Coronavirus Briefing with Whitty and Vallance (21/09)

[ainsworth74]

No they are not. I don't know where the myth of cases doubling every seven days came from, but it is obviously completely false if you actually look at the figures.

Consider yesterday's figure compared to the previous two Sundays. Two weeks ago it was 2,988. If it really were doubling every seven days then one week ago it would have been 5,976 and yesterday it would have been 11,752. In reality it was only 3,300 a week ago and 3,899 yesterday, which is nowhere near.

Apologies I may have misheard the briefing (I wasn't giving it my full attention). In any event I felt that that slide was perfectly well caveated by what they said and indeed on the slide itself. The title itself was "If doubling occurred every seven days what would it look like?" and at the peak of the table "EXAMPLE SCENARIO" and then a footnote "Example scenario after 15 September assumes for the purposes of illustration only a seven day doubling time between 15 September and 13 October" (all emphasis as per original).

It was very explicitly not a prediction (I'm not able to listen back but I'm sure Vallance said that) but a scenario. Of course I'm sure that won't stop people running off and treating it as such.

 

[MalaiseForever]

Yes, they explicitly said it was NOT A PREDICTION, merely what could happen it 7 day doubling continued. Which is what the ONS survey shows is happening.

 

[Mike395]

I thought the briefing was very well done - presented the facts without much in the way of Government spin, and reinforcing the obvious precautions without pre-empting decisions that the Government might take on further restrictions. I did also notice that Whitty acknowledged the balancing act between keeping society working and controlling the virus, perhaps representing an acknowledgement that a full lockdown at this point is unrealistic.

Unfortunately Beth Rigby at Sky News (who, to be fair, I wouldn't normally choose to watch - it just so happened that it was their stream I was watching the briefing on and I'd just left it running afterwards) immediately jumped on the 'doubling every seven days' in her analyis afterwards with none of the caveats Vallance mentioned being discussed

 

[Howardh]

Something I'm not understanding here, and I believe the conference was disgusting scare mongering.

Tests:

We test 20k people daily in April with no widespread community testing and positives come back as 3-4k per day.
Fast forward to today we do 250k tests a day, with widespread community testing, and we get 3-4k per day positive.


Are the scientists using the same tosh modelling that predicted 500k deaths in the spring?

Whitty and Vallance are like slippery car salesmen, except they're slippery vaccine salesmen.

Edit:
they also showed a graph from Spain and France with a MASSIVE upward line.. And at the side the numbers say 0.2 deaths a day per 100,000 population.

Last part, noticed that myself. Puts doubt on anything else they say if they manipulate or distort a graph like that.

 

[MikeWM]

Unfortunately Beth Rigby at Sky News (who, to be fair, I wouldn't normally choose to watch - it just so happened that it was their stream I was watching the briefing on and I'd just left it running afterwards) immediately jumped on the 'doubling every seven days' in her analyis afterwards with none of the caveats Vallance mentioned being discussed

I'm sure they were fully aware that this is exactly what would happen.

 

[C J Snarzell]

Another forum member mentioned the two Ronnies. I felt they resembled Statler & Waldorf.

Just where is Boris Johnson - surely he has a moral obligation to take part in this briefing?

CJ

 

[nlogax]

Another forum member mentioned the two Ronnies. I felt they resembled Statler & Waldorf.

Just where is Boris Johnson - surely he has a moral obligation to take part in this briefing?

CJ

I'm glad he didn't take part. I was encouraged to learn that as scientists they appear to understand the risks of continued lockdowns and restrictions when weighed up against protecting against the spread, and I was happy to hear all of this without the political distractions from the Chief Clown in Charge at an adjacent podium.

 

[DelayRepay]

where is Boris Johnson - surely he has a moral obligation to take part in this briefing?

As I said upthread, probably a deliberate decision to try to reach people who no longer trust or listen to politicians, but do still trust and listen to the scientists.

On the subject of the scenario, I thought it was clear that it was a scenario and shouldn't be taken as a prediction. I think the media and people have a low level of understanding between scenarios and predictions - I think the Bank of England had similar trouble last year when one of their Brexit scenarios was reported as a prediction of a 30% drop in house prices or whatever.

 

[Scrotnig]

On the subject of the scenario, I thought it was clear that it was a scenario and shouldn't be taken as a prediction. I think the media and people have a low level of understanding between scenarios and predictions - I think the Bank of England had similar trouble last year when one of their Brexit scenarios was reported as a prediction of a 30% drop in house prices or whatever.

