Yesterday, 21st September 2020, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty, gave a televised presentation on Covid-19.
A transcript of what they said is online here:
Chief Scientific Advisor and Chief Medical Officer briefing on coronavirus (COVID-19): 21 September 2020
It seems to me that Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty lied to the public about the Covid-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom.
Their claim, expressed by Patrick Vallance, was that the Covid-19 epidemic in England is doubling roughly every seven days.
Patrick Vallance said,
At the moment, we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every
seven days. It could be a little bit longer, maybe a little shorter, but
let’s say roughly every seven days. If, and that’s quite a big if, but
if that continues unabated and this grows, doubling every seven days,
then what you see of course, let’s say that there were 5,000 today, it
would be 10,000 next week, 20,000 the week after, 40,000 the week after.
And you can see that by mid-October if that continued, you would end up
with something like 50,000 cases in the middle of October per day.
Is it true that the epidemic is doubling "roughly every seven days"?
I don't think so.
The Government's own data shows that it is doubling roughly every 14 days.
For example, on the second slide shown at the presentation the rate of new cases per 100,000 of the population doubled roughly every 14 days.
The slides are online here:
Slides to accompany coronavirus press conference: 21 September 2020
In the age group 20-29 the number of cases for 24th August to 30th August was about 31 (reading the graph by eye).
For the same age group for 7th to 13th September there were about 62 cases (again reading the graph by eye).
Similar increases can be seen in the other age groups.
If cases increase from 31 to 62 in two weeks that means that cases were doubling roughly every 14 days (not every 7 days as Patrick Vallance claimed).
Perhaps there is more recent data that shows the doubling time is getting shorter.
The most recent data that I can find is online here:
Cases in United Kingdom
The second graph on that page shows daily numbers of positive tests.
By mousing over individual dates you can see a number of positive tests for that date and the rolling 7-day average at that date.
The graphs are in ongoing process of updating. The following description reflects the figures shown in the version I downloaded a little before 06:00 on 22nd September 2020.
There is no sign of doubling every seven days that I can see.
If we look at positive tests on individual days we see the following:
- On 18th September the number of cases was 4322 (an increase of 22% from 11th September)
- On 11th September the number of cases was 3539 (an increase of 82% from 4th September)
- On 4th September the number of cases was 1940 (an increase of 52% from 28th August)
If we look at the 7-day rolling average again there is no sign of doubling every 7 days:
- On 18th September the 7-day average was 3928 (an increase of 30% from 11th September)
- On 11th September the 7-day average was 3003 (an increase of 47% from 4th September)
- On 4th September the 7-day average was 2032 (an increase of 53% from 28th August)
On no date was there a 100% increase over the examined 7 days periods.
The highest increase was 82% from 4th September to 11th September.
But that was followed by a 22% increase from 11th September to 18th September.
So, even if it were true that cases were close to doubling every 7 days from 4th to 11th September, the figures on 18th September show that any such doubling had slowed markedly.
If the number of cases isn't doubling every 7 days (and hasn't been in the recent past) it can't "continue" to double at that rate.
It seems to me that Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty have seriously misled the public.
If they had data showing doubling every 7 days surely they would have shown it.
Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty should apologise for misleading the British public and provide a detailed explanation of why they did so.
