I totally disagree. If there are a lower number of applicants then there COULD be a direct correlation to the quality that a medical school is willing to accept. For instance, a middle tier applicant is a able to get into an upper tier school (which might not have happened if their were more applicants), a lower tier applicant gets into a middle tier school. This leaves some schools with the option of either picking a sub-par applicant (if one is available) or choosing to let the spot(s) go unfilled for the year.
If the number of applicants has gone down (which I suspect it has, thus the reason for this post) but the MCAT and GPA numbers continue to go up on average, that would seem to me that there are not as many "good" picks for the schools. i.e. when the cream of the crop pick their "Harvards and Hopkins" the remaining applicants become very appealing to the rest of the schools.
Also, perhaps because of this discrepency many who were on the waitlist picked a better school than they otherwise would have chosen.
Just a thought.