Good question

Yes, because the absence of case data would just mean that bureaucrats scientists make up model case numbers to support their outbursts advice.

We’re at the stage where there’s far too many people invested emotionally, professionally and financially in the pandemic to let it go.

Hopefully the byelection result will either knock some sense in to Boris and stiffen his backbone, or if it doesn’t it does the same to his backbenchers and they remove him. Although I am aware of the old saying about being careful what you wish for in the latter case.

BiS – When have so many experts shared such a lack of expertise?

Climate science.

Two cheeks of the same arse.

It’s a good question. Imagine this was 1999 before digital PCR testing and mobile phone apps. How would we know?
Monitoring hospital admissions for admissions for respiratory disease perhaps. Typically these are in the range 1-9% with an average of 2% as the data spends a lot more weeks below the mean as above. We’ve been at 6% or so for 5 months which *is* really unusual not because of the amount of it going around but because of the duration.

Am I right to assume that when They test you for Covid they don’t test you for other respiratory viruses too?

If so: suppose you test positive and then develop a cough and a bit of fever. They will attribute it to Covid. But it might be a cold caused by a rhinovirus, a flu caused by an influenza virus, a lurgy caused by RSV…

Nobody can know if they haven’t tested for other viruses too, which is rather a big deal in the season of sniffles and sneezes.