>>This is taken from the Twitter feed of Vincent Rajkumar @VincentRK - Professor, Mayo Clinic; Editor, Blood Cancer Journal; Oncologist; Health Costs;

Interesting. FWIW the Israelis predicted this sort of infection surge months ago matching what was seen in many places at the time, but then there were additional waves.

Meanwhile epidemiologists say we should focus on "excess mortality" meaning the change in death rate no matter the cause of death, before vs during COVID. They say that just publishing COVID stats is frightening and doesn't allow people to understand relative risk, or whether the cure might be worse than the disease. So you need to look for changed mortality to see whether COVID is killing swathes of additional people rather than just giving a different cause of death, or whether there's a big increase or decrease in deaths associated with society's response. As an example, motor vehicle mortality is reduced +++ when people are locked down at home, flu rates are way down for the same reason, while many reviewers say untreated diseases and isolation suicides are well up. Certainly society is competent to consider "out of the frying pan into the fire" equations on responses to COVID, especially if there's also evidence that infection rates are reducing.