As one of the most reliable Covid commentators on Twitter noted this morning:
The story actually comes from iNews.
The message is that:
A senior Whitehall source familiar with the plans told i: “The Prime Minister has pencilled in Easter as the latest date by which the daily Covid statistics will be published in their current form. In an ideal situation he will bring an end to them sooner if the current downward trend in deaths continues.”
For the record, there is no downward trend:
Deaths have plateaued with a surprising drop yesterday. More than 1,500 people a week are dying.
iNews notes:
“Ending the daily Covid death toll is part of the Prime Minister's strategy of living with Covid,” added the Whitehall source. “It is hoped that taking the focus away from the Covid figures will also help people move on with their lives.”
Those dying cannot live with Covid. They have been denied the chance to do so. The prime minister wants to remove the data that shows this was at his choice.
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It seems like the daily breakdown will be available weekly as before with previous respiratory infections. These would be in the weekly SARI surveillance reports to weekly reports from the ONS of deaths and excess deaths.
Those do not show the UK’s pandemic management in a good light.
Based on data such as this
https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1488262399710928898/photo/1
the change could be justified. And there must be a cost in staff time in providing the current daily data.
There will be the same cost in assembling the data
Typical of this (so-called) govt. Instead of actually doing something about it, they are trying to pull a con trick – ‘No data reported, so no deaths. Nothing to see here, move on.’
Sadly, some will fall for it.
Craig
Well, there’s nothing to add to that when it’s put that way.
These people seem to have been sacrificed for a view about how society should be based on the artificial limits imposed on Government by basically what are a bunch of idiots.
Macho posturing is the name of the game here.
“Opened up the economy faster than any other European country”.
‘No need for masks, celebrate our freedom”.
‘We are not dragging our heels over Ukraine ( implied like the French and Germans). If the Russians put one toe cap over the line, we will hit them with sanctions.’ And ‘We might send a Brigade.”
Sadly the people most exposed to ‘opening up early’ are those who cant work remotely and have to mix with other people. Plus those in over crowded or poorly heated homes.
The latest research ( so the Higher Authority i.e. my wife , tells me) says that the virus will survive for up to ten days in the throat, thus making wearing masks a sensible measure.
A Brigade is about 3,000 and the Russians can deploy at least 100,000. If they did invade, a British brigade would be a sacrificial offering. We would have hundreds of casualties and possibly a thousand soldiers held prisoner. Unless we did a fast retreat. Ukraine is a huge country and moving forces up to confront the Russians, even if not under attack, would take weeks, if not months. NATO is not configured for an offensive land campaign even if there was popular support for it. Our Generals know it and so do the Russians. We have to resort to diplomacy.
Macho posturing was made an art form by Mussolini and modern quasi-Fascists seem to wish to emulate him.
I have to confess I have – inadvertently – misinformed you.
I was sure that I had read Johnson had threatened to send a Brigade to Ukraine. I saw no other mention of it so checked it out – to find no mention of it. It might have been Biden’s movement of two thousand troops to Europe.
I have admonished myself. I contemplated finding a Boris speech on the Web and forcing myself to watch it but I decided that was excessively cruel.
Three Hail Mary’s should do 🙂
One of the breakdowns i would like to see from ONS is the breakdown of deaths by *income decile*. We had this pre-pandemic showing that lowest 10% women had ‘lost’ a year of ‘life expectancy while the top 10% of women had gained a year during the ‘Austerity’ years. Putting people in areas of deprivation or wealth (as has been the way over the pandemic) is far cruder and undoubtedly obscures the reality.