Quote:
Originally Posted by jonbxx
This is all very "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" suggesting that reducing testing will reduce infections...
The data you need is what proportion of tests are positive. If, as suggested that more testing means more cases, then the positivity rate should remain constant. Unfortunately, the recent data does suggest that the proportion of PCR tests that are positive has gone way up since early November where it was around 9% to nearly 3% with the latest data shown in the first chart here
Going forward however, we need to treat this with care as you only need a PCR test when symptomatic where before, you got one when you got a positive lateral flow result |
No, I was commenting on the number of reported cases - that figure that appears on our TV sets each night. I am not arguing that the number of actual cases will fall.
The thing is, nobody knows the actual number of cases there are in the country because we cannot know what isn’t reported. One thing for certain is that there are far more positive cases than are reported.
The data indicating the proportion of tests that are positive proves very little. After all, there are specific reasons why people get PCR tests. What about the rest of positive cases where no PCR tests are performed?