It is a conundrum. For much of the past two months, many people have been convinced that mortality associated with Covid-19 would rise as the number of people testing positive with the disease increased.
But this has not happened so far. Why? A look at government data from England and Wales can provide some clues.
By late summer, the UK government had finally managed to produce a consistent definition of precisely what constitutes a positive case of coronavirus. It is defined as a person with at least one lab-confirmed positive Covid-19 test result (individuals who tested positive more than once are only counted once, on the date of their first positive test).
The first graph below shows cases by the day on which they were initially reported – represented by the blue line. Cases peaked at 5,451 on April 5, reached a low of 101 on June 10 and very recently have appeared to…