Do COVID Cases Translate Into Deaths?

Using the cross correlation function to avoid nonsense

This may sound like a daft question to ask at this stage because we’ve seen COVID cases rise and fall and COVID certified deaths rise and fall. Given the tortuous and ever-changing definitions adopted by the various authorities surely nobody can deny that there is a strong correlation between daily counts of COVID cases and daily counts of COVID deaths at the national level: to query this a person must be mad!

A fanfare offstage. John Dee enters from stage left.

DEE: My name, good subscribers to my letters, is John Dee though this be of no consequence; for I shall wager that I am stark raving mad; thrice mad, in fact!

John Dee exits stage right. A cockerel is heard.

In a quaint English public house in rural England several years ago a well-dressed man sporting a fine silk scarf was blocking the entrance to the bar, ignoring all polite attempts to allow me to pass to get to my beer. Polite throat clearing done I barged through. That man was Nicholas Cage, and I’d like to start by having su…