A lot of people are still quite comfortable and feel virtuous about lockdown, protecting (as they see it) those who likely only have months left.

It will end when this ceases to be affordable and when unemployment spirals, or when a vaccine comes, whichever is soonest.

I'm also fighting a losing battle on the forum I frequent. The person who takes me to task on every point and pushes the government and SAGE line uncritically, entirely convinced by the rising number of 'cases', is winning the room.

I felt much encouraged by Neil Oliver today on IRoMG; my feeling is the smart people are the ones we are listening to (and hats off to the scientific whizzes here whose discussions I read but don't entirely understand).

History will show who were the headless chickens.

I feel the same way as SussexFox.

I tried to explain about the possibility of false positives being very high on my local Facebook group, and some people reacted with hostility, one person more or less accused me of wanting to kill the elderly and infirm, I was told I was saying the virus didn't exist, etc.

Hi, I'm a bit confused about the false positives. On the one hand it's great if the number of cases is overreported. But if reported positivies are increasing exponentially wouldn't that mean that even the "real" positive cases are also increasing exponentially?

In statistical terms if there are zero true positives, and an increase in testing, false potiives will still rise. In glossing over the fact that a rising rate of false positives could accompany zero true positives, the government's scientific advisors presented a case which no viewer with a basic science training was likely to take seriously, and which Profs Vallance are Whitty certainly would have known fell short of full disclosure.

Even if there are some true positives, 'cases' are not rising exponentially, in mathematical terms: 'exponentially' is used hyperbolically to mean 'very fast', and one hopes not to try to trick people into believing there is a daily doubling or something like that.

Calling a positive test in an asymtomatic person does a 'case' not make it a case in normal medical use, though any many languages there has been the same shift in terminology this year.

Finally, I am told with someone who runs a lab doing COVID tests in Austria that the government heath auhority have recognized an asymptomatic person with a positive test has an almost zero chance of being infectious, and that they expect that this research will start to be taken into account in government policy soon.

> Hi, I'm a bit confused about the false positives. On the one hand it's great if the number of cases is overreported. But if reported positivies are increasing exponentially wouldn't that mean that even the "real" positive cases are also increasing exponentially?

If you ramp up testing 3x or 4x the slope of the false positive curve would be indistinguishable from an exponential curve in the short term. As would the true positive curve.

As the actual R0 for community spread for SARs CoV 2 looks like its around R0 1.2 every two / three months or so there will be a ramp up in actual population infection rate, each peak being much lower than the previous one. Then it will roll off again to around background levels. A classic decay curve. Which repeats until it reaches the equilibrium point of around 35% or the population.

So these ups and downs will continue for the next year or two until SARs CoV 2 becomes just part of the winter flu season cycle. I would expect the infection rate of SARs 2 in a year or two to track the infection rate of the general human corona-virus mix of around 1% at any given time.

Plus there will always be lots of sample noise. Variations of up to 20%/30% either way in instantaneous daily values. Have not worked out the exact values but would guess that any true positive number that was not a moving average based on a 10/15 day moving window would not give you a realistic indication of the actual infection rate.

If you ramp up testing 3x or 4x the slope of the false positive curve would be indistinguishable from an exponential curve in the short term. As would the true positive curve.

As the actual R0 for community spread for SARs CoV 2 looks like its around R0 1.2 every two / three months or so there will be a ramp up in actual population infection rate, each peak being much lower than the previous one. Then it will roll off again to around background levels. A classic decay curve. Which repeats until it reaches the equilibrium point of around 35% or the population.

So these ups and downs will continue for the next year or two until SARs CoV 2 becomes just part of the winter flu season cycle. I would expect the infection rate of SARs 2 in a year or two to track the infection rate of the general human corona-virus mix of around 1% at any given time.

Firstly, we need to concentrate on percentage cases/tests. Then I think we need to explain why this seems to have behaved in a step-like fashion - steps lasting a couple of weeks - seeming to trigger a jump over 1-3 days each time.