COVID cases in England aren’t rising: here’s why

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It’s just one person playing with numbers, I wouldn’t set much store by it. The number of cases in England is rising, it should be noted more as time goes by. Lockdown was imposed too late, and lifted too early in England.
 
mikeyB said:
It’s just one person playing with numbers, I wouldn’t set much store by it. The number of cases in England is rising, it should be noted more as time goes by. Lockdown was imposed too late, and lifted too early in England.
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A charitable explanation is that he's treating "tests processed" as being related to tests being, well, processed (as in, with results), but apparently they're often just tests sent out (and over half of those don't produce any results). (However, the author's been rather optimistic on covid for a while.)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1290286773533388801
 
Bruce Stephens said:
(The apparent increase is explained by the increase in Pillar 2 testing. Perhaps, at least; the reporting of testing seems poor enough that I'm less confident, but it's at least plausible.)

COVID cases in England aren’t rising: here’s why | The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

www.cebm.net www.cebm.net
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Hi Bruce,

Thanks, there's some good comments in that twitter with links to other twitter accounts.

From what I can tell, the PERCENTAGE based results per for example every 1000 tests done (not just the simple number of positive tests without the percentage of total tests taken into account) for positive test has decreased massively from the peak.

So many people are now doubting the official narrative/headlines. More and more tests will find more and more positive results, but they are not expressing the increased positive tests in context as per 1000 tests to give a true meaning to whether there is actually increased incidence of covid19.

If 100 tests are carried out today giving 1 positive test, and tomorrow you perform 100,000 tests and 1000 positive tests, that doesn't necessarily mean an increase in the virus, it has to be expressed as a percentage not a simple number.

Also on BBC interview 2 days ago, they said the PCR is known to regularly give false positive results. So how will they ever get rid of the virus, if we will be forever given false positives? How will we start living a normal life again free of lockdowns, school closures, bankruptcies, increasing debt and social isolation?

What do you think?
 
or perhaps we are being primed to all go back to work,schools open,let it rip and don't worry about the collateral damage,this government is all about trade and industry,lives, health come second
 
Amity Island said:
Also on BBC interview 2 days ago, they said the PCR is known to regularly give false positive results. So how will they ever get rid of the virus, if we will be forever given false positives?
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We'll need to also look at different measures (such as hospital admissions). Though at least some of those are lagging indicators.

Testing waste water (and other pooled tests) seems like a good approach once the numbers are low enough that you're expecting negative results. I assume those also have false positives, but you could potentially be really careful about your testing (and so reduce the false positives) if you're not doing so many, and you can repeat tests and (I assume) use slightly varying tests in order to reduce the overall false positives.

But yes, it does seem like a problem. I assume we've had similar problems with smallpox, polio. (And, before it returned, measles.)
 
Not a good comparison, smallpox, polio and measles. All are more deadly than coronavirus for a start, and all have effective vaccines. Smallpox is no longer extant in the wild, and polio is almost extinct. I'm old enough to have lived through a polio outbreak. And you don't need blood tests to diagnose, the clinical signs are so distinct and specific.
 
The one number I have not seen is an estimate of the number of infectious people in the community at any time which is a bit different to the number of new cases identified. Seems to me that is the most important number.
 
Docb said:
The one number I have not seen is an estimate of the number of infectious people in the community at any time which is a bit different to the number of new cases identified. Seems to me that is the most important number.
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The Kings College Covid study does a daily estimate, based on the reporting of all the people who signed up to log their health. (I do this daily).
covid.joinzoe.com

Latest Daily UK COVID-19 Data: Vaccines, Cases, Trends | ZOE

COVID infection & vaccination rates in the UK today, based on public data and reports from millions of users of the ZOE Health Study app
covid.joinzoe.com covid.joinzoe.com
 
Thank you @Robin. I'll keep an eye on that one.
 
Docb said:
The one number I have not seen is an estimate of the number of infectious people in the community at any time which is a bit different to the number of new cases identified.
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Not much different, though, in the sense that the number of new cases over the last couple of weeks is about the number of infectious people. The ONS survey gives an estimate of the number of people in the community who (if tested) would test positive.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest has this:
  • An estimated 35,700 people (95% credible interval: 23,700 to 53,200) within the community population in England had COVID-19 during the most recent week, from 20 to 26 July 2020, equating to around 1 in 1,500 individuals.

(Karl Friston has a model, https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/ . I don't see the number you asked for though I assume it's there somewhere. It does give an estimate of the prevalence in each county, which seems helpful (and seems to more or less match the official estimates of where things are).)
 
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