I posted that in here yesterday morning.
QUOTE (apologies to those who read it then).
It is pointless debating what will happen in 2 or 3 months as the reality is nobody knows where we will be in November or December as there are so many variables that can change that picture.
We can say numbers are likely to rise as it is Winter. Just as we can say they will fall in the Summer because it is not . But that was turned on its head by the arrival of the new variant in Scotland and the North West in late Spring and no predictions could have seen that other than as a possibility.
The media keep comparing now with this time last year and saying we are clearly worse. But the huge difference in the number of tests is not mentioned or the positivity level - just the raw case numbers.
Or indeed why numbers are high. As in kids who largely brush it off as a bit of a cold. Not as last year many of those tested were in need of serious health care.
They also say hospital numbers are well up now v last September but again that is meaningless as so much had changed in those 12 months. The real measure is the hospital numbers v cases reported that gives you a better picture.
On 14 Sep 2020 we had 2621 cases
Yesterday there were 26, 628 almost exactly TEN times as many.
Disaster looms if you follow the reporters. As those low cases rocketed days after mid September and kept on rising and rising for months. Though we started doing LOTS more tests too.
We did 1.028 MILLION tests yesterday. We did 213,000 a year ago. Not a minor difference.
So - yes - there are MORE cases now but not by anything like ten times as it might look. Because most of the ones that never bothered the NHS were simply not found and reported as we focused on finding the cases that WOULD bother the NHS. Unlike now when we try to find every case that exists.
The positivity level is about double not as it seems from the raw numbers. And in England it is actually even less as cases are lower pro rata there than the other nations.
The likely key reason is that the current variant is very infective, younger often unvaccinated people (as in under 20) are catching it more than any other age in all the data but not usually getting it bad enough to disrupt their lives other than a few days off school. Certainly not to drain the NHS as most Covid stats were doing last year pre vaccines.
There are 8349 in hospital today from those 26, 826 cases and 1061 on ventilators.
This day last year by chance was the one in which the patients number tipped over 1000 to 1066 - and it rose pretty well every single day after that up to the near 40,000 in January and did not fall back under 1000 again until 14 May and was only there for three weeks before it started going back up. So it was NOT seasonal. It was Delta that did that.
So there are 8000 patients from 26,000 cases now versus 1000 patients from 2600 last year.
That is another way to look at the same numbers and actually says we are doing BETTER now than a year ago. But that - of course - is not the story that sells.
Numbers are easy to manipulate to look like what you want them to say.
But the reality is many things are different now than September 2020 and the one that REALLY matters is none of the above. It is the impact of the vaccines on the length of stay in hospital - reduced to a few days on average not weeks - lowering the daily numbers. And lowering the deaths dramatically.
You cannot just use cases as an easy way to predict disaster. Not any more. Time the media starlets woke up to that new normal.
