Media Coverage of COVID -19

[AdamWW]

I didn't say bogus I said meaningless i.e. unreliable.

OK fair point.

But change "bogus" to "meaningless" and I stand by my comments.

I think the media can be good at misusing numbers to effect (e.g. being given a range of outcomes and focussing on the worst case as if that's all they were told) but here I see no evidence that they are misusing what they are being given.

 

[Richard Scott]

OK fair point.

But change "bogus" to "meaningless" and I stand by my comments.

I think the media can be good at misusing numbers to effect (e.g. being given a range of outcomes and focussing on the worst case as if that's all they were told) but here I see no evidence that they are misusing what they are being given.

I didn't say they were misusing it either. They're applying it truthfully but it's not telling a truthful story is it? Aiding them to get their scaremongering messages across.

 

[Bantamzen]

OK fair point.

But change "bogus" to "meaningless" and I stand by my comments.

I think the media can be good at misusing numbers to effect (e.g. being given a range of outcomes and focussing on the worst case as if that's all they were told) but here I see no evidence that they are misusing what they are being given.

Do you remember back in June when a spike occurred in Germany, briefly raising their 'R' rate to 2.8? And do you remember parts of the media leaping on it, claiming that this was raising fears of a second wave? I certainly do, just use your favoured search engine with a query of something like 'Germany R rate 2.8' to remind yourself should you need to.

 

[jtuk]

Do you remember back in June when a spike occurred in Germany, briefly raising their 'R' rate to 2.8? And do you remember parts of the media leaping on it, claiming that this was raising fears of a second wave? I certainly do, just use your favoured search engine with a query of something like 'Germany R rate 2.8' to remind yourself should you need to.

Probably doesn't remember that location being 0.4 days later

 

[Justin Smith]

The ongoing bias / censorship on Covid......
We're going down to see my folks soon which requires a long motorway journey and I was desperately trying to think of a way we could do that (with teh necessity of loo breaks and having to eat, there and back remember) without having to go into places where face masks are enforced. The short answer is it's almost impossible, so I admit I was in a bad mood anyway so imagine how much more angry I felt when R4's "Today" was doing vox pops from Preston. They had one person on complaining about people who weren't wearing face masks, and another stating she thought people should be wearing them, but nobody saying they hate the soddin' things and did not want to wear them. I'd say over half the people I know think like that, but you never hear it. This is what it's like to live in a country without a genuinely free media. This is another example of what Covid has done : a virus which kills less than 1 in 200 of those who actually catch it (and not everyone seems susceptible to it) and we even know who is most at risk from it anyway, it's the biggest over reaction in the history of the world......

 

[Bantamzen]

The ongoing bias / censorship on Covid......
We're going down to see my folks soon which requires a long motorway journey and I was desperately trying to think of a way we could do that (with teh necessity of loo breaks and having to eat, there and back remember) without having to go into places where face masks are enforced. The short answer is it's almost impossible, so I admit I was in a bad mood anyway so imagine how much more angry I felt when R4's "Today" was doing vox pops from Preston. They had one person on complaining about people who weren't wearing face masks, and another stating she thought people should be wearing them, but nobody saying they hate the soddin' things and did not want to wear them. I'd say over half the people I know think like that, but you never hear it. This is what it's like to live in a country without a genuinely free media. This is another example of what Covid has done : a virus which kills less than 1 in 200 of those who actually catch it (and not everyone seems susceptible to it) and we even know who is most at risk from it anyway, it's the biggest over reaction in the history of the world......

Interestingly, I overheard a conversation in my local Aldi yesterday with two people in the queue talking about how masks weren't so bad, and how they'd got used to them. However it seems they may not have been entirely truthful because on reaching the packing area one of them had already taken it off, and the other ripped it off the second they passed through the exit. I think this situation is a bit like the Thursday night pot banging for the NHS, people feel unable to criticise masks for fear of being told off by teacher.

 

[AdamWW]

Do you remember back in June when a spike occurred in Germany, briefly raising their 'R' rate to 2.8? And do you remember parts of the media leaping on it, claiming that this was raising fears of a second wave? I certainly do, just use your favoured search engine with a query of something like 'Germany R rate 2.8' to remind yourself should you need to.

