My cousin died recently, double jabbed, no underlying health issues. I don't want another lockdown as much as you do but to call folk scaremongers when they are clearly not says to me that like millions more do is that you don't give a flying fck & you think this s#it has gone away. I hope covid does go away & it's run it's course but I doubt it the way some folk are carrying on.
I think the key thing missing from the reporting in the media (and fame seeking doctors) is that cases going up and down is exactly what we would expect to see. Remains to be seen the full impact of children returning to school following half term. Colder weather is also going to be upon us soon. I remember reading right back in March 2020 that eventually it's likely everyone would be exposed to Covid. Nothing seems to have changed on that front. Everything I have read suggests when a epidemic moves to endemic you would expect to see natural peaks and troughs that would reduce over time. We hope that further peaks continue to be lower in terms of hospitalisations and deaths with the advent of boosters and now hopefully antivirals. We also have to acknowledge that parts of the pressure now being built on the NHS are as a result of the lockdowns (rightly or wrongly) and have to balance further action accordingly.
So not actually a lie, then? Just a very specific set of data that could be interpreted differently, yeah? You're obviously entitled to your views, db3k, but need to be careful in your choice of supporting language.
Firstly let me say I think db3k posts some absolute nonsense quoting some very dubious people off Twitter and it often reads like the musings of child. However the 14x higher stuff seems like dangerous misinformation, a irresponsible use of the data. If we are charitable, and Amanda Pritchard just got her data wrong - massively and bizarrely wrong, then surely it is an extreme concern that someone who is clearly so lacking in basic understanding is in such a high position in the NHS?
But it wasn't wrong - that Twitter article says as much. Just two specific samples or snapshots a year apart rather than, unless I'm reading dreamy's wibblings incorrectly, the data for the whole of 2020 v 2021. Just taking the mid-point of August in each case - 15/08/20 saw 99 UK hospital admissions, 15/08/21 was 808. Not 14x by any means, but neither was it our learned friend's fantasy statistics. As I said, I couldn't really give a flying one for our resident village idiot's views, but he needs to spare us the dubious language.
So Pritchard, without contextualising it herself, made a statement that she knew was selective to the point of untruth, and wouldn't stand-up to scrutiny. Can you pass it off as, not a lie? Possibly, much like a conservative MP will pass off much of what the PM says as not a lie. It was however a really silly thing to say and I'm not sure what the motivation behind it was.
It wasn't a lie though. Not even close. Her 14x line might actually stack up looking at data for the whole of the two months involved. Did she actually say that admissions for 2021 were 14 times those of 2020, or that admissions in August 2021 were 14 times those of a year ago? The latter could actually be true.
Quite possibly it was true but the context of the interview given today when someone says ‘We have had 14 times the number of people in hospital with Covid than we saw this time last year' You don't necessarily assume on the 8th November that they would be talking about August to August comparisons. I'm glad it's been rightly challenged. It's essentially just a case of the waves have happened at different times in the two years so both comparisons are largely useless. It's abuse of data by both sides of the argument in my humble opinion. The truth remains we will have peaks and troughs over time as Covid becomes endemic.
Really? Maybe the media, but the medical profession? A profession that's lost many people to this horrible disease? Edit, An already overworked and underpaid profession that has had to work even longer hours because of COVID?
Well you just crack on then, yeah? Here's hoping dumboy3000 doesn't find himself or a loved one with a serious dose of Covid-19, eh readers?
But it is a lie because they shouldn't be mentioning August as that's not "this time last year" unless we've gone back in time.
