Projected CV deaths in UK to 12 April

Projected and actual deaths in UK to 12 April 2020

Continuing the graph of projected and actual deaths in the UK, the predicted death rate has fallen from the early projections, and hopefully reflects a continuing trend. The total number of deaths has continued to track the predicted (red) curve, but should begin to dip below the projection in the coming days as the hard lockdown continues to bite into the infection rates. These statistics only record people who died in hospital with confirmed CV infection. Many more, perhaps twice this number, die unrecorded at home or in care homes.

Today, 12 April, would have been my mother's birthday. I can't remember this happening before, but checking the calendar I find the last time this happened in her lifetime was 1936, when she was 29, so that is not surprising. Edwin was only 1 year old when she died, so cannot remember her, but the other children remember her fondly. Both she and my father ended their days in a care home for the blind. They, and countless millions like them, gave so much, not just to us but to their country, building the wealth we inherit, or caring for others as my mother did as nurse and midwife. Yet their deaths would have been unrecorded in the statistics of this chart, unnoticed and under-appreciated. It is time we recognised and saluted these other thousands of people who die alone, unacknowledged by the governement.

Boris has come out of hospital for recuperation at Chequers, raising everyone's hopes over this early summer that we may turn a corner and begin to return to some semblance of normality. This will probably not include me or Ann visiting the outside world for some time though, as we remain firmly in the "at risk" category.

Walking the dogs this week, I saw a horse being trained in a paddock. The girl handling it held the horse on a long rope so it could canter in circles round her. To keep it moving, she had a small dog running at its heels, yapping loudly and continually. Every now and then she yelled an order and the dog moved to face the horse, forcing it to turn round and run the other way, providing exercise for both animals with minimal trouble to herself. Today I walked past with Ann and our dogs, but everything was as still as the church yard graves we walked through. Not a car nor person was stirring, and we didn't hear a single dog. It was as though the plague had already swept through the whole village and every beast and person had died.