I don't think you are that easily confusedOriginally Posted by Mossdog
Point taken - I'm easily confused!
So, in my list of naive questions above, if we were to replace my use of the word(s) 'infection(s)' with case(s), what would the numbers be?
Also, just to be clear, when someone is infected do they only become a case when they've been tested as positive for CV?
Variation in testing behaviour and case ascertainment over time means that any trends in cases do not necessarily reflect trends in infections.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/estima...io-in-england/
I've added the link just to show the differentiation between cases and infections.
The folks that wrote the letter to Govt yesterday which I linked to, have been discussing this for 1-2 months.
If you get a positive PCR test, that is a case. But you could be asymptomatic and carrying a live virus, you might have been carrying the live virus several months ago at the height of the pandemic and the test might have picked up on a fragment - let's call it a dead piece of virus - there could be other factors.
They have pushed the Govt to do further work, suggesting viral culturing. If a test has picked up live virus then it will be able to be grown in the lab, if it's dead virus it won't. Then a better indicatin of how many of the positive cases are actually infections will be available and better strategy can be worked out.
In the letter yesterday, they were brief and to the point, probably because they wanted to focus minds. But note they said "we are therefore concerned about the sole reliance on the case numbers and the "R" to inform national and local policies"
To your question, I don't think there is a good rate of increase for daily cases. But the problem is, there doesn't seem to have been enough work done on detecting active cases, which are infections.
It's easy to understand that in a pandemic, with every week, more of the population are exposed to the virus even if they show no symptoms.
If you have a test that picks up viral fragments and shows them as a positive, the longer you are in to the pandemic, the more likely you are to pick up positive cases that are inactive, especially if you ramp up testing and then send in hit squads to urban areas that are suspsected to have been or are viral hotspots.
So at the moment I don't see what you can read in to cases.
But you can read something in to hospital admissions and fatalities. Even then there are some caveats, some which we have discussed extensively.
