A month ago, the 7 day rolling average for new coronavirus cases was 696 new cases per day. Now, it’s 1190. That’s a 71% increase.
In roughly the same time period, testing has increased by 30%. We can’t put this increase in cases down to increased testing alone, in my opinion.
Now, it’s not exponential growth (yet), and it’s very likely focused in particular areas. But I actually think this slow creeping up of cases is more dangerous. If there was a sudden jump in cases, like there was in Spain, and is currently in France, for example, it motivates people to actual do things- to make changes, to stop reopening things as fast. It changes people’s behaviour.
But this slow increase means we are sort of ignoring it, our politicians are sort of ignoring it, and we’re just seeing all of this as acceptable. It doesn’t make for good headlines, so the papers aren’t reporting it.
However, once again, we’re not learning from other countries. It’s very clear that in Western Europe, a country can quickly go from “having things under control” to exponential growth of cases very quickly. There’s a second wave in France and Spain- and this is summer. This was our chance to get things under control before the winter flu season.
And we haven’t. Because we’ve “prioritised the economy” over keeping things under control- except we’ve already established that doesn’t work.
I guess I would just feel a lot better if it weren’t for the shower of incompetents who are supposedly running this country.
