Thread by @uk_domain_names

When is it too early to draw lessons from a pandemic that's been raging for 2 years?

Could we learn about England's current situation by studying the peak last winter?

Last winter: cases in blue, hospitalisations in purple.
This winter: cases in red, hospitalisations in orange.

Last winter, cases peaked around 8 January (would have been reported in the daily figures between 9-12 January). Hospitalisations peaked a week later.

This suggests we have a lot of cases and an awful lot of hospitalisations to come as the effects of Xmas/NY mingling play out.

Of course, Omicron isn't Delta. History won't play out exactly the same. And there will be fewer deaths per hospitalisation thanks to the vaccine and better treatments.

But we have a strong indication that the worst:
A) Is already baked in
and
B) Has yet to manifest in the data

Finally, we should remember WHY cases (and eventually hospitalisations) peaked last winter.

It didn't happen by magic.

It happened because Boris Johnson slammed England into a strict lockdown on 6 January 2021. We only finally exited the last of that lockdown in July 2021.

NOTE

All the data in this thread originated from the official Coronavirus Dashboard.

Two datasets were used to construct the graphs:
- "Cases by specimen date", for England.
- "Patients admitted to hospital", for England.
coronavirus.data.gov.uk