Government Officials Continue to Tell Half the Story on Covid Statistics
The U.K. Statistics Authority says it is concerned by the misrepresentation of Covid data by the Government and its head, Sir David Norgrove, points out that “we’ve intervened more during the pandemic and made more comments than in the years before”. It is, of course, expected that mistakes are to be made on occasion, but it’s concerning that time and again these mistakes are being repeated, and with damaging consequences. The Telegraph has published a good piece on this.
“With statistics, it’s usually cock-up rather than conspiracy,” [Sir David] added. “They are under pressure and they get themselves into a hole and we have to help dig them out.”
Yet despite this, nothing seems to be changing.
At a press conference from Downing Street on Wednesday evening, Dr. Jenny Harries, the Chief Executive of the U.K. Health Security Agency, took the public through slides showing that there were currently 7,891 people in hospital with Covid in the U.K.
What she failed to mention is that this figure does not only include people admitted with Covid, but also those who test positive for coronavirus while in hospital for another condition.
Hospitals were instructed to distinguish between the two groups earlier this year, but so far it has not filtered down into the official figures.
In fact it is only possible to find the data by scrolling to the very bottom of the “Hospital Activity” page of the NHS website. Even then, the figures are woefully out of date.
At the most recent count for England on October 12th, 26% of the overall cases were not primarily Covid.
If that was extrapolated to Dr. Harries’ British data, it would mean that more than 2,000 people included in the Government’s press conference figure are actually in hospital for other causes.
A similar problem can be seen in the daily reported death figures published on the Government’s coronavirus dashboard. On Tuesday, many experts seized on 223 reported deaths to argue that Britain should enact ‘Plan B’ restrictions.
But the reported death data does tend to jump around depending on the day of the week and reflects deaths over several days. Look at the figures by “date of death”, and it is clear to see the situation is largely plateauing.
Dr. Jason Oke, a senior statistician at the University of Oxford, pointed this out earlier this week, saying: “As we have said right from the beginning, we need to focus on deaths by date of occurrence, not deaths by date reported.
“Reporting Tuesday’s numbers – always the highest – in isolation, tends to exaggerate things, and gives no indication of current trends, which has if anything been slowly falling through September and October, [and] no guarantee of future trends of course.”
Regular readers of the Daily Sceptic won’t be surprised by this report on the misrepresentation of data, especially given our in-house doctor’s repeated highlighting of “a remarkable consistency in [officials] grossly overestimating the numbers of Covid hospital admissions“, and more – but the Telegraph story is still worth reading in full.
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Nobody has ever been pulled up for bullshittery throughout this whole debacle so why should they bother telling the truth now.
Ordinarily we might expect the media to pick up on this kind of sophistry but thanks to the BBC’s “Trusted News Initiative”, criticising the government about its COVID response is basically verboten.
so are you telling the truth/
Oh, how nice, New Low is back.
No, here is the truth, courtesy of the Independent.
Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical industry uses ‘wealth to influence government’ | The Independent | The Independent
And here
Big Pharma lobbyists exploit patients and doctors | The Independent | The Independent
Sorry to bust your bubble…
Correct. We know they are lying, they know they are lying but they also know they are getting away with it time and time again,
Of course they are lying, BUT the General Public have been scared out of their wits and now EXPECT to hear devastating news. The amount of sheer ignorance out there is shocking, and only yesterday while chatting to an friend I’d not seen for several years I was made painfully aware of the saturation propaganda the public have been subjected to. First there are many young people dying of the Virus now and its having an effect on the Funeral sector – Funerals are having to be delayed and bodies are being stored in cold storage. Cases are soon to overwhelm the NHS / Hospitals. Upon replying to him by asking if he was aware or the “Normal” daily death rate for the UK another close relative interjected with – err, about 400 a day possibly in Winter – so obviously the 100 or so Virus deaths are unacceptable!
