in the age of news #enshittification
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in the age of news #enshittification, i HATE to go all #ReplyGuy with:
[ CITATION NEEDED ]
https://mastodon.social/@COVID19_DISEASE/1133631802712253701. no searches for NHS or UKHSA plus COVID19 give me anything the article claims
2. the only hit i got was this at the GOV.UK website:
"Our current surveillance shows that around 13% of sequenced COVID-19 cases are the ‘XEC’ lineage however current information doesn’t suggest we should be more concerned…"
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-report-published -
@[email protected] the url they give is fishy as fuuuuuuuuck
would not click that -
@blogdiva So this is all based on an Express article that is a little sensationalist in framing, but not making anything up, that I can see.
The UKHSA covid dashboard is here : https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/respiratory-viruses/covid-19
They report by specimen date, not by report date, which means their last seven days of data are partial and it's crap data comms to include them in graphs, but everyone does anyway. I believe the week for the 17.8% case rise stat is the one ending Oct 9, though I haven't DLed to check their math.
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@blogdiva The NHS and their regional divisions are doing their fall awareness and guidance push, which includes references to both five- and ten-day isolation guidance for anyone with covid:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/covid-19/how-to-avoid-catching-and-spreading-covid-19/
They're probably doing press outreach with this info as well, to try to get people to remember how long you actually have to isolate for to be sure—especially since they no longer *require* any isolation at all.
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@blogdiva This is what the regional NHS comms pushes look like:
https://northeastnorthcumbria.nhs.uk/media/yxzhujn5/flu-and-covid-19-2024-faqs.pdfSo I don't see anything in the original Express (and Mirror) reporting that's actually *wrong*, though I don't myself love anything about UK covid policy or comms.
Also good reporters always remind people that in public health terms, "isolation" is when you have an infection and "quarantine" is when you've had an exposure or potential exposure.
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Erin Kissanereplied to Erin Kissane last edited by [email protected]
@blogdiva Lastly, for my true nerds, this is a good breakdown of the issues with visualizing covid data by date of report vs other ways, focusing on deaths data:
https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/is-there-a-right-way-to-chart-covid-19-deaths-over-time
With cases, it's much better to report by date of specimen, BUT it's so irresponsible not to visually mark the most recent data—which will always look better than it is because it's incomplete—as useless/misleading in any visualizations you produce. We saw this exact thing used for disinfo in the US.
