By Russell Bruce
Dear People of England,
We are worried about you. Your government is not giving you the true picture on the Covid-19 pandemic in your country. People in Leicester were surprised by the sudden new lockdown when they understood that the virus was in retreat. The local authority had not been given the complete picture because Pillar 2 data was not being made available by the Boris Johnson government, so they had insufficient understanding of the actual situation in Leicester.
“The UK government’s published numbers of new cases at local authority level only include pillar 1 and not pillar 2 cases, meaning as many as 90% of new cases are missing from the data.”
The fatality rate in England from Covid-19 is 24.4% compared to 15.69% in Scotland. England’s fatality rate is the highest in the developed world and almost as bad as the situation in war torn Yemen with a fatality rate of 26.94%.
For comparison the fatality rate in France is 14.77%, 17.73 % in Lombardia in Italy, 14.41% in Madrid and just 2.6% in Berlin.
The Scottish government is working with both the science and the data to improve our performance because we know it could be better. Excess deaths are higher in Scotland than we would like at 841 per million people but lower than in England with 935 excess deaths per million people.
Please people of England do everything to protect yourselves, wear a mask, keep distances and tell your government you expect them to do much much better.
With love
The People of Scotland
PS When this is all over you will be welcome to come to Scotland but NOW IS NOT THE TIME
SOURCES
Leicester: Public Health England, Leicester Mercury and Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/301c847c-a317-4950-a75b-8e66933d423a
Excess deaths: Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/a3fe315f-610a-4086-a6bc-a466a7f33aa1
Fatality rates: John Hopkins University, Coronavirus Case Fatality Ratio (1st July)
