Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter
speaker
351 appearances
17 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2010
last heard Jan 2021
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I find these headlines very distressing.
I mean, we have been speaking since the start of the pandemic in March about the dangers of reporting the number of deaths or even the number of cases because of the reporting delays.
And so these numbers depend so much on the day of the week, for example.
Wednesday is almost always a high day,
And last Wednesday was reported 1,820 deaths, which got a lot of headlines.
Now, so far we know that actually at least 1,028 people died on that day, as more cases are reported.
It may go up to about 1,100, but nowhere near 1,820.
And so, you know, all these headlines I feel were deeply, deeply misleading.
In the end, the total numbers will match up.
It's just that the headline figures on particular days receive such attention.
And days on which far fewer deaths are reported, for example, yesterday it was 600 or so, that doesn't get any coverage at all.
And so I do feel that these headlines are misleading.
The numbers are high enough and bad enough anyway without making inappropriate comparisons.
Not in terms of the peak.
The problem is that the number that's reported and is on the main dashboard is using this criterion of a death of somebody who once tested positive.
and then died within 28 days of their positive test.
Back in April, in the first wave, there wasn't anything like the same amount of testing that was done and so there's a systematic undercount in the actual number of deaths.
So, for example, the peak in the first wave, according to the dashboard, is 1,073 who died on the 8th of April.
But in fact, if we look at ONS data about who actually died on that day and then was registered as a death with COVID, it's 1,456.
You know, much, much higher.
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