the transmission rate is lower than 1 per person, which a look at the death statistics has clearly happened
Sorry @ShootsFruitAndLeaves - explain that one to me, would you? Our current trajectory of deaths does not reflect this at all...
I have a spreadsheet here:
filebin.net/8et2jne8vj0ixmlg (For England NHS figures)
Deaths doubled every 3 days 12th March to 27 March. From then it took 8 days to double again. It looks like we will end up with most deaths on 8 April, around 800 for England alone, but they haven't been reported yet (now up to 709). The numbers for the 9, 10, 11 are still very much in their early stages, but they are looking like being stable or below the 8 April, although obvious caution is needed because of the Easter weekend slowing reporting down.
Anyway, there is around 5 days from infection to symptoms and 14 days from that to death; the lockdown started on 24 March, schools closed on 20 March, so you'd expect a peak in deaths around 19 days from school closure (8 April) and then after the lockdown for deaths to fall further to affect the lockdown (12 April).
At the moment clearly there are people infected pre-lockdown who are dying. Some since lockdown but who may have caught it pre-lockdown. The earliest exponential growth stage in deaths would have been infected while people were still behaving completely as normal, e.g., Crufts, Cheltenham, Stereophonics concert, etc.
Clearly as time went on we started to implement social distancing, cancelling events, e.g., football was cancelled from March 14, and the growth slowed down a lot to reflect those cancellations.
At some point we will presumably go back to an intermediate state of distancing so that the virus cannot spread as quickly as it did in the early growth stages of UK pandemic.
In the mean time it seems it's working.