Living in West London during the lockdown imposed as a consequence of the Coronavirus outbreak is a surreal experience. Regular existence, corresponding to we knew less than months ago, appears to have happenred in one other lifetime. Some of us older ones lived through the nervous uncertainties of the Cold War and we all look with some trepidation at the imminent challenges posed by climate change. However this is something altogether different.

As a fifty eight-year-old diabetic male my vulnerability within the face of this virus is heightened. As is that of my son, who's asthmatic. Neither of us is listed among the 1.5 million most vulnerable as recognized by the UK government, however we're open enough to issues for us to have gone voluntarily into more or less full isolation, along with the remainder of the household who're supporting us. Various in-laws and outlaws appear to be trying their stage best to tempt us out into the perilous yonder, but up to now we're holding firm.

Readily available data

I'm neither a virologist nor an epidemiologist. I'm not even a statistician. However I have an O-degree in Mathematics. And modest though this achievement may be within the wider scheme of academia it's ample to enable me to identify trends and to draw conclusions from data that is readily available to anybody with a connection to the Internet and a working data of Google. Which is why I shudder on the evident bemusement of a lot of these commentators who pass for experts.

All through its handling of the crisis, my government has been keen to emphasize that it is "following the science". Political spokespersons are invariably accompanied during briefings by medical advisers and scientists aplenty of order and esteem. And yet what passes as the most effective of scientific advice one day appears so often to fall by the wayside the next. Thus our preliminary reluctance to droop giant sporting events was based on "scientific advice" which said there was no evidence that enormous crowds of people packed closely together presented a perfect setting in which a virus might spread, only for opposite advice to be issued barely a day or later. Likewise pubs and restaurants. "Following the science" has even been offered as an evidence for deficiencies within the provision of protective equipment to frontline workers and in testing capacity. One might be forgiven for wondering whether political coverage was being knowledgeable by the science, or vice versa.

Lengthy plateau

That was then. At the moment we're in lockdown, and the dialogue has moved on to how we're going to get out of it. Much flustered navel gazing inevitably ensues as it dawns upon the good and the nice, political and scientific, that a dynamic market financial system cannot be held in suspended animation forever. So the place does all of it go from here?

If one wants to know what's likely to happen in the future, the past and indeed the current usually serve as helpful guides. And there's sufficient info to be discovered within the statistical data that we've got collated since the preliminary outbreak in Wuhan, by way of the exponential pre-lockdown will increase within the number of infections and deaths and on to the more welcome signs that have more lately begun to emerge from Italy and Spain, to offer us some concept of the place we're headed.

Initially, the lengthy plateau followed by a gradual decline in the numbers reflects the less drastic approach taken by the European democracies than was adopted by China. When crisis comes there is usually a worth to pay for enjoying the benefits of a free and open society. In southern Europe the descent from the "peak" of the outbreak is noticeably slower than was the unique climb. With the United Kingdom's shutdown being less severe even than Spain's or Italy's, the unlucky fact is that we can anticipate our recovery from this first peak, when it comes, to be a fair more laboured one.

The reproduction number

The fundamental reproduction number is the mathematical time period used by epidemiologists to quantify the rate of an infection of any virus or illness. Specialists have calculated that, when left unchallenged, the reproduction number (or R0) of Covid-19 is around 2.5. This means that each infected individual will, on average, pass the virus to 2.5 different individuals, leading to exponential spread.

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