With the UK regime’s head honcho and his Minister of Health testing positive for Covid-19 today, and the Chief Medical Officer isolating himself with symptoms, the next few weeks may rise to another level of stupid. It appears from this afternoon’s briefing that other leading regime policymakers are not going to be tested for the virus because they don’t have symptoms of the disease. Wow. Asymptomatic super spreaders at the heart of what passes for government. What could possibly go wrong?

We, the bemused sheeple of the UK, are being told we are “two weeks behind Italy”. Across the Pond, the Great Leader expects to celebrate Easter and deliverance from the plague.

I am not double-checking the data I’m about to present. It is very obvious that accurate numbers for Covid-19 infections and deaths don’t exist anywhere. So there is no point putting in extra effort to make sure I haven’t made errors graphing bogus data. But suspect figures hastily gathered might still paint a useful picture.

I have taken predicted totals for infections and deaths from the Andology Prediction Tool, with countries given the same R0 (2.5), Mortality Rate (2%) and doubling time (7 days). For the first three or four months, all countries have the same weekly totals, until population totals diverge. These later differences don’t come into play here. Reported infections and deaths have been taken from Worldometers.

Italy’s Patient Zero surfaced on 29 January; the UK’s two days later. (You may find different first case dates given in other sources but I’m running with these.) The countries are not too far apart in population size: Italy 60.36 million, UK 67.74.

The first Covid-19 death was reported in Italy on 22 February and the UK’s first thirteen days later on 5 March. The graph below starts on the day Italy recorded its tenth death, 25 February.

I’ve chosen to give the graph a log scale, so rather than flattening a curve please imagine bending a straight line downwards, as much as possible. The dotted prediction lines are slightly wavy but straight enough to indicate the exponential rise in deaths.

Although they crossed the infection start line almost together, Italy’s terrible death toll began quickly and rose at a greater than exponential rate. But its lockdown policy appears to be effective, bending the line in the last few days.

I’m not sure why the UK was slow to lose people, compared to Italy. The regime didn’t have any control from the outset. Recent reports have proclaimed that the “death rate” in the UK is greater than in Italy and this graph offers confirmation. Deaths are doubling every three or four days in the UK now. In the notional two weeks that we are behind Italy – that is four doublings. Yesterday, Italy’s death total was 8,215. The indications are that by Good Friday, the UK will have lost over 9,000 citizens to Covid-19. How much will the curve have been flattened, or the exponential line bent? Each one of us “ordinary folk” can make a useful contribution towards the recovery. We shouldn’t expect help, only hindrance, from those who rule over us. Amazing Polly explains.