THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR
SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora now writes for the Daily Express. Readers can enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that has won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything will be all right, read Professor Positivity.
FROM the start of this pandemic I have always warned against misleading comparisons against other country’s fatality figures. It makes eye-catching headlines but must be taken with a huge pinch of salt.
The BBC used such a graph a few days ago which was widely shared on social media. It misleadingly stated that our reported death figure that day was higher than in all the 27 countries of the EU combined. This was simply not true.
The way deaths are reported here means there are huge fluctuations throughout the week. If you look at our reported figures you would think that the virus takes the weekend off.
These drops are due to the bureaucracy slowing down over the weekend and bank holidays. This then causes the following few days to report higher as the figures catch up.
Each day when the daily total is counted, it’s important to realise that many of these deaths did not occur within the last 24 hours.
Some of them go back weeks simply because finalising death registration can take some time.
Not only that, the way in which different countries count deaths due to the virus is hugely variable. We have been very liberal in attaching the Corona diagnosis compared to Germany.
So, our numbers seem to be higher but we’re being honest. Some of our European neighbours use imaginative techniques to suppress their numbers. Spain has recently changed its reporting system.
One day they reported 283 deaths, the next only one. Across Europe, deaths are recorded differently.
And of course, we entered this pandemic at least two weeks later than most. As the incidence falls there is a delay before we see the deaths plummet. But if you look at the rolling five-day average it’s all heading in the right direction in a dramatic way.
I’m not a statistician but I caveat any figures I use. Look beyond the depressing headlines and you’ll be reassured.