Knighthood, please

Dear prime minister,

Can I please be awarded a knighthood like Sir Patrick Vallance, for his disservice to the nation?

Although an engineer by trade and not a mad scientist, I can easily calculate that the rate of coronavirus infection

(or rather fear of it), if growing exponentially by doubling every seven days like Vallance projected, will be 200 per day in mid October, 400 per day the next week, 800 per day the following week and 1600 per day, doubling for every week thereafter – and that there will be no-one left to catch the infection by the end of 2021.

So even though I am not a mathematician, I worked out that you will also have few people free of infection or well enough (and not in a hospital) to award knighthoods to by the end of 2021. I suppose there may be a few people left, who have hidden away in fear in air raid shelters, behind their sofas, under their kitchen tables, or in a commercial freezer, as you did.

In his TV briefing with the other ‘boffin’ Professor Whitty, Vallance confidently projected 50,000 cases per day by mid October. Using his predictions, projections or worst case scenarios, we will have 100,000 new cases per day the following week, then (the next week) 200,000 new cases per day; the following week 400,000 new cases a day, next week 800,000 new cases a day, next week 1.6m, 3.2m the next week, 6.4m the next week and the next week 12.8m and so on – and now I have run out of noughts.

Do your mad scientist boffins and nutty professors actually attend school at all? I attended Marylebone Grammar in London in the 1950s when they DID teach proper mathematics…

Sincerely and with thanks for considering me – after all the others have either become infected, hidden themselves away in fear, departed, or else discovered that someone with common sense will recognise the negative effect of compounding things – especially statistics and ‘projections’.

Bob Blackman Hill Drive, Fareham