If the daily numbers are only new infections

[StealthPolarBear]

They will start to come down anyway won't they as there are fewer people left to infect for the first time?
Apologies if this is a stupid question

There are no stupid questions and it's a good question anway.

Unfortunately the virus doesn't seem to give lasting immunity and so people can become infected again.

It's all reliant on data and that takes time to gather, years even, and then work it all out, and then play catch up working out how the new variants of concern behave too.

They are going to show reinfections from sometime in January I'm afraid!

12,000,000 known infections - will be higher as some don’t PCR and others couldn’t prior to testing.

66,000,000 people in the UK

It’s hardly gone through the population has it?

Also don’t forgot not everyone who has a positive LFT will go on to have a recordable pcr. The figures are actually much higher sadly.

Judging by Mumsnet, an awful lot of people aren’t bothering to do a PCR once they have a positive LFT.

Call it 150,000 a day, infectious/ill for a typical 10-14 days, that's 1.5m - 2.1m on a rolling basis. The adult population is about 54m so you couid be looking at quite a while before the mathematics brings the numbers down.

@JanglyBeads

They are going to show reinfections from sometime in January I'm afraid!

Ah that's interesting

@RoseAndRose

Call it 150,000 a day, infectious/ill for a typical 10-14 days, that's 1.5m - 2.1m on a rolling basis. The adult population is about 54m so you couid be looking at quite a while before the mathematics brings the numbers down.

About a year, not accoutnign for seasonality and natural epidemic patterns. So good point.