Martin S, You are both wrong and you are right. It is important to have some knowledge and understanding of the subject, in order to plan & respond. However, there must be many caveats to statistical data, which caveats are rarely or consistently stated by government ministers or indeed the media. It would often take a very long time to do so.
The first issue in this case is that no one knows how many individuals have actually contracted Covid-19. Testing would only partly inform. You would need to test everybody, then again every couple of weeks for those that didn’t show. Also countries are using differing methods of data collection – or intentionally corrupting the figures (China, Russia, Iran & Italy come to mind).
Additionally, as a society we are hooked on the absolute numbers of cases, deaths etc. These also must come with the second biggest caveat. We are not comparing ‘like with like’. All comparisons of Countries, Regions, States, Counties, Local Authorities, etc need to be compared from a common base – that is, how many cases/ deaths per standard number of the population for that entity.
In UK we are able to do this, because the data collection method is common and all regions/ NHS Trusts return at the same time. Thus, the situation for Local authorities in the UK & England, in particular is readily collectable and comparable.
If you select the correct data and ignore all the ‘number commentary’ we may well learn how this contagion is progressing.