I think they understand it perfectly and deliberately lie in order to get more clicks on their stupid articles.

 

[jtuk]

Seen this described as "Sesame Street science" which I'm sure is not too far off the mark

 

[MikeWM]

@cricketwyvern on twitter, who has been balanced and an excellent source of statistics throughout the last 6 months, is not impressed:

https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1308005488026628096

I would take a very dim view if my UG students submitted a report like this. Do @CMO_England and @uksciencechief really think it is acceptable to present data in this way?

 

[Richardr]

Clearly the media has a shortage of news when it goes out of its way to push the story that everybody is confused about the current restrictions. For over a week now, there is this constant revisiting the fact that the poor (uninformed?) public are confused by the differences between the Scots, Welsh, NI and English rules of 6.

The BBC seems to have two reactions to any rules or laws that are not exactly the same throughout the country. Either there is confusion as here, or if that fails they move on to the phrase "postcode lottery".

A couple of weeks ago they claimed there was confusion when Scotland introduced stricter quarantine measures on holiday makers returning from Portugal, and England didn't (at the time). They interviewed holiday makers over in Portugal, but failed to find a single person who didn't know whether they normally lived in England or Scotland.

 

[AM9]

The BBC seems to have two reactions to any rules or laws that are not exactly the same throughout the country. Either there is confusion as here, or if that fails they move on to the phrase "postcode lottery".

A couple of weeks ago they claimed there was confusion when Scotland introduced stricter quarantine measures on holiday makers returning from Portugal, and England didn't (at the time). They interviewed holiday makers over in Portugal, but failed to find a single person who didn't know whether they normally lived in England or Scotland.

It's not just the BBC, - miost media sources try to make the whinings of a few look like the news story of the century.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's not just the BBC, - miost media sources try to make the whinings of a few look like the news story of the century.

Bad news sells papers. If it's not that bad, you need to make it sound worse.

 

[BJames]

@cricketwyvern on twitter, who has been balanced and an excellent source of statistics throughout the last 6 months, is not impressed:

https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1308005488026628096

My friend has him as a lecturer for Quantitative Methods. He is excellent. Paton certainly knows what he is talking about.

 

[DelayRepay]

Bad news sells papers. If it's not that bad, you need to make it sound worse.

But the BBC doesn't sell papers. The BBC's purpose is supposed to be to inform, educate and entertain. Sometimes they've done this fantastically well, but other times they have failed. This applies to other topics, e.g. Climate Change, Brexit as well as Covid.

 

[MikeWM]

My friend has him as a lecturer for Quantitative Methods. He is excellent. Paton certainly knows what he is talking about.

They're suitably warned that they'd better do a better job with their graphs than Whitty and Valance managed

 

[BJames]

They're suitably warned that they'd better do a better job with their graphs than Whitty and Valance managed

Noted

I think the conference was designed entirely to scare people into complying again because they know people just aren't listening anymore, but I also agree with Mike395 above that it probably wasn't such a bad thing that no government ministers were on it (despite the usual i.e. Piers Morgan etc shouting about how shocking it was that Boris wasn't there). They clearly have nothing useful to say and while their presence might have once been reassuring I doubt many trust the government anymore to make the right decisions on anything.

 

[greyman42]

I did also notice that Whitty acknowledged the balancing act between keeping society working and controlling the virus, perhaps representing an acknowledgement that a full lockdown at this point is unrealistic.

Yes, that caught my attention as well. I think it is the first time that Witty has acknowledged the importance of not trashing the economy, or at least not trashing it further. I wonder if he was asked to mention this in the presentation?

 

[Bantamzen]

But the BBC doesn't sell papers. The BBC's purpose is supposed to be to inform, educate and entertain. Sometimes they've done this fantastically well, but other times they have failed. This applies to other topics, e.g. Climate Change, Brexit as well as Covid.

You may have noticed that the BBC has been under increasing pressure due to the licence fee & calls to scrap it. So they really need as much net traffic through their site right now, which may go some way to explaining their recent obsession on anything health-scare related in recent years.

 

[Freightmaster]

Seen this described as "Sesame Street science" which I'm sure is not too far off the mark

this just in: PHE have revealed their new 'foolproof' method of compiling the daily Covid death statistics:

MARK

 

[kristiang85]

Here's the actual comparison with France and Spain: https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1308003052469784576/photo/1 . Whereas the way they presented it, you'd think France and Spain were on the same curve.

The fact is, they can say all they like that this is 'not a prediction', but they know the media (and social media) will see scary graphs and reprint them, and it causes worry in the population. It is a terrible way to go about it and completely misleading.