I’m absolutely fed up with all of this and can only sign off with the suggestion that a Joseph Goebbels prize be created and awarded to the practitioners working for SAGE etc. They truly deserve it, although it may be construed a bit unfair to Joseph Goebbels!
Well hopefully they will, since this is the most damning of the government’s statistical reporting of all mainstream media articles to date.
I just hope that publications like the Telegraph and others keep watchful eye on the situation so these officials can be held accountable in the eyes of their very large readership.
Very interesting. I have just received a letter in the post from U.K. Statistics Authority offering to pay both me and my partner £10 each to complete a survey.
They want to know whether I believe the government’s statistics regarding the “pandemic” are trustworthy.
I’ve held off doing it because I’ve become so untrusting of the government that I’m not comfortable disclosing my name and address.
Privacy is freedom
Sound thinking. Trust the buggers not one inch.
Firstly I would at least try to find a number to call to confirm it’s genuine and not a scam – unsolicited letters, emails and phone calls that have anything to do with money exchanges are VERY frequently scammers (you have to fill in your bank a/c details to receive the £10, after all)
If it really is genuine then I would use the opportunity to get your voice heard if I were you. The officials responsible for flawed reporting need to know that the public has little trust until they start reporting things a lot more accurately.
How many times have you disclosed your name and address to the government before, anyway? If you drive a car, your details will be on a DVLA database, they’ve got everyone’s details for NI contributions, etc, etc. Sorry, but more than likely they’ve already got it!
Do you actually think they’re looking for the truth?
Never disclose anything to government, you don’t have to, it will be used against you.
Same principle as the police, say nothing more than you’re legally obliged to.
DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MOBILE NUMBER! EVER!
I couldn’t agree more, just as you would never divulge any personal details to a phone scammer, never give any more details than are necessary to state-run databases.
The point I am making is that they ALREADY HAVE all these details anyway! The NHS have them, HMRC have them. Do you have a passport? If so, then your name, address, tel.no, passport no. NI number, etc are logged, stored, and ready to deploy against you should you decide to become some kind of criminal in the eyes of the state.
Our personal details are already owned. I think we have to admit that first before mounting any resistance to government intrusion in our lives.
‘Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.’ – Thomas Sowell
Lying by omission – the MSM have also been doing this.
Another cock-up?
How many more cock-ups (or is it “cocks-up”?) does it take before we can officially declare it a conspiracy?
Is there a chicken in orbit?
Imperial College’s modelling team projects over million chickens in orbit per day unless we resort to the winter “Plan B”.
In our house we declared a conspiracy back in March 2020. We have reviewed the situation every six months since then and only last week a conspiracy was once again confirmed, this time without a vote.
Ask yourself why are statistics important? What’s the difference between governed by science & technocracy.
I remain steadfast in my assertion covid mitigation is a moral argument. I’e. No one has the right to take one man’s freedom for another man’s safety! It’s my belief, no one has a right to imprison others in case they may do harm.
I’d also assert treaties such as Nuremberg code are relevant in regard to experimental treatment, what is lockdown if not experimental medical intervention?
The WHO doesn’t recommend lockdowns, track & trace, masks or vaccine mandates
I have been informed, I do not consent. I stated so much to my MP back in April 2020.
Meanwhile, in one of the corners of the US sphere that managed to remain sane through the covid hysteria:
The Amish response to covid-19
A serious response to those anti-religious types who insist that religion is superstitious nonsense that leads people to do irrational things. Well, it might be or it might not be, but here it clearly protected this community from a mass hysteria that struck most of the human population and led them to do literally stupid, hugely costly things. Partly no doubt because that hysterical majority are not irreligious, but rather worship a technocratic elite and their pronouncements.
Seriously, the Amish sound intensely sane to me, to an extent not seen as a cultural norm in Britain for a century or more.
The Amish response link shows it as currently unavailable. Surprise surprise, well perhaps not.
Oops, looks like an error on my part pasting the link in. It’s here:
The Amish response to covid-19
I think the Amish eschew all forms of technology including, presumably, television news and social media, the only two places where a pandemic actually exists.
