How reliable are the coronavirus figures?

The statistics – all of them – have become utterly meaningless, regardless of how dramatically they are presented in our newspapers. We have not been testing with anything like enough numbers to give a true picture of the spread. And so the death rate – not the actual numbers – is also meaningless and ranges from a ludicrous rate to next to nothing.

Complicating the picture still further is the growing suspicion that many of us have already had the virus, in late January, and perhaps did not realise it. 

These known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, suggest to me that this crisis will diminish rather quicker than many are suggesting. I am no epidemiologist, of course, and I could be completely wrong. But it’s just a suspicion.