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> Cases peaked at 5,451 on April 5, reached a low of 101 on June 10 and very recently have appeared to be rapidly rising again. The most recent rise in cases, t

> Cases peaked at 5,451 on April 5, reached a low of 101 on June 10 and very recently have appeared to be rapidly rising again. The most recent rise in cases, to more than 2,600 a day, is particularly unsettling. One thing the article briefly mentioned but didn't really dig into (IMO) is that the peak of 5,451 cases on April 5th is basically a meaningless number and that it is important to try to figure out what the real number should have been. On April 5th, the UK was only doing 16,000 tests a day and had a nearly 40% positive rate for tests. Only very sick people were being tested. That implies that the 5,451 cases detected that day is a vast undercount of the actual number of new cases at that point. It is bad data science to keep reporting that peak case number in comparison with the current case numbers as if it means anything. So how many new cases were there on April 5th? No one knows for sure, but various estimates based on community surveys guess that it was more like 100,000/cases per day. That would be a very different graph than what gets attached to every news story. Compare that with now, where the UK is doing ~200k tests a day (over 10x!). We also have much better community survey data now and can estimate that there are about 3,200/cases a day right now. The daily testing is picking up the majority of those expected cases. So if you actually compare numbers that are comparable (~100k cases/~1000 deaths with ~3k cases/~10 deaths), you get a much better idea of what is actually going on. Demographics are definitely working in our favor now, which keeps death rates lower. But it's not like we have "solved COVID treatment" and can cure everyone now because we know to use steroids. It's mostly that there just aren't nearly as many people getting it right now as there were at the peak. Even if tomorrow we detected 5,451 cases again, there's no reason to expect that the death rate should approach the peak because we are getting much closer at detecting all the sick people than before.

thu2111 6y ago
3,200 cases/day is a little more than the daily positive UK RT-PCR tests. But by the government's own admission and recent commentary about cycle counts, it's entirely plausible and in fact likely that 100% of these are false positives. It's the only explanation you need to determine why there are no deaths, although there may well be other correct explanations too. The problem is that the test's sensitivity has been amped up to such a huge level that labs are reporting positive for people who have virtually no virus in their blood, or actually no viable virus at all, and certainly are not infectious let alone at risk. Fortunately the British government in the last few weeks finally understood that RT-PCR tests do in fact have false positives, contrary to what was being regularly claimed back in April. They changed their guidance on September 6th. There's an analysis of this by a scientist here: https://lockdownsceptics.org/when-is-covid-19-not-covid-19/ https://lockdownsceptics.org/when-is-covid-19-not-covid-19/ A useful quote is this one: The number of cycles is not actually specified in the publication. Instead each laboratory must determine their own. A beautiful French study demonstrated the relationship between the number of cycles and the chance that a sample will be from an infectious case. Above 30 cycles and the chances of a test being from an infectious case are only 50/50. Above 34 cycles they are all positive. Another laboratory may find a different cut off. Indeed, a Canadian study found no cases requiring more than 24 cycles were infectious. To put it in perspective, COVID testing labs have routinely been reporting positive at 40 cycles.

thu2111 6y ago

3,200 cases/day is a little more than the daily positive UK RT-PCR tests. But by the government's own admission and recent commentary about cycle counts, it's entirely plausible and in fact likely that 100% of these are false positives. It's the only explanation you need to determine why there are no deaths, although there may well be other correct explanations too. The problem is that the test's sensitivity has been amped up to such a huge level that labs are reporting positive for people who have virtually no virus in their blood, or actually no viable virus at all, and certainly are not infectious let alone at risk. Fortunately the British government in the last few weeks finally understood that RT-PCR tests do in fact have false positives, contrary to what was being regularly claimed back in April. They changed their guidance on September 6th. There's an analysis of this by a scientist here: https://lockdownsceptics.org/when-is-covid-19-not-covid-19/ https://lockdownsceptics.org/when-is-covid-19-not-covid-19/ A useful quote is this one: The number of cycles is not actually specified in the publication. Instead each laboratory must determine their own. A beautiful French study demonstrated the relationship between the number of cycles and the chance that a sample will be from an infectious case. Above 30 cycles and the chances of a test being from an infectious case are only 50/50. Above 34 cycles they are all positive. Another laboratory may find a different cut off. Indeed, a Canadian study found no cases requiring more than 24 cycles were infectious. To put it in perspective, COVID testing labs have routinely been reporting positive at 40 cycles.