Sorry, but when the cock-ups go in only one direction, it’s kinda hard to believe it’s a cock-up, and not a cock-up-our-collective-backsides.
Yes the cock-up theory has been nearly been done to death. Amazingly though, it still has some stalwart supporters and normally you don’t have to stray too far from DS to confirm that.
A much better headline and piece, not simply parroting propaganda.
Thank you.
Surely the ‘fact checkers’ and ‘misinformation police’ should be all over this?
All sources of the fake facts to be deleted/silenced/cancelled and all record of Harries’s news conference to be deleted from the internet…..?
Who said there are lies there are damned lies and then there are statistics?
Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835–1910)
They should have said lies, damned lies and the Government’s statistics.
I bow to no-one in my admiration of Mark Twain.
… but that was one of his more stupid aphorisms. Real statistics, and the ability to recognize them, are one of the major guards against lying.
It is, of course, expected that mistakes are to be made on occasion, but it’s concerning that time and again these mistakes are being repeated, and with damaging consequences.
FFS. Repeat after me. There. Are. No. “Mistakes”.
I dunno. Call me a cynic but I can’t help thinking that there’s a motive behind the constant “Fergusonation” (= hype) of the fear factor. Presumably it will continue until everyone including babies (then embryos?), are jabbed with Big Pharma’s mysterious, rushed and untested concoction. Big money!
GPs are keeping mum of course, to the extent that it’s impossible to see one face to face. No surprise there, they’ve been taking the pharma dollar and propaganda for years via frequent rep. visits and treats.
This could all prove to be the disaster it’s currently headed towards or a breakthrough to better, more honest times. I’m not ready to bet.
…..but I can’t help thinking that there’s a motive behind the constant “Fergusonation” (= hype) of the fear factor……..Big money!.
If only they were actually doing it just for the money! Of course, they don’t need any more money and so it’s highly likely that their real purpose is much more sinister.
I agree. There is big money involved in jabbing everything that moves but there’s clearly a longer term plan.
I agree. There is big money involved in jabbing everything that moves but there’s clearly a longer term plan.
This has also been done on frequent occasions by mainstream media journalists, who had made a habit of turning up in Covid wards on a Monday morning, the hospital having had no discharges over the weekend. This gave the impression of overwhelm in a particular hospital, where in truth a matter of hours after the crew has packed up and left there’s been a significant discharge of recovered patients, and things calm down.
But too late, the story’s already taxiing for take-off. Some smug journalist then hands in the sensationalist footage to his/her editor, the story runs on Tuesday and the nation panics…
Then also on Tuesday (which happens to be consistently the day of the week with the highest Covid death reports), the misleading statistics alluded to above are peddled out by an official to compliment yesterday’s misleading reporting.
Come on, mix things up a bit… let’s hear about Wednesday (wouldn’t that be radical)!
Send this to anyone who may be interested. Were there really 223 deaths, up by almost a 100 on the prior day? No, of course it’s simply transparent lies. The 7 day average a month ago was 143, now it’s 134.
I heard on Planet Normal today that their NHS mole had the data showing that over 60% of all Covid cases in hospital were internal admissions. Someone admitted with a broken hip or whatever who subsequently caught covid. You couldn’t make it up.
Government policy is absolutely clear: exaggerate; mislead; frighten; control.
Enough is enough.
Out with them.
And in with who? We need to sack the lot of them.
Fair question. However, just as with Brexit, a political vacuum has opened up clear blue water as the Tories move ever left. This opens a gap for a centre-right party who oppose green nonsense and wokism. Who though?
I don’t see any move left, just a move towards more corruption, less honesty and less integrity. Global capital taking power from elected governments isn’t ‘left-wing’.
In March the vote against renewing the police state legislation was mostly from the Tory right, the Labour left, LibDems and Green. You can be left-leaning and freedom-loving; you can also be right-leaning and authoritarian e.g. Theresa May (who wears a mask in parliament, unusual for her party, and would probably love another nationwide mask mandate.)
