COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

UK update: 1,427 new cases (a high), 87 more deaths (a high), 6,491 tests (not a high). Total of 8,077 known cases and 422 deaths as of 9AM today.

I would guess that'll keep accelerating for at least a couple of weeks despite the lockdown. We're facing big healthcare problems as the week goes on, with the Government looking for large amounts of ventilators, and large venues being converted into field hospitals.

It could still keep getting worse after that, the lockdown is a bit of a mess. Initially some official government sources were saying you could only travel to work 'if you are a key worker', but then that was corrected to 'if you can't work from home', so there's a lot of people, probably too many, still being told they have to come in to work. And the government has explicitly allowed some work to continue, e.g. construction work.

That said, a lot of businesses are taking it seriously and closing down even though they're nominally exempt. This may in part be because the instructions to individuals are at odds with the instructions to businesses. Individuals are told they 'should only leave the house for one of four reasons.':

● Shopping for basic necessities, for example food and medicine, which must be as infrequent as possible.
● One form of exercise a day, for example a run, walk, or cycle - alone or with members of your household.
● Any medical need, or to provide care or to help a vulnerable person.
● Travelling to and from work, but only where this absolutely cannot be done from home.

So, for example, takeaways are allowed to stay open. But people are told to go out for food as infrequently as possible. So with less people going out for them, it's not necessarily worth them staying open. Additionally, businesses which stay open are supposed to practice physical distancing, which is clearly going to be impractical in some environments. A lot of chains have closed accordingly, including McDonalds, KFC, Nandos, and Subway.

For some workers, there's some support, with the government covering 80% of wages of furloughed employees, up to £2,500 a month (about $3,000).

But there's continuing problems; that doesn't cover the self-employed or a lot of hourly workers. So there's a large group of people for whom it's impractical to stop working.