All I’m hearing and reading about the Coronavirus is how cases are up, how there are Second Waves (or, here in Hong Kong, and quite unaccountably, a Third Wave), and therefore we have to have new lockdowns, like the “Rule of Six” in Britain. It’s all cases, cases, cases.
Yet death rates are down, down, down. All over the world. Despite recent rises in cases. Why is this? I don’t get it. We seem to have got our mindset into a place where any increase in the virus is time to press the panic button, otherwise it’s mass deaths. Where clearly, the actual, real, experience, around the world, that that is not the case.
Here are some charts proving that. Note that the Y-axis is logarithmic for all the charts (other than England and Wales) which means that each gridline is ten times more than the one below. And focus on the squiggly lines, which are daily cases and deaths.
In each and very case, there has been an increase in cases, but deaths have remained low. And that’s been the case for nearly three months. Enough time to be over the incubation period by months.
The Chief Science adviser in the UK was asked about this. He answer was we need to “watch out”, because there’s an incubation period and deaths will go up. But we have figures from all the other countries where they have not gone up, even months after the increase in cases. Seems they are still going on the model of Imperial College London, rather than the actual, real, data from countries around the world.
ADDED: Toby Young makes the same point here.
