I keep seeing people saying "I don't believe the data that says there's not much Covid around, there are loads of stories of people catching it at the moment".
Yes, but you're not seeing *as many* stories of people catching it at the moment.
Yes, it's around. Low Covid does not mean No Covid.
But here in the UK *every single possible metric* is indicating that there are historically low levels. We're still doing 20k PCR tests in England each week as a base level, plus more when there are more cases. Scotland has wastewater.
Tests, cases, admissions, deaths, wastewater, positivity are all tracking at the same rates - and it's very hard to manipulate one without manipulating all of them, and there's no need to, because 99% of the population don't care what the levels are.
I buy and hand out tests to people in our local community myself. The positives on those tests track quite closely to national numbers.
Some people are then arguing that it means that tests aren't picking up cases.
Well, that doesn't make sense either, because we've just had a wave that hit kids here, and the tests picked those up fine.
The final thing is:
What does low mean?
'Low' in terms of Covid doesn't mean *none*.
There are more Covid cases confirmed at the moment each week than Measles cases... but Measles cases are 'High'.
Covid cases are *low for Covid*.
Low Covid does not mean No Covid.
It just means that it's not overwhelming healthcare right now.
Low Covid does not mean that I'm stopping masking, or stopping any other mitigations that I've had in place for six years. It just means that there's not as much around as at other times.
Which would be a particularly daft time to catch it.