London – Day 35 of lockdown

The messaging remains confused. We don’t know what’s happening when. But there are hints of relaxing of lockdown which would be good if any of us had any idea what this means. Well it might be good unless folks relax just a little too much which would mean another spike in positive cases and deaths. Then we’d go into lockdown again.

There is a slight improvement in the hospital figures though its hard to say what this really means. We’re up to 82 deaths of NHS workers and 16 in social care. The figure on hospital deaths today is up 360 to 21,092. This again gives very little sense of what’s going on as it doesn’t include deaths in care homes or at home; and there will be a bit of a lag in death notifications.

There’s also a lot of work to be done to understand what proportion of total deaths are an unintended or knock-on consequence of people not going into hospital for other reasons, stretched services, and so on.

I understand data. I understand it’s value. I remain confused about the figures.

I’m am getting tired of being told how well we’re doing. 21, 092 deaths is not doing well particularly when we add all the deaths outside hospitals. Well at least Boris Johnson, the PM, is back at work after his hospitalisation a few weeks ago.

Globally we’ve just hit the 3,000,000 mark. The UK is ranked 6^th on the leaderboard. This is not a leaderboard any country wants to move up on.

And it’s an ongoing balance between day to day life where things are OK; and the surges of rage if I read too much about what’s happening, particularly in care homes.

I’ve been busy today, working across various projects.

I went for a walk as I do daily for my allotted exercise. I miss my quick 10 minutes walk around the block to clear my headspace when working. A bit of a meander through Dulwich Park, up to the Dulwich College and then back home. And I spied with my little eye that Dulwich College has now given up its carpark for NHS coronavirus testing. The car park has the school to one side, and other playing fields not open to the public, on the other. I saw a couple of guys in army fatigues with face masks. It was quiet with on a few cars parked.

Dulwich College, founded in 1619, in a world famous independent school for boys. It’s good to see they’re playing a role in supporting the community – both in terms of opening up space, and also providing testing space as pretty much the only other carparks big enough near here are at large supermarkets which aren’t appropriate spaces as they’d be busy with folks grocery shopping.

My weird headspace continues. Today I pretty much run out of fresh food which means a shopping trip tomorrow, another fun time of running the gauntlet. It is what it is. I know plenty of folks in a much worse position and/or headspace than me.

So that’s it for Day 35. Stay safe, stay well, and stay home!