This tweet is pretty important:
An enlarged version of that chart can be found here.
If a consistent basis for reporting Covid-19 deaths had been applied to yesterday's data i.e. the deaths had been reported as they had been for weeks, then there would have been a significant upturn in Covid-19 deaths reported yesterday.
Instead, the basis for reporting was changed and the deaths were backdated and past data was restated.
The result was a false representation of declining deaths
When the government thinks it has to lie we need to worry.
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The graph is pretty poor. Obviously the person preparing it had few skills in that kind of work. Does everyone use Excel or something like that. As a physicist I used SigmaPlot which enabled the production of quality graphics. The enlarged version of the graph looks no different to me even when zoomed. Rant over.
Do you think the data (mis)representation is deliberate or just a result of incompetence? It’s pretty clear to be that all the ministers on display would be unemployed if they hadn’t had expensive educations. They got to where they are by privilege rather than ability. When people used to claim Johnson was clever because of his buffoonery on ‘Have I got news for you’ I was unconvinced. Now if you want witty and clever, take the ferry from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich – the guy on the boat giving a running commentary is witty and clever and he would probably make a better PM too.
Pardon me for being tangential but you have touched upon two of my pet theories:
1. HIGNFY is responsible for Boris Johnson being PM and for Brexit via promoting Nigel Farage. The show was greatly responsible for masking those personalities’ egregious politics and contempt for their fellow people by inflating the loveable-rogue-cum-raconteur-you’d-love-to-have-a-pint-with. I’m not suggesting that the show was consciously doing that, heaven forfend, but it was an unconscious process.
2. One way to improve governance of the country would be to replace all MPs and lords with a totally random selection from among the population. How bad could it be? It would be like jury duty except for four years. The ruling class have proven themselves to be a malicious force, that’s now impossible to ignore since they seem to be actively trying to make the death rate from Sars Cov2 as bad as possible. Would a random selection from among the general public result in such horrific governance? I would be willing to bet it couldn’t be as bad.
Meanwhile, I follow the Worldometer site for my Covid stats not sure how reliable that is. Yesterday it recorded 556 deaths in the UK (from memory) which does not sound very good.
My fears is few selected would last more than a week or two….
HIGNFY? And Michael Gove got there through that awful BBC Moral Maze programme. Better called the Moral High-Speed Railway for all the reflection the panellist thought necessary or their ability to modify their moral/intellectual destination. Aided of course for Gove by the Murdoch press.
Government by random selection or lot – sortition? They did it in ancient Athens and also to some extent in medieval and early modern Italy. The Greeks regarded such a form of government as the essential characteristic of democracy (although of course their idea of who constituted the demos was a little restricted). Government by the few, including as selected in elections, they regarded as oligarchy, the opposite of democracy. Citizens could exclude themselves from the pool. As you say, there are parallels with jury service- juries are selected by sortition.
Might appeal to Boris, with his well-known penchant for cod classicism – or to Dominic Cummings, the saviour of the people from the privileged few?
Shocking and disgraceful.
This race back to normality is heading for the catch points……………………………..
Of course it is lying, because honesty was politically unpalatable. It comes from the same drawer as including COVID tests sent out (and tests done for research purposes, not diagnosis) as tests “done” to meet a political target, even if the number of people actually tested for diagnostic reasons falls. Or suppressing the (no doubt awful) track and trace numbers until they can be massaged into something that does not look too embarrassing. Or claiming that international comparisons are not possible, because it looks bad now, when they were doing it themselves for weeks while it flattered them. The scientists invoked with this political masquerade should be either speaking out against it or hanging their heads with shame.
I meant “involved” not “invoked”. People like Dr Deborah Birx (we have our own in the UK, whose careers depend on political favour) who stand aside and say nothing, while politicians spout dangerous nonsense.
Well, this is slightly encouraging. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52889711
Apparently the scientists resisted the government’s wish to reduce the COVID alert from level 4 (“transmission is high or rising exponentially -> social distancing continues”) to level 3 (“virus is in general circulation -> gradual relaxing of restrictions”).
But the politicians went ahead with their pre-announced relaxation of the restrictions anyway, inventing an intermediate stage of “transitioning to level 3”. I.e. currently high, but we wish and hope it won’t be next week, even as we take steps to make that transmission more likely. The attractively-presented bullshit might work on the voters, but the virus will just quietly and insidiously do its own thing. We’ll see what’s what in about two or three week’s time.
