In the Uk there are two main soruces of information about cases. The King's college phone app, and the results of government antigen PCR testing.
4 million people are now reporting to the app whether they are feeling ill. They then get asked questions and some sent testing kits to determine the statistical number with covid. This has been gong on since march on much the same basis, so it forms a robust basis t see how cases have gone up or down since then. At peak they estimated 2 million cases at the same time with symptoms aged 20-70.
PCR testing on the other hand has been done on a changing basis almost weekly. The numbers of tests have gone up (do twice as many teast and you wil likely find twice as many cases), who is being tested and where they are being tested keep changing. Test people with symptoms, you get more positive results (duh!), test people with no symptoms and you can find asymptomatic cases who dont know they have it. But you cannot compare eg this week with march, because the numbers of tests then were ridiculously small. Right now government is reporting nearly as many cases now as then, whereas in reality the peak was maybe x100 bigger than the number of cases now. Its bonkers that the government claims they are similar.
This weekend government advisors whitty and vallance went on tv and claimed an epidemic was about to take place again, citing fast rising numbers of cases.
Problem is, there are no fast rising cases.
The case data from both kings and the government website lginform is consistent and basically says there is no pattern of doubling of cases in a uniform time as the advisors claim. Looking at lginform at
COVID-19 Case Tracker | LG Inform
This has about 2 months of daily case numbers data. Cases go from about 500 on 11 jul to 3000 on 15 sept. Thats about 8 weeks and 2.5 doubles.
But there is absolutely no uniform patttern to this growth. On 30/8 it was on 1000, so thats doubling once in about 7 weeks to then. Then it jumps from 1000 to 2500 in three days! Then it goes from 2500 to 35000 in 2 weeks, so doubling about once in 5 weeks.
Just what sort of bonkers epidemic does that? None.
The only conclusion I can see is that this is simply not measuring natural epidemic growth. Whatever it is, is being controlled by man made processes.
Looking at the latest weekly government update at
https://assets.publishing.service.g...COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_38_FINAL.pdf
there is a plot of testing positivity. At about 30/8, between weeks 35 and 36, reported positivity of pillar 2 tests doubled. And gee…at that moment in time reported cases doubled!
So how does the number of tests getting a positive result suddenly double in three days out of eight week?. Hasnt done it before or since, its a one-off. What sort of epidemic does that? In three days the number of people with it doubles, and then it stops changing.
What most likely happened? Perhaps a change of testing policy which redirected testing to somewhere with twice as many positive cases?
Without that sudden change in positivity there is a slow increase in total cases, which is likely approximately in line with increasing numbers of tests. Because as I said, just increasing the number of tests increases the number of (official) cases. Magic. So magic, why dont we just stop testing and then there wouldnt be any cases at all? Thats just as sensible as claiming a rise because you did more testing.
So there was a sleight of hand causing postivity to double, and a steady increase in testing…and thats all which has happened to otherwise flat case numbers in the last two months.
Minister was on TV a few days ago telling people with no symptoms they must not be tested. What would that do? It would boost the positivity rate by having fewer tests likely to be negative. But thats just manipulating the testing system to get the result you want.
Just what is happening here? Why is the government claiming there is a new epidemic when there is no evidence to support one?