The gap in the market is surely among the localist rather than globalist end of the spectrum, libertarian not authoritarian, also those wanting more constitutional safeguards on the executive, more freedom of speech, freedom of information as they have in the USA and Sweden. Maybe PR too.
Sweden had no lockdown because the constitution bans it. It was that simple, I gather. Ditto Japan.
We need safeguards from excessive influence by lobbyists on government. One person, one vote. Or are some more equal than others?
Well said. The traditional right/left political dimension has become irrelevant in this. The key dimension is Authoritarian/Libertarian (in the root sense).
Labour and Conservatives are two cheeks of the same arse.
And an ugly fat arse at that.
In with the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency. See my post btl on the Daily Roundup.
Apologies for referencing my post about the Covid vaccine surveillance report #42 (on a different thread), but there are enough arse-covering civil servants out there (I know the type) for the data to be in the public-if-not-very-visible domain. That way they can say they weren’t behind the cover-up when it comes to the inquiries etc. This means the challenge is two-fold:
Sorry if that sounds critical: it’s not meant to be, but preaching to the choir doesn’t win many converts.
As I suggested earlier, if the Today programme’s top story was that government figures showed that the infection fatality ratio for double-jabbed people was almost three times higher than for unjabbed over the last three weeks, then I think you’d get some people’s attention whether they liked it or not.
Oh, and yes, you can be truthful and still play dirty.
Generous of Sir David to attribute it to cock-up, but I beg to differ.
They sewn so much confusion in the masses they are now at the peak of their powers. They can say the vaccines have been massively successful, while also threatening lockdowns due to unvaxxed. They can talk about building back better while threatening to shut businesses again.
If people haven’t been paying attention to this willful psychological operation, they’ll be ripe for any further manipulation. Government says “It’s the filthy unvaxxed doing this” they’ll nod and carry out their tasks.
Good documentary tonight on the Vietnam war on the PBS channel. The parallels are breathtaking: it wasn’t just the futility (or the brutality) that was so shocking but the self-deceit. The American government, the American military and the American people were locked into a belief that not only was the war winnable but that it was being won even though the statistics constantly said otherwise. The phrase that really struck home though was one used by a retired Army advisor: we need more. More bombing, more troops, more killing. Then we would win. Fast forward to 2021: more vaccinations, more boosters, more lockdowns. Recruiting children to the vaccine roll-out echoes the recruitment of more and more college students as the supply of fresh troops dried up. Worst of all though was the stubborn refusal of the government, the military and the people themselves to change their belief. The Viet-Cong would be defeated, the virus will be defeated. Dissent from the prevailing view was seen as anti-American and anti-democratic. Bring on, 50 years later, the anti-vaxxers to be vilified and silenced. The world, we are told, is at war with the virus. But the virus will “win” because the methods of… Read more »
And just to add that the daily drip-feed of covid deaths in the news exactly mirrors the update of numbers of Viet-Cong killed each day that I remember from the news during my teenage years. And inflated of course, just as the number of Covid deaths is today.
Have you seen the compelling documentary The Fog of War ? The lies and obfuscations preceded (and initiated) the start of that war, too.
I remember John Pilger pointing up another parallel – the distortion of language by propaganda.
So 7891 people in hospital .even if they all had raging Covid ,which they dont .has anyone considered that there are over 1250 hoapitals in the uk.Obviously a quick sum will tell you there are abot 6 people in ech hospital .not as the stupidest might imagine 7891 just in their local hospitall another pointless stat and story combination
Government officials continue to lie, to push through Agenda 30.
It doesn’t matter, we will never breakthrough until the sheep wake up and for the forseeable that looks like being never.
Well – it’s good that the UK Statistics Authority hasn’t yet been got at. But watch this space – and I bet that there’s a lot more instances that they’ve not mentioned in order to keep focus.
Bonus prize for anyone who finds this story on broadcast news.