Generic Virus Thread

[sharkyvilla]

The hospital deaths in England seem to be down to 300 or below per day now, it looks like it's reducing by about 150 per week so hopefully in a couple of weeks there will just be a handful.

[markavfc40]

I don't think I have ever heard as much crap spouted from one mans mouth as I heard from Johnson today. Apparently we have succeeded in the most important task we set ourselves which was to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world. I mean wtf. Shouldn't other countries be saying they have avoided the tragedy that has engulfed the UK.

The government seem to see the fact that the NHS hasn't become overwhelmed as a success. The only reason it hasn't become overwhelmed is because they cancelled so many operations and screening services to leave capacity to cope with covid 19 cases. Measures which will also eventually lead to thousands of lives lost.

[VILLAMARV]

32 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I don’t understand what the problem is here, is anything he is saying inaccurate or a lie? Surely we need a diversity of angles, provided they are accurate and sourced? Surely it doesn’t help anything to only read articles which support our preconceptions?

Edit: Was it a completely different article before with erroneous information which has now been changed?

It's not a question of accuracy, it's about ethics. What are you trying to show?

(As everyone keeps saying regarding the would have died anyway stuff, everyone dies anyway, what is your point)

The first graph, I have issues with, apart from the fact that the line plotted against is rather linear (like deaths aren't) it's point is like saying if I go outside in the rain and hold a glass out to collect the rain, and compare it to all the rain in the year, it hasn't rained much here in wales.

It's a pointless statistic that means little. 

'There are three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics'

People like Mr Triggle give people ammunition to point at stats and say stuff like, you can prove anything with stats, they don't mean anything.

As implied in the op, the lawyers probably had a word (about the changed headline) and said over egging is not a phrase the BBC should be employing in such a fashion.

Or to quote from the big lebowski

"you're not wrong, you're just an asshole" 

(Not you LL it's a good question)

 

[DCJonah]

1 minute ago, markavfc40 said:

I don't think I have ever heard as much crap spouted from one mans mouth as I heard from Johnson today. Apparently we have succeeded in the most important task we set ourselves which was to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world. I mean wtf. Shouldn't other countries be saying they have avoided the tragedy that has engulfed the UK.

The government seem to see the fact that the NHS hasn't become overwhelmed as a success. The only reason it hasn't become overwhelmed is because they cancelled so many operations and screening services to leave capacity to cope with covid 19 cases. Measures which will also eventually lead to thousands of lives lost.

Honestly I'm so wound up reading what he said. 

Why the **** isn't he being pulled up on it?

[HanoiVillan]

46 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I don’t understand what the problem is here, is anything he is saying inaccurate or a lie? Surely we need a diversity of angles, provided they are accurate and sourced? Surely it doesn’t help anything to only read articles which support our preconceptions?

Edit: Was it a completely different article before with erroneous information which has now been changed?

In terms of your edit, basically yes. My post perhaps wasn't very clear. The piece linked under the bad data viz is okay (apart from said data viz). The second two screenshots refer to a previous article that was subsequently replaced, at the same URL, by a different article that put a different slant on the data.

I don't really care that Triggle was proven too optimistic by events, everyone calls things wrong sometimes. But it would be much better form to write an updated article and link to it from the old piece rather than deleting it. Even better would be to write a reflective piece on 'what I got right and what I got wrong' which would suggest he'd actually really learned from the experience. Of course, it may very well have been his editor's decision to overwrite the old piece, not his, but if anything that's even more worrying. I really don't think the national broadcaster, which is the country's most trusted news source, should be memory-holing writing like that.

This was the original, overwritten article: https://web.archive.org/web/20200321023151/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

This is the new article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

 

[Stevo985]

49 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Did Laura Kuenssberg ask her usual question?

I’m worried one day she’ll ask something different and I’ll have missed it.

She was one of these

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

The government have been consistently clear that the R number has to remain below 1 to ease the lockdown. 
 

most of the reporters today using their questions to ask what a manageable R number is. 
 

LESS THAN 1! ARE YOU EVEN **** LISTENING?!

 

[bickster]

9 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I don't think I have ever heard as much crap spouted from one mans mouth as I heard from Johnson today. Apparently we have succeeded in the most important task we set ourselves which was to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world. I mean wtf. Shouldn't other countries be saying they have avoided the tragedy that has engulfed the UK.

