100s more UK cases than known and peak Higher and earlier - theory with Diagram

[RapidRainbow]

Has anyone found anything that supports a much higher, earlier peak than the 'known' UK Peak? I've made this (very) rough diagram that explains visually. The idea that the peak was actually just the point our testing capability hit the number of cases which may have actually aready been dropping.

(the green line should really cross at the named peak!)

I think it's fairly well accepted that there were many more cases earlier. Did you reverse back from the excess deaths to draw your picture? What date are you using? Infections typically come at least 10 days up to 4 weeks before the deaths, and I think the highest death toll was April 8th, which suggests the peak infection was in late March, which would be expected because of lockdown. The real curves are bumpy and uneven, you can probably prove anything you fancy.

This is a (very basic)visual of what I've thought for weeks and weeks now. If the next month doesn’t result in a huge rise in cases it’s the most likely theory imho

Where's your source for that estimate?

I'm not doubting your theory as I also believe there have been many, many more cases than recorded.

The Zoe Covid symptom tracker research estimates that at the point we went into lockdown there was around 100,000 new cases per day. The number of people logging symptoms when the app first launched compared to now also backs that up. The 300,000 of official cases would be far too low.

That's a really interesting theory, I guess we'll never know.

There is no source for what I've posted, it's just a theory that I feel is being underexplored, though may come out later.

Again I don't want to attribute to the graph to specific dates, I don't think it's important as I'm not being particularly scientific in my approach. You could just assume that the Named Peak in my graph is the UK daily cases peak (April?), except what I'm suggesting is that had the testing been in ace earlier, the pek would have been higher and possibly back in March.

Based on hospital death peak of April 8, it's always been known that peak infections was in March.

There has been quite a lot of modelling done on peak infection, which is actually likely to have been before Lockdown (which makes sense given the voluntary distancing which was already going on). Which suggests peak around 18/20 March.

Realistically, it can't have been much earlier than that as it would be reflected in deaths.

I believe there was a University of Bristol study which supported the idea that cases peaked a few days before lockdown (so late March). Not sure how widely accepted that is but it was reported in a few papers about a month ago.

Modelling by Oxford Uni Centre of Disease Control & Imperial had daily infections rising exponentially until lockdown,
then falling abruptly after lockdown

Of course it does, it's from the same modellers who created the model that drove lockdown in the first place. ;-)

PHE and Cambridge university did some modelling in may that showed that for London, for example, R had already fallen from 3 to around 2.3 before lockdown occurred. There was a lot of social distancing going on from mid March, so that makes sense.

Note, I'm not arguing against lockdown. But back calculating from daily deaths shows that peak infections was very likely to be before lockdown.

I did a calculation back when this theory of peaking before lockdown came out. The gap between lockdown and peak deaths (the most absolute measures) was the same, to within 1-2 days, across about 10 different countries (not that many had locked down at that point). I'd consider that sufficient evidence that lock down was the cause and the peak was the effect. I can't be arsed to do the same analysis again. People make headlines by proposing alternative theories, it doesn't mean those theories hold any particular weight.

Two weeks before lockdown I had a week where I lost my sense of smell, felt a bit groggie, the rest of the house seemed ok, 10 days later, X2 days before schools closed, school almost sent child1 home as he had a temperature but took him to medical room and decided to keep him in. No illness in anyone. Was this Covid? Wasn't suggested at the time. It's so confusing. Clearly I hope it was, on the flip side I don't want to catch it. So I don't know.

My onlyvreason for the theory as that the best we could hope for is that many of us had it and barely new. I too have my own stories of illness that may have been Covid and may not have been. I can't wait until we have a reliable antibody test, I'm not against lockdown and it was my own instinct to stay home 2 weeks before lockdown came in. I'd just like to think that in my area which has low cases now, that could be because it already ran through our population.

It's going to be one of those things that will come out eventually I imagine!