Yes. I do. I was thinking about that after i posted last night.

I suspect this is because in Germany, unlike the UK, they have managed to get infection rates down to the point at which R really has become not so useful.

As I said before, the fact that the UK R value isn't jumping around like that suggests that we still have large enough numbers for the ranges quoted to be meaningful.

Probably doesn't remember that location being 0.4 days later

And if we start seeing R do that here, then we'll know that it should be treated with extreme caution. And no doubt so will SAGE and the ONS. But so far in the UK it has remained fairly stable within the quoted ranges. Even with regional values which are taken from smaller numbers.

As a reminder: I agree completely that with low enough infection values R becomes not useful. All the evidence suggests to me that this isn't the case in the UK and all I've seen on this forum is assertions that I'm wrong, but without anything to back it up.

 

[Djgr]

Yes. I do. I was thinking about that after i posted last night.

I suspect this is because in Germany, unlike the UK, they have managed to get infection rates down to the point at which R really has become not so useful.

As I said before, the fact that the UK R value isn't jumping around like that suggests that we still have large enough numbers for the ranges quoted to be meaningful.



And if we start seeing R do that here, then we'll know that it should be treated with extreme caution. And no doubt so will SAGE and the ONS. But so far in the UK it has remained fairly stable within the quoted ranges. Even with regional values which are taken from smaller numbers.

As a reminder: I agree completely that with low enough infection values R becomes not useful. All the evidence suggests to me that this isn't the case in the UK and all I've seen on this forum is assertions that I'm wrong, but without anything to back it up.

But daily infection rates in the UK are broadly in line with Germany.

 

[AdamWW]

No doubt the inevitable reviews will show whether this approach came from the scientists, or whether the dithering came closer to home, in other words at the political level.

You can get some idea from the SAGE papers.

From those it's fairly clear that SAGE was initially saying not to lockdown (on the grounds that there is no exit strategy, though it seems to me that they underplayed reasons why it might be the right policy in the short term - for example the idea of being able to set up an effective track and trace system was given only a cursory mention - they seemed to pretty much assume that when you end lockdown you are in exactly the same position as when you started it).

They then moved to advising that in order to avoid the health service from being overwhelmed we should bring in restrictions.

However, the lockdown we ended with was a lot more severe than anything that SAGE seemed to be actually recommending. Their advice was perhaps a bit more Swedish, you might say.

 

[AdamWW]

But daily infection rates in the UK are broadly in line with Germany.

OK at the time of that spike they were getting ~ 300-400 infections a day (so a bit lower than in the UK now, but yes I agree not a massive difference).

Having had a quick look, it seems that on a single day they tested a large number of people in one big outbreak, getting 1122 positive tests in one day. That will certainly skew the figures for a crude analysis of R.
If we have a similar incident, no doubt we'd see the same.

The ONS values from random surveys should not in any case suffer from this effect.

 

[adc82140]

The German R figure was also ultra local. I'd imagine you'd get the same swinging R if you applied it to Leicester, for example.

 

[jtuk]

The German R figure was also ultra local. I'd imagine you'd get the same swinging R if you applied it to Leicester, for example.

It'd fluctuate a bit, yeah, but at low levels who cares. As you'll see here:

The Leicester lockdown was not necessary

Every time there is an increase in coronavirus cases in a local area, a local lockdown now seems to be on the cards: Matt Hancock announced new restrictions last week affecting over 4 million people in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and just yesterday the Scottish government announced a local...

unherd.com

It seems, like everywhere else, it was likely going away on its own before Hancock started micromanaging

 

[AdamWW]

It'd fluctuate a bit, yeah, but at low levels who cares. As you'll see here:

The Leicester lockdown was not necessary

Every time there is an increase in coronavirus cases in a local area, a local lockdown now seems to be on the cards: Matt Hancock announced new restrictions last week affecting over 4 million people in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and just yesterday the Scottish government announced a local...

unherd.com

It seems, like everywhere else, it was likely going away on its own before Hancock started micromanaging

They say:

Of course the real concern with outbreaks is that really serious cases will result in hospitalisation or even death.

