Just looking at the figures across a few countries in Europe, based on latest 7 day averages. New cases UK - 25,065 Germany - 558 France - 3,585 Spain - 11,554 Deaths UK - 20 Germany - 34 France - 26 Spain - 19 Tests UK - 1,101,467 Germany - 100,789 France - 260,745 Spain - 83,795 Why do we have the massive difference in tests when you look at the UK compared to these other countries? Obviously lots of news around the increase in new case in the UK, yet the deaths remain low.. Just to pose the question that if we adopted the same criteria for testing as in say Germany and scale the numbers appropriately based on that, we would quite obviously report far lower numbers in terms of both cases and deaths. So are we causing somewhat artificial panic about lifting restrictions on 19th July by testing so many people, then being compared to other countries for instance? If we were only testing 100k like Germany and not going down the mass testing route, would anybody be worried about lifting restrictions if we were reporting a tenth of cases and deaths? I'm not saying it is wrong to test by any means, it is all how the data is presented. From the other point of view. If the likes of Germany, Spain, France were conducting the level of tests as in the UK what would their data look like? I think a useful stat would be, from the reported cases, what percentage of those are asymptomatic which would add a little balance and peace of mind should that be really high. It was after all always accepted that we would end up living with this virus for the long term, so the route back to normality was ultimately stopping people from losing their life and serious illness. So I guess what I am saying is, the way the data is now presented to us needs to evolve. We need to see :- Overall cases v asymptomatic Positive Cases and breakdown of vaccination status within those numbers. Hospitalisation and breakdown of vaccination status within those numbers. Deaths and breakdown of vaccination status within those numbers. Then drilldown on the deaths to identify Deaths and breakdown of underlying condition v no known conditions for each vaccination status. Those top level charts now only serve to add increased levels of anxiety without the context added.
Are lateral flow tests included in the official figures? Or are people that get a positive LFT supposed to then get a PCR test, which would then be included in the numbers if positive?
Are we finding more cases because we are testing more? Or are we testing more because we have more people with symptoms?
I get what you're saying and agree that if we're testing ten plus times more than any other country we are going to get higher levels of cases which is going to make us look far worse.
You’ve missed one- Long Covid cases, these will no doubt increase markedly, they’ll be chronically ill people whether they’ve been hospitalised or not. However, I expect this Govt to put pressure on the doctors to ‘not include’ this term on sick notes etc
I suspect we are testing far more without symptoms than say Spain who look to be testing those with symptoms only, looking at those figures alone. May be totally wrong.
id hazard a guess that most of the people that are getting tests are vaccinated folk (obviously no data to back that up so assuming its either that or the very young - they ought to say unvaxed v 1/2 jabs testing pos) . People not jabbed by now I doubt bother to get tested either. So are folk getting in a frenzy over people that are jabbed getting re-infected? None of it really adds up. Get jabbed and you can still get it and spread it (asymptomatically if you believe that). But, get jabbed and you can fast track thru the airports now and not have to get tests etc so its a free super spreader pass??? Can't have it both ways - we can either spread it or not when you are asymptomatic. Also, re-infection will/should strengthen a person's immune response so why the concern about vaxed folk getting infected again? Yes there will always be folk that have immune issues but that is the same for a lot of viruses and health issues. Not a lot we can do about that. Finally if vaxed folk can get it still then they can create a variant. Again another thing I cant grasp in the jab v no jab debate.
Viruses have a chance to mutate every time they replicate, so the more people they infect, logically the more chance we have of getting a new variant. A new variant isn't necessarily a bad thing though. We could find a variant that is much more transmissible which becomes the dominant strain, but is also causes milder illness. Viruses aren't necessarily selecting for maximum damage, just for maximum transmission. Studies so far suggest that now we have a vaccine, it will continue to be effective.
We're testing more because the Tory chumocracy will be taking a nice cut from every test done; paid for by you and me from our and generations to come's taxes.