The government seem to see the fact that the NHS hasn't become overwhelmed as a success. The only reason it hasn't become overwhelmed is because they cancelled so many operations and screening services to leave capacity to cope with covid 19 cases. Measures which will also eventually lead to thousands of lives lost.

And creating the care home death camp network

[Stevo985]

6 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Honestly I'm so wound up reading what he said. 

Why the **** isn't he being pulled up on it?

Yeah it was more very weird wording. Saying we’d avoided the tragedy that the rest of the world has seen. Clearly trying to make us look like the best. 
 

Again the exact context was that We hadn’t overwhelmed the NHS and that we’d had enough ICU beds and ventilators. Which is true, but it made it sound very much like we’ve avoided any tragedy. Which is of course bollocks. 
 

I know that international comparisons aren’t totally valid and we’ll have to retrospectively look at things when this is all over and data is more robust. But I just can’t look at that chart and see us with the worst death toll in Europe and almost the world and accept this “we’ve done everything right we are the best” narrative

[Stevo985]

22 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

Doesn’t make any **** sense anyway. Why adjust all of the lines to match in that case? Why not just add them to the graph from 2000 deaths and annotate it?

It’s bollocks. 
 

One thing I can say about them is they do tend to change that graph once people point out problems with it so there’s a chance they’ll put it back to normal

Worth noting that they did indeed change the graph back to how it was before, so I was right. One small thing you can give them credit for. 

[LondonLax]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

In terms of your edit, basically yes. My post perhaps wasn't very clear. The piece linked under the bad data viz is okay (apart from said data viz). The second two screenshots refer to a previous article that was subsequently replaced, at the same URL, by a different article that put a different slant on the data.

I don't really care that Triggle was proven too optimistic by events, everyone calls things wrong sometimes. But it would be much better form to write an updated article and link to it from the old piece rather than deleting it. Even better would be to write a reflective piece on 'what I got right and what I got wrong' which would suggest he'd actually really learned from the experience. Of course, it may very well have been his editor's decision to overwrite the old piece, not his, but if anything that's even more worrying. I really don't think the national broadcaster, which is the country's most trusted news source, should be memory-holing writing like that.

This was the original, overwritten article: https://web.archive.org/web/20200321023151/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

This is the new article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

 

I agree with your premise that you should let your original words stand and address them as necessary. On the other hand I have now read through the original article and am not sure what there is in there that is particularly controversial. It just asks some questions around the concept of ‘excess deaths‘ and acknowledges that we don’t know the answers yet. I assume the editor decided the follow up was a case of filling in some more information on the original article and hence could be put through as an update? 

[snowychap]

16 minutes ago, bickster said:

the care home death camp network

Who are currently topping the 'Rock & Metal' chart, I believe.

[VILLAMARV]

7 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

On the other hand I have now read through the original article and am not sure what there is in there that is particularly controversial. It just asks some questions around the concept of ‘excess deaths‘ and acknowledges that we don’t know the answers yet. 

From that article:

Quote

Would these people be dying anyway?

The figures for coronavirus are eye-watering. But what is not clear - because the modellers did not map this - is to what extent the deaths would have happened without coronavirus.

Given that the old and frail are the most vulnerable, would these people be dying anyway?

Every year more than 500,000 people die in England and Wales: factor in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the figure tops 600,000.

The coronavirus deaths will not be on top of this. Many would be within this "normal" number of expected deaths. In short, they would have died anyway.

I helped pay for that, as did all of us paying the license fee. 'In short' can stay on Twitter thanks. How is this even newsworthy ffs?

Who cares about the old people?

Me. I care about the old people and the way they are spoken about. 

As I said in a previous post about the same journalist some pages back it's clumsy wording at best.

(At worst it's pro government reductionist propaganda)

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Who are currently topping the 'Rock & Metal' chart, I believe.

Death Metal, if you wanted to pick a sub-genre

[snowychap]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Death Metal, if you wanted to pick a sub-genre

I wrote that originally but I didn't like the 'death ... death' repetition from quote to my post.

Still, I suppose if any thread is one where multiple deaths are in keeping then it's this one.

