If they are not testing people for this virus, how on earth do they know how many have it ?

[Lardlizard]

I get that it’s a waste of time to certain extend and the staff are needed elsewhere
But it seems odd seeing all the figures in the news etc when they can’t be right at all

I was talking about this with my mum earlier. Surely the stats are only for the people that have had it bad enough to be admitted to hospital and been tested. I bet theres hundreds of not thousands of people that have it or have had it just not "confirmed" so those people wouldnt be included in the stats

Sounds about right. What's perplexing is how are we supposed to work out if we've had it or not and safe to go back out into the community to work/help others. Those with mild symptoms that think they've had it but actually haven't will be putting themselves at risk. Do we all stay in forever until we can all have this test that determines whether you have had it or not (not readily available or even fully developed yet iirc)

Totally agree with you both

Someone on bbc said 10x the amount known about as an estimate

Probably so that when it all blows over Boris can hold his head high and say this his country had the lowest confirmed cases due to him doing x, y and z. But in reality the number of cases will more than likely be his figure x 100!

There's a calculation based on the number of deaths, which someone more knowledgable than me will be able to remember and work out.

Do they estimate the total number using the number of deaths and multiplying up from there?

Presumably the death figure is correct?

I doubt it's to do with trying to make the numbers look better, because it actually makes the mortality rate look worse if you can only get a % from confirmed cases which are mostly serious cases.

I've been musing the self isolation for temp &/or cough. I've seen soooo many people including myself needing to do this, this week. It would be impossible to test us all. And I certainly think it's wasted on me.

But what will be happening given most of us probably won't have CV yet, is it keep us away from society for a bit anyway, and rate of transmission will be slower? Whereas if we test no and are back out in the community then rate of transmission will be quicker.

It's like a way of being able to rotate x% of people out of society every 7 days. So maybe that is more effective.

This is just my musings, I'm no scientist.

There is also the cost and time factor. I do believe they are aiming to increase testing esp for health workers. Chris Whitty did say out of 44k tested, 42k were negative but imagine if that is extended to everyone with either a cough or temp. I think proportionately, right now the large majority of people in self isolation will have common coughs and colds rather than CV.

Only people who require treatment/hospital admissions are being tested, therefore the total figure each day represents just those people; This figure is not the true reflection of the overall picture because those with "mild" cases of the virus are not being tested at all.

A strategy that in my humble opinion is completely flawed!

The problem with this approach is we won’t actually know how well our death stats compare to other countries because we are only recording the worst affected and if our system leads to loads more deaths than it should they will just assume more people were infected that actually were. I also don’t understand why they aren’t testing frontline workers!

I think even the who are critazing the U.K. lack of testing 😰