Deaths at Home, Supermarket Infections and the Cobra Effect
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Since the start of the pandemic there have been many warnings that people might die not just from the coronavirus itself, but also if they didn’t seek medical help out of fear that hospitals might be dangerous. Is there any evidence that this has happened? David Spiegelhalter is on the case.
The UK is in lockdown, but tens of thousands of people a day are still testing positive for Coronavirus. Where are they catching it? Grim data on drug deaths in Scotland has been called into question on social media. We ferret out the truth. Plus, what can venomous snakes tell us about the government's plan to increase the number of people self-isolating?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:04.8 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, with a programme that tries to make your world |
| 0:10.7 | add up. Without taking anything from the multiplying difficulties we face in these |
| 0:15.4 | divided times. I'm Tim Haferd. |
| 0:18.8 | This week, are people more likely to die at home rather than in hospital these days and |
| 0:24.1 | is that good news or bad news? David Spiegelhalter is on the case. The government has |
| 0:29.8 | a cunning plan to encourage people to self-isolate, is there a risk that it's a bit too cunning, |
| 0:36.1 | cobras and feral hogs may be involved. The UK's in lockdown, but tens of thousands of |
| 0:42.0 | people a day are still testing positive for coronavirus. Where are they catching it? |
| 0:47.5 | And grim data on drug deaths in Scotland have been called into question on social media. |
| 0:53.4 | We ferret out the truth. |
| 0:55.7 | At first, COVID case numbers are still falling. The number of patients being admitted to hospitals |
| 1:01.5 | also seems to have started slowly falling, but deaths remain high. |
| 1:07.0 | On the 20th of January, headlines said that the UK had reported 1,820 deaths. We've |
| 1:14.8 | mentioned many times on More or Less that reported deaths, and not the Sabers deaths which |
| 1:19.9 | have taken place that day. But that didn't stop many people claiming that 1,820 people |
| 1:26.6 | had died that day. For example, Professor Alice Roberts of the University of Birmingham |
| 1:31.9 | tweeted that 1,820 people died today, and that we should all be angry. And nearly 10,000 |
| 1:40.7 | people were angry, angry enough to retweet anyway. But as I keep trying to tell people, |
| 1:46.3 | 3 retweets don't necessarily help us think more clearly about the world. And while the |
| 1:51.2 | death toll is appallingly high, it's not as high as the headlines and the tweets claim. |
| 1:57.8 | David Spiegel-Holter is the chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication |
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