Thread by @skeuomorphology

It's become very difficult for the clinically vulnerable to judge when might be a safe - or at least safer - time to access healthcare.

That's partly because the tools have been taken away from them. The data is poor and now often comes too late.

A short 🧵

1/6

https://twitter.com/SalWitcher/status/1825864521493172660

Case data and admissions data are indicative but both are now misleading given the lack of testing.

Look at cases on the UKHSA dashboard, and you'd have no idea that we're still in a much bigger wave than last Christmas.

2/6

PCR positivity is a much more reliable indicator. For the public, it's just about the only trustable *and* actionable metric on the dashboard.

You can find it here:

3/6 ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-1…

The number of NHS staff off work with covid is also useful, though the stats are only released once a month.

As the Nursing Times note, though, many staff aren't testing. And the baseline when prevalence is allegedly 'low' is still a constant 1,000.

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Can we trust that figure, given lack of staff testing and variability of reporting & policy among NHS trusts? Probably not.

If we look at *all* absences instead, we see a pattern that matches waves of covid but with much larger numbers of staff.

5/6

Take into account the 21% who've worked while infected, and it's clear that hospital attendance is a real hazard for patients, with real risk even at times of lower prevalence.

It's an artificially Sisyphean situation.

6/6