Thread by @gnomeicide

Today we're getting to the meat and drink of real Covid data in the UK. Deaths in particular, we'll start to see real data and we'll finally have a better idea of where we are. For context, where we were (1)

In the week running up to Christmas we were averaging 111-116 deaths a day. Deaths per day had been falling almost imperceptibly slowly during December (2)

By Christmas Eve recorded Covid cases had started to go absolutely bonkers. We'd just topped 100k per day on average, that day. A week earlier that average was 68k, another week back it was 49k (3)

Hospitalisations on the 24th of December were averaging 116 a day. That was again, relatively stable (4)

Now obviously we'll remain well above where we were for average cases per day. If reported case number today was 0 we'd still have a 7 day average of over 150k. Cases have risen colossally, thats irrefutable (5)

Deaths are high right now, by chance we had catch-up data 30th Dec and 5th Jan. The latter data for New Year will still be in the data after todays data drop, the latter (for deaths over New Year) will be, and should be (6)

So after today, we'll have the first real 7 day average of deaths since Christmas Eve. That figure will be 854+whatever is reported today. Or, in other words, deaths are up relative to before Christmas (6)

Before we add todays deaths, the total is already 9.5% up on Christmas Eve. Every death in todays figure represents a bigger rise (7)

We won't get full hospitalisation data today. On Christmas Eve we had 8,547 patients in hospital in the UK with Covid. The day before yesterday we had 17,276. Slightly more than double (8)

So today we start to find out how much worse things really are than before Christmas. Note - we know its worse, we know its much worse. Its not a question of whether deaths are up, cases are up, and hospitalisations are up. Every key parameter, every indicator, is worse (9)

But from today we can hopefully start doing some maths with the data to have a clear view as to where we're going. Not 'is this worse', but 'how much worse is it' (fin)