I thought the justification for trying to squash outbreaks as quickly as possible was so that they didn't spread and start numbers going up across the UK.

 

[jtuk]

They say:


I thought the justification for trying to squash outbreaks as quickly as possible was so that they didn't spread and start numbers going up across the UK.

Numbers of what?

 

[AdamWW]

Numbers of what?

Infections/hospitalisations/deaths...take your pick.

 

[talldave]

They say:


I thought the justification for trying to squash outbreaks as quickly as possible was so that they didn't spread and start numbers going up across the UK.

Is that an officially published justification or did you make it up?

 

[AdamWW]

Is that an officially published justification or did you make it up?

Well...

The current aim appears to be to prevent infections from rising across the UK, and lock lockdowns are supposed to be one of the tools for doing that.

Given that we don't prevent people from travelling throughout the UK, if local hotspots arise and are allowed to continue, it's not likely to be long before they are no longer local.

 

[talldave]

As far as I'm aware I don't think the government have bothered to tell us just what their objectives and justifications are.

I think it's known as mushroom management - "keep them in the dark and feed them s**t". Which is part of my motivation for ignoring all the stupid regulations and just getting on with it. I have no respect for a plan I'm not even worthy of being informed about.

 

[jtuk]

Infections/hospitalisations/deaths...take your pick.

It kind of makes a big difference what your strategy is, and the reasoning behind it. The only one that is a real concern is deaths, but tell me how any sort of measure reduces deaths ***of all kinds*** in the context of:

- Covid on its own has only killed 1,500 to 5,000 in the UK, all the rest have some sort of pre-existing comorbidity
- While it may have contributed to people with other issues, at this stage we know half of all care homes have had a Covid outbreak
- SAGE has come out and said that we're already at the stage where there's going to be more deaths as a result of the failed lockdown policy than actually from Covid (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...ly-caused-16-000-excess-deaths-study-12044923)

 

[Mcr Warrior]

In layman's terms, how exactly is the 'R' figure calculated...

So, anyhoo, anyone able to clarify this point?

 

[jtuk]

So, anyhoo, anyone able to clarify this point?

I would take a guess at (some value of some thing now)/(some value of some thing some time previously)

Choice of values and time difference selected dependent on the narrative you want to spread

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Thanks, but hinting that the 'R' number is some officially-sanctioned "back of a fag packet" calculation is not really helping!

 

[jtuk]

I don't know, but it can't be that much more involved

 

[Domh245]

Thanks, but hinting that the 'R' number is some officially-sanctioned "back of a fag packet" calculation is not really helping!

The academics doing the estimating of R (at least on the regional level) say:

We fit a transmission model (Birrell et al. 2016) to a number of data sources (see ‘Data Sources’), to reconstruct the number of new COVID-19 infections over time in different age groups and NHS regions, estimate a measure of ongoing transmission and predict the number of new COVID-19 deaths.

The linked paper has the following:

the, now regionally-dependent, (A × A) infection rate matrix is given by:

where M(tn) = {Ma,b(tn)} is a matrix of relative infective contact rates between individual of age groups a and b derived from POLYMOD data[31] and the contact parameters, mk, k = 1, …, 5 (as described elsewhere[14]). This approach allows estimation of region-specific reproduction numbers, R0,r (via the epidemic growth rates ψr, see SI Section 1.3.1 and Equation S6). The

denote the dominant eigenvalues of the next generation matrices

which has (a, b)th entry given by Nr,a × Ma,b(0) × dI, where Nr,a is the resident population size of people in age group a in region r.

Which does essentially boil down to taking the number of cases and deaths reported by various public health bodies, alongside data/estimates about what level of 'exposure' the virus is getting, to estimate numbers of current and future infections, and then just taking the ratio between the two to determine 'R'

The other groups doing the estimates of R appear to follow a similar procedure, if not exactly the same model.

 

[HSTEd]

It appears the Government is literally going for the "don't kill granny" line I proposed....

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'd say over half the people I know think like that, but you never hear it.

Literally the only place in my life where I have heard a view expressed in normal society against masks (i.e. that they are a bad thing and should not be worn) is here. Nowhere else.

The majority views in my circles are "it's not fun wearing one, but it's a sensible precaution/it's sensible to at least try it, so we'll put up with the discomfort", or "I'm exempt so it doesn't matter anyway".

