[michaelt]

> For some reason you're completely ignoring the positive test results

For a good reason.

By almost all the statistics, the second wave hasn't been as bad as the first. Comparing peaks, measures like "Deaths within 28 days of positive test" (942 vs 486) and "Weekly deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate" (9,495 vs 3,371) and "Patients in hospital" (19,518 vs 16,421) and "Patients in mechanical ventilation beds" (3,252 vs 1,461) say the second peak was about half the height of the first one.

On the other hand, "Cases by date reported" peaked at 5,113 in the first lockdown and 25,329 in the second lockdown - making the second wave 5x higher than the first. Presumably due to a lack of test capacity.

If I'd chosen the one metric which makes the second wave look 5x the first instead of 0.5x, that'd be a pretty deceptive way of describing the results of government policy (although technically accurate).