Expert hits out at ‘number theatre’ briefings

THE GOVERNMENT is playing “number theatre” with data around Covid-19 deaths and testing, an expert has warned, dismissing the trustworthiness of the messages being delivered as “frankly embarrassing”.

Eminent statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter criticised the Government’s daily briefings in the face of the public’s desire for genuine information.

It was “extraordinary”, he added, that so little was known about how many people have been infected with the coronavirus.

“I think this is actually not the trustworthy communication of statistics,” said Sir David, who is chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge. “It’s such a missed opportunity.

“The public out there who are broadly very supportive of the measures, they’re hungry for details, for facts, for genuine information, and yet they get fed this what I call ‘number theatre’, which seems to be co-ordinated really much more by a Number 10 communications team rather than genuinely trying to inform people about what’s going on.

“I just wish the data was being brought together and presented by people who really knew its strengths and limitations and could treat the audience with some respect.”

Asked yesterday on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show about the Government’s communication to the public about coronavirus through its daily televised briefings, Sir David said: “Frankly, I found it completely embarrassing.”

The number of deaths involving Covid-19 that have been registered across the UK currently stands at 33,021, although NHS England figures suggest the overall death toll for the UK has now passed 36,800.

In Yorkshire, 22 further deaths were yesterday confirmed in the

region’s hospitals, bringing the official number to 2,082.

Sir David, raising concerns about the reality of information being delivered to the general public, said: “We get told lots of big numbers, precise numbers of tests being done – 96,878. Well, that’s not how many were done yesterday; it includes tests that were posted out.

“We’re told 31,587 people have died; no, they haven’t, it’s far more than that.”

And he raised concerns about a lack of information on how many people have had the virus.

With too little known about the infection fatality rate – the proportion of people with the virus who go on to die – nobody knows if the numbers who have already recovered are as few as 3.5m, double that, or much higher.

Sir David said it is “very important that we are aware of what the risks are”.

“I’m not saying how anybody should feel, or what they should be worried about, but my aim, as a statistician, was that people’s anxiety should be at least roughly proportional to the actual risks that they face,” he said.