Coronavirus – Day #49

The first of the month is always an admin day for me, though sometimes other stuff happens too. Today I had an online meeting, and I recorded an interview for next week’s radio show.

The latter was good timing because today is #RadioFromHome day, a day intended to raise the profile of community radio and the work we are doing during the crisis. I’d like to say that it will help encourage the government to offer some money to help community radio stations to stay afloat, but given that our current government is about as loving and friendly as a squad of hungry Humboldt squid that doesn’t seem likely.

Talking of the radio show, this week I’ve had a number of people turn me down for interviews because they are too busy or otherwise unavailable. I can put a show together with what I have, but if anyone has something they’d like to talk about that might be of interest to the women of Bristol and is available to record an interview over the weekend do let me know.

Something interesting has been happening to the official government statistics on C-19-related deaths. They continue to report daily totals that are mostly in the 600-800 range, and which are always less than the total for the same day in the previous week. But that’s because prior days’ totals are being raised. I can’t remember how many deaths were originally reported for April 24th, but I know that it wasn’t 1005 because the daily totals never got over 1000 on any day. Now that isn’t even the highest. We’ve now got 9 days with over 1000 reported deaths, and a peak of 1172. Possibly they are being more honest about the numbers in the past, but what does that say about the numbers we are getting today? Or about the claims that we are past the peak?