I don't know of anyone who actually enjoys wearing one, but I don't know anyone who actively enjoys wearing a seatbelt or bicycle helmet, either - they are just safety precautions that are considered by those people to be a "necessary evil" or necessary and neutral.

Anyway "there's a thread for that" if you want to continue

It appears the Government is literally going for the "don't kill granny" line I proposed....

Preston City Council is. I was listening to LBC earlier on, though, and someone pointed out that it might have unintended consequences, e.g. a kid picks it up at school and their Nan catches it completely independently but they had seen their Nan in a distanced manner, and may be traumatised that they killed their Nan, so it probably needs to be a bit more cautious than that.

The one I thought was better was that advert done by the Government on social media during lockdown which showed 3 twentysomething "chavvy" lads stood around in a kids' park (for some reason). There was a caption on each - "Has coronavirus, doesn't know he has", "Lives with his Nan" and "Has severe asthma". (I know asthma is now not considered high-risk, but it was back then). They could have added a podgy one for good measure, but I thought it was really good, as in anyone old enough to "get it" it would form the "don't kill your Nan" thing, but a 7 year old wouldn't pick up on it in the same way.

 

[DB]

Literally the only place in my life where I have heard a view expressed in normal society against masks (i.e. that they are a bad thing and should not be worn) is here. Nowhere else.

The majority views in my circles are "it's not fun wearing one, but it's a sensible precaution/it's sensible to at least try it, so we'll put up with the discomfort", or "I'm exempt so it doesn't matter anyway".

You must have a pretty limited circle of acquantances, then - because it's certainly not just on here where people are against them.

As regards your second point, we are not 'trying it', are we? If we were there would be some clear measure to determine whether it's working. As it is, the measure was brought in with no clear aim, no means of measuring it and no real cut-off date. The claimed 'growing evidence' was also not forthcoming - you'd have thought that if the government actually had this then they would have published it for all to see...

And as for it not mattering if you are exempt, I can assure you that to many of us it does - I feel that I am so unwelcome on trains that I am unable to use them at all, and shop visits are limited to Tesco once a week at after 9pm on a midweek day, and no other shop visits at all.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

In layman's terms, how exactly is the 'R' figure calculated...

The linked paper has the following:

the, now regionally-dependent, (A × A) infection rate matrix is given by:

where M(tn) = {Ma,b(tn)} is a matrix of relative infective contact rates between individual of age groups a and b derived from POLYMOD data[31] and the contact parameters, mk, k = 1, …, 5 (as described elsewhere[14]). This approach allows estimation of region-specific reproduction numbers, R0,r (via the epidemic growth rates ψr, see SI Section 1.3.1 and Equation S6). The denote the dominant eigenvalues of the next generation matrices which has (a, b)th entry given by Nr,a × Ma,b(0) × dI, where Nr,a is the resident population size of people in age group a in region r.

That was the Layman's explanation?

 

[Freightmaster]

That was the Layman's explanation?

 

[Huntergreed]

More scaremongering from the mirror tonight:

UK 'heading back into lockdown next month', says government's ex-chief scientist
EXCLUSIVE: Britain could be heading for full lockdown again by September unless test and trace 'disaster' is sorted out according to a former top government advisor.


Boris Johnson has been warned Britain faces a second lockdown unless we have a proper test and trace system by September.

Former government chief scientific adviser David King says we are “nowhere near” the safe reopening of schools.


He is urging the Prime Minister to “get it right” in August – or face a second wave of coronavirus infections.

And he blasted the Government’s track and trace policy as “disastrous”. Sir David, 80, heads the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies shadowing the Prime Minister’s scientific team.


He said: “The Government has a month to deal with the level of infectivity as it stands now. Reopening schools should be a priority, but we believe we are nowhere near the point where it can be done safely.”

As far as I’m concerned, another national lockdown is not going to happen, and I’m absolutely beyond sick of the media using scare-mongering tactics to try and increase clicks and ad revenue.

I’m not saying there should be state-control over the media, as that is very dangerous, but there needs to be a review into how irresponsibly the media has behaved throughout this crisis.