WS More or Less: Coronavirus
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2020
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The WHO have declared a ‘Global Health Emergency’ as health officials are urgently trying to contain the spread of a new coronavirus in China and beyond; but not all the information you read is correct. We fact-check a particularly hyperbolic claim about its spread that’s been doing the rounds on social media.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.0 | You're weekly guide to the numbers in our past, present and sometimes even future. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm Ruth Alexander. |
| 0:12.0 | This week we've been keeping up to date with the latest news about the spread of coronavirus. |
| 0:18.0 | The death toll from the coronavirus rises to 41 with authorities in China. |
| 0:23.0 | More than 100 people have now died in China as a result of the virus. |
| 0:26.0 | Four and a half thousand have been infected. |
| 0:30.0 | China says there are now nine and a half thousand cases of coronavirus in the country |
| 0:34.0 | and that at least 210 people have died. |
| 0:38.0 | And we've also been looking at the chatter on Twitter. |
| 0:42.0 | This message peaked our interest. |
| 0:44.0 | Holy Mother of God! |
| 0:46.0 | The new coronavirus is a 3.8! |
| 0:50.0 | How bad is that reproductive R-NOT value? |
| 0:53.0 | It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad. |
| 0:57.0 | I'm not exaggerating. |
| 0:59.0 | Are you sure you're not? |
| 1:01.0 | Not even a little? |
| 1:02.0 | This message was part of a thread posted last Saturday by Dr Eric Ding, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. |
| 1:10.0 | Even if you don't know what an R-NOT value is and will explain that in a moment, |
| 1:15.0 | his tweet does sound alarming. |
| 1:18.0 | But is it right to call the outbreak a thermonuclear pandemic or describe it as he did in another tweet as... |
... |
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