He's desperate, Dan
It is not long before Desperate Dan goes from talking well, but lying badly (we do have a higher death toll than Italy), to losing it completely, so fully invested is he in The Adoration Of The Boris. “The assertion that Britain has the worst Covid-19 death rate is the coronavirus equivalent [of the £350 million for the NHS Vote Leave pledge]. Those peddling this fake news have stopped short of painting the Grim Reaper on the side of a bus and touring it round the nation. But the effect is the same. They are working the political angles on the most deadly global pandemic for a century”. And there is more.
“Obviously part of it is base hostility to Boris and his administration. As I’ve written before, there are those on the liberal Left who will never forgive him for winning that Brexit referendum, then cementing his victory in last year’s General Election … the problem is not British exceptionalism, but British nihilism. A need among sections of marginalised liberalism to debunk the simplistic notion British is Best by replacing it with the even more simplistic notion British is Worst”. To which I call bullshit.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8nNal-zKUKEZ7wZQDgIfhWAEpblCbLcrBeI63CQlfMr0y-MQ-2tf_vaZf-PDwxxVuZTHCgaAc5EWGMvGZwz0ElhO988Phx-ITBsH205t57S-z4S4WPsMVid9_yJ8y4tfu3v6dUjXYjRA/s280/WHO2.png)
Let’s consider Hodges twin assertions, shall we? Even if you limit yourself to the declared death tolls from both countries, the UK numbers are not only higher, but the rate of increase is greater. Hodges suggests the Italian total may be much higher, but this is disingenuous nonsense: he knows the UK death toll is also far higher (pace the FT).![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8nNal-zKUKEZ7wZQDgIfhWAEpblCbLcrBeI63CQlfMr0y-MQ-2tf_vaZf-PDwxxVuZTHCgaAc5EWGMvGZwz0ElhO988Phx-ITBsH205t57S-z4S4WPsMVid9_yJ8y4tfu3v6dUjXYjRA/s280/WHO2.png)
So he then falls back on the death rate, asserting “The most obvious is the differing size of the respective national populations. Britain’s population is ten per cent larger than Italy’s, and 40 per cent larger than Spain’s”. Ri-i-i-ight. Let’s look at a helpful graph of information from the World Health Organization, showing the number of deaths per million of population, on a seven day moving average to the 8th of May. Which country comes out top, above Sweden, the USA, Italy and Spain? The UK. A higher Coronavirus death rate than all those other nations. There’s a good reason that Dan Hodges devotes so much of his column to whining “look over there at Italy”. Because he doesn’t want his readers to see that his pants are well and truly alight.
But his bosses, and his pal Bozo, will throw him a few biscuits. So that’s all right, then. Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at
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7day moving average? What the heck does that prove.
ReplyDeleteAs of now Britain ranks 8th in Europe for infections per head of population, not that anyone anywhere knows the true numbers of people who have had it, and (proving my point) 4th for deaths per head of population, behind Belgium, Italy & Spain.
I know you don't like Hodges, but come on, he has a point here - is your seat getting hot!
A 7 day moving average means the average number of infections charted on an upward curve against other (in this case) nations in Europe (not the EU of course). But he was talking about declared deaths. Hodge was in denial. Risible. The UK has the highest number of deaths in Europe. This is due to starting far too late to test, trace, quarantine, so herd had started, Covid was out of the bottle- and not containable. Hence a suppression strategy was forced on Government by its own failings. Now it will be suppression, release, new wave, suppression, release, etc until vaccine. Chaos, destitution, poverty for manymore, rising prices, higher taxes, shortages, massive borrowing and overflowing morgues.
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