There are other countries on the graph not picked up by people out there that are highly relevant and not getting much comment - Belgium and Switzerland. The swiss think they are four days behind Italy. It's then getting into comparing regions or small countries with large countries or bits of large countries. One of the problems talking about Italy and the UK taking it seriously was that 2-4 weeks ago reporting was very sluggish in the UK. Stuff was getting reported that was 24 hours or days out of date. The north of Pisa stuff that was government advice was particularly bizarre as it suggested that our government was looking at the provincial figures (as was I) and not explaining to the media, guys, guys listen I know there's lockdown in 11 municipalities but we have data that shows it's throughout the whole of the north of Italy.
It's the US that attention will focus on
.As a general point on movements/social distancing, only the governments will have the data to analyse mobile phone movements. We all hear very mixed messages. One of my friend went for a 3 hour walk yesterday and basically said on the phone that pretty much the entirity of people he saw through large areas of the city were sticking to social distancing. Someone on the other side of the city has groups of 10-20 mixing outside all day, called the police, the police being the police seem disinterested probably as they are in a poor area.