We will
Those worrying might be proved wrong
Johnson will laugh this way to 2024
Or not, as the case may be….
And now the UK Statistics Authority has criticised the government’s presentation of its testing figures, as they appeared to be aimed at showing “the largest possible number of tests, even at the expense of understanding” and also “far from complete”. Or, to put it another way, the numbers have been twisted for political reasons. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52889103 Radio 4’s More or Less has nailed them repeatedly on this in recent weeks.
The politicians celebrate “capacity” to do a certain number of tests each day, but nowhere near that number is ever actually done. I may have the capacity to become an Olympic medal winner, but for some reason my trophy cabinet is empty.
For more than a week much of this data has been said to be ‘unavailable’
For that read ‘being fiddled’
And now Channel 4 are reporting leaked track and trace numbers. https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-covid-test-and-trace-data-in-england-leaked-to-channel-4-news
In the first week, 4,456 cases entered the system. We know that is a significant underestimate. Contact details sought from 1,831 (self-reported, or contacted by the team – it will be interesting to know the break-down: I suspect the great majority of the information is self-reported). But either way, the contacts of about 60% of people with positive tests are not known.
The ones that did give details reported 4,634 contacts, and 1,749 of them have been contacted. So nearly 2/3 not followed up.
In the first week, the 25,000 people employed have contacted around 15% of the contacts of the known positives cases.
World beating.
Or not……
We generally have such respect for the accuracy and impartiality of numbers (the mystique of maths) that they are undoubtedly the most effective tool for a government to use when lying to the populus. The spurious air of precision always works to bamboozle. Have you noticed the daily figures are given as exact numbers? This gives a totally false impression of precision of a figure which may (by some reckonings ) be half the actual total.
You can fool most of the people most of the time if you say it in numbers.
Daily Mail: ‘One Metre Is Enough’.
Daily Telegraph: ‘Quarantine plan under review as MPs revolt’
Daily Express: ‘We’re Winning Battle Against COVID-19’
All the usual Government go-to media propaganda outlets are lining up behind a Government that is rapidly unpicking the lockdown, sending out confusing messages to muddy the water, and allowing the British public’s understandable frustration and instinctive self-interest to better their rational judgement. Ironically, Johnson and Cummings are now exploiting the public’s anger at Cummings which has undermined Government credibility, to serve the Government’s purpose to end the lockdown rapidly: and for the natural phenomenon of entropy to do the rest.
Entropy (see second law of thermodynamics) might be held off if the underlying system was reversible, but I suspect the Government is detemined not to reverse the new freedom, whatever the statistics show, and not to wobble this time. Political self-preservation now means the Government has to claim the coronavirus threat is beaten and the the problem is actually solved: no matter what. They intend to see the original 12th March ‘strategy’ (ahem!) through to the bitter end this time.
In short, I think the British government has given up on COVID-19, and now it is the economy, business as usual (they can dream) and we just have to live with the problem. In short, the Conservatives have given up on the fight, and intend simply to win this by controlling the message, managing the politics, playing for time and public forgetfulness before a Cumming-infused election campaign is required; and write the history: in other words, what they always try to do to bury their blunders.
I’m always suspicious of statistics. I did maths at uni (back in the 70s) and have spent almost all of my working life in or around the accounting business so I have some idea of how they can be used. The only figures that might have meaning are those for excess deaths and even those will need considerable hindsight. If, a year from now, someone dies from cancer because Covid meant they could not get the diagnosis and/or treatment they needed during April and May this year, is that a Covid related death? It won’t be treated as such of course but it should be.
If I understood properly, while half listening, the More or Less radio broadcast on BBC radio 4 this morning justified not adding past deaths to the current day’s figures. But they could have been more open and transparent by mentioning that previous figures had been updated and uprated.
You are right: they said the revised figures included an additional source of COVID deaths, and rather than the data jumping up on the day when that new source was included, it made more sense to restate the historic figures. Ideally, you would want a graph showing the sources of data separately and overlaid like strata of rocks. It is still significantly lower than the ONS excess deaths numbers.
In my previous post, please read “The government” for “they”