THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR
SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.
EVERY day the Department of Health and Social Care releases the figures for fatalities, cases and number of tests.
I don’t really remember how it started, but I put out a tweet trying to explain the figures as I see them, and it’s generally quite well received.
I spend a lot of time looking at numbers and always get that tweet out, whether the numbers are higher or lower.
The way the data is collected and announced is shambolic. I can’t believe that the Government hasn’t come up with a better way of doing it.
For example, last Monday there were 16 reported fatalities, compared with 176 on the previous Wednesday. The virus didn’t take the weekend off, but reporting lags makes it look as if there are huge spikes the following day when the numbers catch up.
When the Office for National Statistics releases its graphs that show the fatalities by the actual date of death, there is a relatively smooth decline as you would expect, but looking at the daily figures it seems the exact opposite.
It’s not just the erratic ups and downs. I can’t remember a time when the data was released punctually at 2pm.
The Government has also stopped releasing the number of people actually tested and there is still no sign of the promised recovery figures.
We were told we would see them by June. It’s now mid-July, and nothing yet. Most other countries have managed throughout. It would be possible to estimate how many have officially recovered, but the reason I was so keen to see the figures daily was to provide some sort of balance.
I am so disappointed that our Government has failed to release the recovery figures in line with most other countries. So much is riding on all of these numbers and yet the way they are handled is so amateur.