Spain's data is on the way down anyway, and this 'second peak' is a lot flatter than the first, despite the original dire second peak predictions at the beginning of this.

Yes, it could still happen, but it is looking less likely and they have to show the best case scenarios too for balance. The fact they didn't makes me convinced they are buttering us up for another lockdown, which is suicidal. And even if not, displaying data like this means yet more people will be fearful to go out and spend money, get essential health appointments/checks, go out for their mental health, etc.

 

[MikeWM]

The fact is, they can say all they like that this is 'not a prediction', but they know the media (and social media) will see scary graphs and reprint them, and it causes worry in the population. It is a terrible way to go about it and completely misleading.

Indeed so. It makes the fearful more so, and those who aren't so fearful are angry at the blatant trickery. Deeply unimpressive stuff from people who should know better.

 

[bramling]

It's not just the BBC, - miost media sources try to make the whinings of a few look like the news story of the century.

Whilst I largely agree with your point about the confusion between the four countries being exaggerated, I don’t think this variation has really served us that well, apart from creating a distracting sideshow. In my view a unified strategy would have worked better.

The bigger issue is perhaps the regional variations. I’m in Wales at the moment and could easily stray into somewhere like Caerphilly without realising, either that I’m entering that area or knowing exactly where is restricted. Likewise I’ve lost track of which parts of England now have restrictions, though to be fair the English restrictions probably wouldn’t affect me so it might not matter as such.

 

[Class 33]

I didn't watch it. I was out. But I caught the bit on the Sky News website about Vallance predicting by mid October there could be up to 50,000 cases per day!! What the...???!!! I really really don't think it will get anywhere near that sort of level! Perhaps up to a short peak of around 10,000 max at worst. At the moment the new cases seem to be stabilising. And daily deaths despite a recent increase, are still pretty low and also seem to be stabilising too.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I didn't watch it. I was out. But I caught the bit on the Sky News website about Vallance predicting by mid October there could be up to 50,000 cases per day!! What the...???!!! I really really don't think it will get anywhere near that sort of level! Perhaps up to a short peak of around 10,000 max at worst. At the moment the new cases seem to be stabilising. And daily deaths despite a recent increase, are still pretty low and also seem to be stabilising too.

That would seem to suggest the "rule of 6" is working. If so, why not give it a week to see if it comes back down, then if it isn't lock down a little tighter to compensate for that week?

 

[Richard Scott]

That would seem to suggest the "rule of 6" is working. If so, why not give it a week to see if it comes back down, then if it isn't lock down a little tighter to compensate for that week?

Could be natural progression of the virus and measures taken haven't made much/any difference?

 

[hwl]

That would seem to suggest the "rule of 6" is working. If so, why not give it a week to see if it comes back down, then if it isn't lock down a little tighter to compensate for that week?

The rise in case numbers is some what limited by the amount of testing they can do currently! In August they reckoned the actually number of cases was circa double the number of +ve tests (based on other testing stream analysis) but with testing constrained and many people now unable to get test this is likely to have increased. The measures usually take at least a week to start showing up in the test stats so probably a bit early to see it. this time next week more likely.
With so much testing capacity reserved for hospital and carehomes, community testing stats should probably be looked at very carefully currently as the assumptions people were making in August may no longer hold.

 

[Class 33]

That would seem to suggest the "rule of 6" is working. If so, why not give it a week to see if it comes back down, then if it isn't lock down a little tighter to compensate for that week?

Thing is all this scaremongering today from Vallance and Whitty of new cases could reach 50,000 a day within a few weeks. Boris may not wait another week to see if the new cases comes down, he's holding an emergency "Cobra" meeting about it tomorrow, and could come up with TOUGHER restrictions or even a national lockdown. That said, I feel it may not be as bad as another national lockdown now. There were reports in the media at the weekend that a full national lockdown could come into force within days, and also reports today that London could go into lockdown TODAY. None of these have happened so far.

 

[Kingspanner]

I didn't watch it. I was out. But I caught the bit on the Sky News website about Vallance predicting by mid October there could be up to 50,000 cases per day!! What the...???!!! I really really don't think it will get anywhere near that sort of level! Perhaps up to a short peak of around 10,000 max at worst. At the moment the new cases seem to be stabilising. And daily deaths despite a recent increase, are still pretty low and also seem to be stabilising too.

As has been pointed out upthread, Vallance predicted nothing of the sort. He described a possible scenario which he suggested we work to avoid