise healthy elderly people - the higher death rate among them is probably because the older you are the more likely you are to be in poor health anyway, and the higher rates in China are not helped by the fact that many still smoke and the higher levels of pollution.

Still Anon | 05.03.20 - 8:27 a.m. | #

8. Paper towels are far more hygienic than blown air dryers - the dryers rely on the person using them having actually cleaned their hands properly & have been proved to blow, um, particles from the hads infection around the room.

10. As a currently vulnerable person I'm totally with DG here - don't care if there are 6, 26 or 626 cases in London, that's still vanishingly small and I'm still carrying on as normal (with added basic hygiene precautions & avoiding surface-to-hand-to-face contact). If the daily infection rate reaches the several thousands - I'll withdraw. In the 10s nationally - mostly those who have travelled - the risk is low.

Steve | 05.03.20 - 9:08 a.m. | #

I believe the hand dryer / paper towel hygiene comparrison is a bit of propaganda from the paper towel industry (would you believe!). Really great article worth checking out here.

Sam | 05.03.20 - 9:40 a.m. | #

As a veteran of crises of the last 40 years (not to mention the last 4000, why learn from the past?), this morning I was reminded of the Y2K craze that also sent the world in a panic. One of my fondest memories at the large bank where I worked at the time was the office of the Y2K coordinator with a SECURITY GUARD at the door INSIDE the building, in case anybody would have tried to kill the switch or stolen the code or whatever.

notagain | 05.03.20 - 9:43 a.m. | #

Don't panic! Don't panic!

Cornish Cockney | 05.03.20 - 9:56 a.m. | #

watch out for deer ticks and Lyme's disease in Richmond Park though...Stout walking boots and trousers recommended.

Got a feeling "10. The whole of London" is going to look a bit complacent shortly.

new still anon | 05.03.20 - 10:08 a.m. | #

DG at his best. Just the sort of quirky humour needed on yet another rainy day, though not downplaying the potential risks

Ken | 05.03.20 - 10:35 a.m. | #

11. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after another 6 months of Jose Mourinho's management :-)

Mikey C | 05.03.20 - 10:45 a.m. | #

it a picture of things-to-come. we are a small over-crowded island. many miles from where this started...and least we forget where it started (and how/why).
yet we already have clusters of cases.
systems in place seem to be geared towards dealing with it not preventing it. one day something so potent that could be classed as an extinction-level event will arise ...and we will undoubtedly be among the first to perish. we are too filthy, greedy and self-absorbed to prevent our demise.
and looking back at how government has dealt with previous threats we stand no chance anyhow.

Grumpy Anon | 05.03.20 - 11:02 a.m. | #

Crossrail platforms should be a good place to bunker-down on for a good few months.

E | 05.03.20 - 11:09 a.m. | #

3. Unfortunately the Dangleway is closed for maintenance until 11th March. Not that anyone noticed.

Keith | 05.03.20 - 11:21 a.m. | #

Note seen by a hand-drier in a motorway services some time ago: "Rub hands briskly under warm air stream, then dry hands on trousers."

Tim W | 05.03.20 - 11:47 a.m. | #

Water company profits will be up this year with all the extra hand washing going on.

Ultra-Man | 05.03.20 - 12:07 p.m. | #

1. As a potentially unclean person from Purfleet, the view across the Thames has changed, Littlebrook power station & chimney are no more.

Fred | 05.03.20 - 12:45 p.m. | #

Sadly, some of the open spaces you have identified will have been designated mass burial sites in the event of a high fatality rate. (Richmond Park?) Time to reread Daniel Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year to really cheer you up. According to today's Times, UK population is least concerned about threat of Coronavirus.

south london lad | 05.03.20 - 12:50 p.m. | #

All good to 9 but your number 10 is a very dangerous statement to make. I assume your "knowledge" is one of your random trying to be funny ironies.

Surbitonian | 05.03.20 - 1:21 p.m. | #

BREAKING NEWS: UK CASES NOW OVER 100.

Think the time for joking is over folks. Time to actually do something constructive. Or do we wait until it 100,000 cases?

