Originally Posted by
Silver Fox
Thanks for this. Very informative. What would be interesting to also know is how many tests they were actually doing over the same period.
The other skew in the figures is that they are concentrating testing in areas where there is a lot of COVID about - university towns etc, which would naturally lead to more numbers being reported.
Essentially, the issue is that HMG is only reporting selective figures, which makes it impossible to compare one period's figures accurately with another. Now that SAGE has become a lobbying group, rather than a Government advisory committee, you will see an increase in apples and oranges comparisons which are designed to frighten people and overstate the case. Even hospital admissions needs to be treated with care, as back in March the whole emphasis was on not going to hospital (let's not forget that Boris himself was admitted far too late and would not have been admitted at all had he been a private citizen - his symptons were not on the NHS 111 list of symptons necessary for hospital admission). As there is currently no pressure on bed capacity, it's far more likely that people will be admitted.
In short, we need to take it on trust, as we are not being provided with sufficient information to make an informed judgment.