THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

I SPEND a fair amount of time looking at the data and even I struggle to make sense of it all. There are so many conflicting reports out there about where we are, partly because different metrics are telling different stories.

My feeling is that we are focusing far too much on new cases. Monitoring how, where and why these infections are developing is crucial, but it is not the only statistic that needs to be taken into account.

It seems as if the Government is basing every decision solely on this data. Surely hospital activity is just as important?

I read reports that Birmingham may be heading towards tighter restrictions, but Dr Ron Daniels, a very sensible intensive care consultant there, has said hospitals remain fairly empty with no sign of any uptick. So it’s tough to draw firm conclusions from just looking at the new cases.

We know testing is increasing all the time and the positivity rate is remaining fairly steady.

In comparison to other countries, our tests-to-cases ratio is staggeringly low.

The absolute number of cases has been slowly ticking up, but there are signs that it is on its way back down. Let’s wait a week before we say for sure.

Also the excellent Covid Symptom Study app is estimating that the number of people with virus symptoms in the UK is now below 20,000 for the first time in months.

It’s been remarkably accurate in the past, so I find that news very encouraging.

And of course, although every death is a tragedy, the numbers are now very small compared with what we have seen.

On the whole, the situation seems fairly stable. There are problem areas that require attention, but there’s no cause for panic despite what you might read.