Jon | 05.03.20 - 4:22 p.m. | #

UK cases = 0.0002% of the population

London now at 0.0003% (the equivalent of almost one per borough)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.03.20 - 4:32 p.m. | #

For someone that has been run over by a car I think I will self-isolate now, whilst I don't have it. My employer can get stuffed. My health trumps money. There'll be plenty of job opportunities after the coming recession. I have enough savings to ride out the storm. If it extends into next year I'll simply retire early. Current government gives me little confidence and the NHS will be at breaking-point.

Vin | 05.03.20 - 4:33 p.m. | #

MORE BREAKING NEWS:
FIRST FATALITY IN THE UK REPORTED.

Jon | 05.03.20 - 5:52 p.m. | #

Approximately five people die each day in traffic accidents. That's over 300 so far this year.

Not the Daily Express | 05.03.20 - 6:07 p.m. | #

It appears that about 97% of people who catch this virus will survive and many people who do catch it only have very mild symptoms.

By all means lets treat it seriously but lets not give in to the ridiculous hysteria stirred up the media (not only the tabloids e.g. "killer virus" in front page capitals) but also the likes of the BBC.

Time to rewatch Survivors | 05.03.20 - 7:37 p.m. | #

With the invisible incubation period, the new infection rate today is effectively what the statistics will be in a fortnight.

If you take today's absolute total, and rate of increase since yesterday, and project it forward by 14 days, there needs to be a flattening and drop in the new infection rate by early next week to avoid significant figures stacking up the week after and beyond.

While agreeing it's vanishingly small compared to flu, now is the time to take it sensibly serious to slow the spread down, not when it ceases to become vanishingly small. Not that I'm panicking either. I'm certainly not wearing plastic tubs or supermarket bags over my head.

NickW | 05.03.20 - 11:02 p.m. | #

8: You know something's wrong when the queue in a gents toilet is longer for the wash basins than for the urinals.

Richard | 05.03.20 - 11:34 p.m. | #

Ride around on bus H3,apart from the driver who's isolated in his cab, chances are you'll have the bus to yourself.

Richard | 06.03.20 - 1:51 a.m. | #

As someone with respiratory problems for most of their life, it’s not quite as easy to be so flippant, especially as there’s an estimated 10% fatality rate for people with those conditions.

Along with the fact that it appears many people have got it but don’t realise, because the strain touring the world is less potent, it does give me pause.

I’m not making major changes, but it is enough to make me think and take extra care and try to avoid certain activities. I realise the official rate is less than one person per borough but the tube is a germ pit and it’s a concern.

Kirk | 06.03.20 - 5:57 a.m. | #

We're likely heading for months of disruption and infection on a scale not seen in decades. But not this week.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 06.03.20 - 7:21 a.m. | #

Breaking news: The plague has arrived in London - Northwick Park Hospital to be precise.

As that's just 3 miles from my house it just got real!

Cornish Cockney | 06.03.20 - 9:53 a.m. | #

A good post for DG to revisit in a future blogpost

new still anon | 02.06.20 - 5:36 p.m. | #

Well, here's the thing: this coronavirus seems to have an incubation period of perhaps two or three weeks or longer between infection and possible death; and if we had locked down a week earlier, at the stage when the virus was freely circulating and doubling every three days or so, infections would have been just a quarter of the level they reached when we *did* lock down, so perhaps 3/4 of the 60,000+ excess deaths could have been avoided.

(And then people might have said "it's not so bad" and complained about the early lock down, if we "only" had 15,000 deaths in total, and 250 or 300 a day at the peak.)

Is it too late to move to New Zealand?

Andrew | 08.06.20 - 12:14 p.m. | #

This is a post from 2½ weeks before lockdown

diamond geezer | Homepage | 08.06.20 - 12:19 p.m. | #

...but, looking back from July, it's now thought the UK had 50,000 infections on 5th March.

That's 0.1% of the population, not "barely 0.0001%", sorry.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 12.07.20 - 3:14 p.m. | #











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