You would imagine it would be a simple enough process to track how many people are dying from Covid-19 but it seems like a lot of things in life it is more complex than it first appears.
The government stats are 10,000 but they only track deaths in hospitals. But with experts saying around half of Covid-19 deaths are in care homes, this means we are vastly undercounting deaths. Then what about deaths in the community? The people who die at home and never see a hospital, are they being tracked?
I realise we are in a fast-moving situation but you would think it is important to get reliable data. How can the government make good decisions with wonky data? Our maybe they have the data but are reluctant to share it with the rest of us?
In a related note is anyone surprised how the UK Government seems to get getting an easy ride over their handling of the crisis? The UK is due to have the largest death toll in Europe, a fact most of the press seems pretty nonchalant about.
But maybe the wind is changing, the Mail has gone from this:
To this in the space of 2 days:
Photo by cottonbro is licensed under CC0
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
