"London could be plunged into Tier 3"
"The R rate in London is currently 0.9 to 1.1, higher than the England-wide average of 0.8 to 1." - Telegraph

AN ABYSMAL MISUNDERSTANDING OF LOGIC & MATHS

Please read & r/t:

"most recent week of complete data, ending Dec 1, showed a rate of 164 cases per 100,000 in London, up from 159 the previous week."

Up by 3% in a week. Can we be sure it isn't noise? Even if real, at that rate the doubling time is over 5 months! In spring it was a few days.

What about the R rate?
"The R rate in London is currently 0.9 to 1.1, higher than the England-wide average of 0.8 to 1"

London's R is around 1. Just what you'd expect if the virus was at a low, fairly stable prevalence or was virtually gone & most 'cases' were false positives.

Comparing London's R to England-wide R, which includes areas where cases are falling, is a complete misunderstanding of concepts & is highly misleading. R is below 1 because cases are falling. When the virus is more or less gone, cases no longer fall, so R cannot stay below 1.

This does not mean that there won't be cases & some increases & declines: the article in fact includes a map showing differences between boroughs. But this is nothing like the spring.

Using 'R' in such a way is simply wrong.

Please read this thread for an explanation of why the objective keeping R below 1 long term is not only a mistake but is literally unachievable. https://twitter.com/RuminatorDan/status/1331940747952746497?s=20