Morning Dags.
It is difficult to argue with you because we are coming at this from entirely different directions.
My reading of the situation is that covid is no longer a threat. It is making a few people quite sick and there are the occasional deaths but in public health terms, the numbers are tiny. The government know this so have moved on to using 'cases' as the new metric.
The 'case' numbers are designed to be as high as possible, false positives are not accounted for and the number of 'repetitions' (effectively the sensitivity) performed by the testing is way higher than recommended. In effect, it will show you as a positive if you have had any corona type infection, even a light summer cold, in the last umpteen months.
In one respect, the tests are perfect, the more people that you test, the more 'cases' you find. The number of 'cases' are usually given as a total number, which increases as the number of tests are performed. Self fulfilling prophecy.
I find it hard to discuss these matters in some ways, the statistical approach is dry and callous because some people are actually going to die of covid, that is awful for all concerned and saying that the numbers are tiny is no help if it is your friend or relative that is sick.