As the pandemic worsened in the United Kingdom during spring 2020, political disputes turned in a strange direction. The UK government started to claim that the UK’s Covid-19 statistics could not be compared with any other country. Politicians based this claim on a flawed interpretation of a Guardianarticle by statistician David Spiegelhalter, who had pointed out the complexity around international statistics. A few months later, in August, then US President Donald Trump would wave a sheet of paper in front of bemused Axios journalist Jonathan Swan, purportedly showing a statistical comparison that the United States was outperforming other countries in its response to Covid-19. Rather than mourning those who had died, politicians in some countries turned to fights over how to represent the toll of the pandemic authentically.
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Source: Stories, Statistics, and Authenticity in Health Communications | Items