A ghostly presence stirs at the mention of his name…
I actually doubt either set of Covid figures is being actively manipulated – a mixture of Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors applies but the situation is “interesting”.
In the UK we appear to have peaked and cases are falling.
On the face of it this seems odd – after all, wasn’t everyone (me included) predicting 100,000 cases a day?
Well, yes.
Egg on face time?
No – you have to go on the data that is available – anything else is speculation and up to a few weeks ago cases were, indeed rising rapidly so caution was certainly appropriate.
There are several factors:
There is the “pingdemic” and the headlines surrounding the negative effects of test and trace in causing a lot of people to be “pinged” and having to isolate. So much so that large numbers of professions have been identified where employers can request daily lateral flows instead of employees having to self-isolate. Of course this is a function of the number of positive cases but the tabloids in particular don’t seem to have focussed on this. There is “https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57779371”>some evidence that people are deleting the app which is going to result in fewer contacts being identified and fewer people subsequently getting tested.
There is also the fact that fewer tests are being done (sorry, did have a link to some figures but mislaid) – the government counts tests sent out but the number being processed by the labs is down much more.
There are also a couple of drivers which have ended – the Euros being one of them Covid: Watching Euros may be behind rise in infections in men – BBC News.
Finally the kids are off school and it is warm and sunny (some of the time) – both factors are likely to lower case numbers. Covid is a respiratory virus and these are naturally less prevalent in the summer when people are more likely to be interacting outside in fresh air, than inside in stuffy, poorly ventilated spaces which allow much more viral transmission.
If the case numbers are unreliable (mainly for the first two reasons above) what can we look at to determine the real trend? – well, hospital admissions has always been a good indicator and these look to be falling as well.
So the fall in cases looks “real”. Though a note of caution is the ONS survey data – this is random sampling of the population whether symptomatic or not so likely to be much more accurate. This is still showing a rise but it is somewhat delayed compared to the case data so might start to reflect the downturn in a week or so.
What is especially interesting about these figures is the estimation that 90% of the population have antibodies – that’s real “herd immunity” levels so the final fact or in the UK is that the virus just could be starting to run out of people to infect.
For France, the first question I’d as is “are the rates going up”?
In fact the answer seems to be “no, not any longer”, at least for large parts of France.
Source – the redoubtable Guillaume Rozier https://twitter.com/GuillaumeRozier
Over large swathes of France the rate has also peaked in the last week or so.
Some factors are probably shared – especially the fact that kids are off school.
My gut feeling at the moment is that we will see steady or falling numbers through August and early September, probably in both countries, but there is a risk that once the kids are back at school and exchanging not just stories about their summer hols but virus as well that cases could rise again. Slightly cynically I have decided to take advantage and scheduled another trip over for just after the kids have gone back but before the numbers are likely to have caught up 
However vaccination is going well – especially in France with Macron’s incentives, less so in the UK but even here 30k a day is a million a month, and there is talk of a 3rd booster vaccination for the over 50’s and vulnerable given that there is evidence immunity fades a bit after 6 months (eg see UK scientists back Covid boosters as study finds post-jab falls in antibodies | Vaccines and immunisation | The Guardian).
The good news is that a booster dose may be relatively more effective against variants, including Beta (see this report in the Independent – Moderna vaccine booster may offer protection against Covid variants, early study suggests).
I’ll be queueing up for mine (along with the ‘flu jab), whatever Helen says (sorry Helen)
Addendum:
On deaths I suspect MarkH is right – Chris Giles (https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_) from the FT ran a series of estimates for a long time when it was obvious from ONS data that the excess deaths were higher than the official reports but he stopped when the two sets of figures aligned more closely.
I believe we may never know the true number of excess deaths.
The online Ouija board has been returned to the data cabinet… 