Sunday 19 April 2020

Covid-19 virus update, 19 April

My spreadsheet from figures at Worldometer 
And so it goes on…. HK Total = 1024. New = 2. While Singapore had 942 new. 

While listening to “The Mill on the Floss” by George Eliot on Radio 4 Extra, and wondering what ‘Floss’ means.  A Field, perhaps. Or a section of river?* Heart rending passions. A semi unintended elopement by rowboat. And now a flood. Maggie plunges into the rushing water. She finds Tom. Brother and sister disappear over the weir.’In their death they were not divided’.
* It’s the River Floss

Wuhan Diary. Despatches from a quarantined city” by Fang Fang to be published in English today

What good can this do? Other than stir up the anti government camp? Police arrest opposition veterans
HK: (after a week of single digit growth). No need for lockdown. Pandemic restrictions plus citizens’ actions helped keep pandemic at bay. HKU study. Social distancing may continue to next year
Do I believe the low Hong Kong numbers? Yes I do. I know the Hong Kong bureaucracy. Worked with it for a decade. They are sticklers for detail and getting things right. Plus if we had numbers like Singapore and were trying to hide them, we would soon know through extremely active — and anti government — social media.

Trump: I have just watched him at a presser say that China has more Covid deaths than America. “Many, many more, no question”.
Worldometer figures are: China 4,632. USA 39,015. Trump is claiming China figures are nearly ten times greater than reported.
As far as I can see in the public realm there is precisely zero evidence of his claim. Zip. If he has it, I’d like to see it. If he has covert intelligence, he ought to say. But — speaking here as a guy who used to be in intelligence assessment with access to US product — I’d bet my booty there is no intelligence to support his claim. You’d have to have people in the ground all over China, with the single aim of finding our about Covid deaths, and there’s no way that’s happening. So, on this point I’d call it a “pants on fire “ misstatement.

The Mull on the Floss