Looking at some countries that offer more detailed data, you can sometimes see the cases double, while hospitalizations and deaths grow at a much lower rate (if at all).
Compare for example the UK:
- This chart for the daily new cases shows a dramatic second wave that even exceeds the first one: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
- This chart for the positive rate on the other hand shows a modest increase to ~3% over the past few weeks, far below the 30% in April: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#the-positive-...
- And if you look at the number of tests you'll see it has more than tripled since April, hence the increase in "cases": https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#how-many-test...
But there is no reason to care whether infection is prevented or not, unless infection carries some sort of cost. That metric has no value on its own.
To get a good estimate we'd have to randomly test the population, instead of measuring people with symptoms. Since a lot of people are asymptomatic or don't get a test since they don't feel too sick. Picking people at random would give us a good overview of active cases.
In March in Germany they were reporting a doubling of cases on TV every day, but they failed to mention that they had administered almost twice the tests as well. So basically the number we were measuring was the number of tests we could administer, which was naturally rising as testing capacities expanded, not the number of Corona cases.
Deaths just seem way more reliable a measure.
However, the metric that is actually at least attempting to measure the underlying reality of interest, here, is not deaths, but cases, that's my only point. But I totally concede that in some cases deaths may be the less bad metric for cases, than confirmed cases.
0.9% end of April
0.3% end of May
Zero of the tested were infected end of August
End of September is being published next week
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhets...
It is that there is range of consequences from absolutely nothing to death through "sick for months" and through "maybe lifelong consequences but we dont know yet".
Even if 10 % of patients end up with permanently reduced lung function it's a lot because the disease is so infectious, given the right conditions, and it isn't going anywhere soon, at least not this winter.
Here's an overview: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6
We don't know enough about long-term problems affecting those who caught it, although one glance at Boris Johnson should get anyone worried.
Convalescence is protracted, and there are reports of lung damage and cardiomyopathies in a good number of recovered patients. We don't know yet for certain about neurological problems, but there are indications that covid might cause demyelinating disease, and until that's settled I'm not going to find out.
He always looked disheveled. Has it gotten worse?
Agreed on he longterm effects, I don't think we know all of the longterm impacts yet and as such I'd prefer to avoid it until a safe vaccine is available.
Isn't this primarily because it's mostly the younger demographic that was getting covid over the summer?
Why is this a relevant metric at all?? UK (where I am) has more confirmed cases than in March, yet comparatively negligible death rate. So the raw new cases metric is obviously completely useless and uninformative, there's clearly something else going on (better management of disease, more medical resources, less extremely vulnerable people, more testing, ...)