Dear Corporate Media and Political Agents, Covid Context Matters!

The media, politicians and government bodies are rarely providing CONTEXT on the current epidemic. Below are 3 decontextualised factoids used in whole or part. and without proper context by the media and government representatives, either to stoke fear or gain attention or both. Some important context for them has been added in order to reasonably inform the reader. Firstly, though, here are 4 opinions - 1 liberal and 3 humanist - that I hold, which themselves provide context for what follows.

1. Every individual has an equal right to life.

2. Coming to terms with suffering and mortality is a challenging, but necessary part of the human condition.

3. An end to a life that occurs towards the end of a natural life span is tragic.

4. An end to a life that occurs at the beginning or middle of a natural life span is a greater tragedy.

Therefore, and although it may be considered a small mercy, among the many lives lost in a tragedy, a majority of lives that are not lost towards the beginning of their natural lifespans is a mercy nonetheless.

That is to say...

An airplane crash populated mostly by octogenarians is a terrible tragedy.

An airplane crash populated mostly by children is a different scale of tragedy.

DECONTEXTUALISED FACT 1:

Stay safe, covid is still a risk, including for kids.

SOME CONTEXT:

Staying in your house is not risk free, it could burn down. Going out is not risk free, you could get hit by a car. 'Safe' does not mean zero risk, we normally intuitively gauge risk and when it is sufficiently low we either deem it 'safe enough' or usually just 'safe'.

MORE CONTEXT:

The number of healthy people under 60 in the UK that have died in this epidemic is less than 400 (source: NHS, incl: NHS England), less than the number of people that drown in the UK each year (source: Nat. Water Safety Forum).

MORE CONTEXT:

The risk of the average kid catching and succumbing to either the flu or covid during the disease's epidemic works out about somewhere between 1 in 1,000,000 and 1 in 10,000,000. After the epidemic has passed its peak, (as this epidemic evidently has, source: Worldometer) that risk gets ever decreasingly lower still. (based on data from: NHS, incl: NHS England, ONS)
 

source: NHS England
 

   

DECONTEXTUALISED FACT 2:

3 kids in the UK have tragically died of Covid.

 

SOME CONTEXT:

13 kids tragically died of flu during last years winter. 104 kids sadly died of flu in the winter of 2014-15 (source ONS)

MORE CONTEXT:

The number of kids in UK that have sadly died in this epidemic is less than the number of kids in the UK that sadly die from flu every winter. (source: NHS, incl: NHS England, ONS).

MORE CONTEXT:

There are millions of kids in the UK that haven't died of flu or covid or many other diseases.

source: ONS Flu annual report: winter 2018 to 2019

DECONTEXTUALISED FACT 3:

More than 36,000 have died of Covid in the UK.

SOME CONTEXT:

About 12,000 to 28,000 people die of flu during every winter in the UK, sadly. (source ONS)

MORE CONTEXT:

Like every flu epidemic, the vast majority of people that have sadly died in this epidemic are nearer the end of their natural life than nearer the middle or beginning. (source: NHS England)

MORE CONTEXT:

"...the excess deaths [across Europe] from Corona are actually [only] 15% more than the flu season of 2017-18.".

- Professor Michael Levitt (interview), Nobel prize winning mathematician.

MORE CONTEXT:*
"Hong Kong Flu 1968 to 1969. Moderate influenza pandemic.

Estimated attributable excess mortality in the UK: 80,000.

Age groups most affected: All age groups"
(source: UK Government / The Telegraph)

MORE CONTEXT:

Each year in the UK, sadly, more than half a million people die. The majority are persons that were towards the end of their natural life. (source: ONS)

MORE CONTEXT:
"In the last two months we should have diagnosed 60,000 people with cancer. No cure has been found, so where have they gone? It's so worrying. This culture of fear is dangerous and it has to stop - it could end up taking more lives than the virus."
- Professor Karol Sikora (Twitter), Oncologist 50 years, Ex WHO director.

 

Disclaimer: I am not stupid. Nor am I a professional health advisor.

 

*Edit 14/5/21, the following was replaced:

"1968 influenza pandemic— 'Hong Kong flu' or 'Mao flu' as some western tabloids dubbed it [killed] more than 30,000 individuals in the UK and 100 000 people in the USA, with half the deaths among individuals younger than 65 years" (source: The Lancet)