[LondonLax]

18 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

From that article:

I helped pay for that, as did all of us paying the license fee. 'In short' can stay on Twitter thanks. How is this even newsworthy ffs?

Who cares about the old people?

Me. I care about the old people and the way they are spoken about. 

As I said in a previous post about the same journalist some pages back it's clumsy wording at best.

(At worst it's pro government reductionist propaganda) 

It’s explaining the concept of ‘excess deaths’ which is the way all pandemics are measured. To see how deadly a virus is you don’t look at the number of people who have died, you look at how many more people have died than usual. Those ‘extra’ deaths are referred to as ‘excess deaths’. 

I can see what you are saying regarding the wording and it is clumsy. The final sentence quoted can be interpreted in a very dark way, but I took it to mean that a proportion of the quoted number of virus deaths would likely overlap with the usual 500,000 annual deaths on a venn diagram, not saying that all of the Covid deaths would have just died at some point anyway so no big deal. I do suspect that a number of people would not have considered the concept of this overlap and instead considered all the reported deaths from the virus to be in addition to the usual mortality rate, hence the need for these sorts of questions to be asked by journalists.   

Edited April 30, 2020 by LondonLax

[VILLAMARV]

2 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

It’s explaining the concept of ‘excess deaths’ which is the way all pandemics are measured. To see how deadly a virus is you don’t look at the number of people who have died, you look at how many more people have died than usual. Those ‘extra’ deaths are referred to as ‘excess deaths’. 

I can see what you are saying regarding the wording and it is clumsy. The final sentence quote can be interpreted in a very dark way, but I took it to mean that a proportion of the quoted number of virus deaths would likely overlap with the usual 500,000 annual deaths on a venn diagram, not saying that all of the Covid deaths would have just died at some point anyway so no big deal. I do suspect that a number of people would not have considered the concept of this overlap and instead considered all the reported deaths from the virus to be in addition to the usual mortality rate, hence the need for these sorts of questions to be asked by journalists.   

And yet you, (presumably not a paid for by me journalist) managed to make this point using proper terminology...

As I said above, not an issue of accuracy, but one of ethics. 

I wish I wasn't on my tablet thingy as I can't mock up the Venn diagram I want to to illustrate my point. 

It resembles an 8 ball in pool.

Big outer circle 'at risk of death - 7.8billion people'

smaller circle inside of that 'at risk of covid 19 death - x people'

I understand excess deaths and the overlap you describe and so does everyone else on here that has (at length) made the same point. 

Sometimes semantics is important.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

There is no two ways about it England is suffering more than anywhere else in Europe (and presumably the world) when it comes to excess deaths in the last month. Shockingly enough for Ireland despite having an horrific number of Covid-19 deaths in the official figures have not had any excess deaths up until now but we have been publishing almost all deaths in our figures.

[PaulC]

I think we are all responsible not just the govt. They should have acted quicker but we are a far less obedient nation than the people of say South Korea who have virtually eliminated it now. 

[chrisp65]

5 minutes ago, PaulC said:

I think we are all responsible not just the govt. They should have acted quicker but we are a far less obedient nation than the people of say South Korea who have virtually eliminated it now. 

**** obedient.

But I am happy to co-operate.

[markavfc40]

15 minutes ago, PaulC said:

I think we are all responsible not just the govt. They should have acted quicker but we are a far less obedient nation than the people of say South Korea who have virtually eliminated it now. 

99% of us have been as obedient (or co-operative as @chrisp65 rightly put it) as we have been asked to be. This has always been a soft lock down in comparison to a lot of countries. 

In fairness the odd knob head flouting lock down rules to hold a house party or sunbathe on the beach dwindles into total insignificance in comparison to the government allowing, in fact actively encouraging,  250,000 people to attend Cheltenham at the same time as Northern Italy was locking down

The government went into this ill prepared. That same government was then led by a PM who took pretty much the whole of February off and when he re emerged in March gave it the big un about shaking the hands of coronavirus patients. The government then locked down too late and has been playing catch up ever since. 

Sorry I am not having this diverting blame to the public. This Government have blood on their hands but I am sure enough people, and enough of the media, will turn a blind eye whilst they frantically try to wipe it off or rub it onto someone else. In fact it seems some are already helping them to do so.