Financial Times Data Specialist dispels myths about coronavirus
Appearing on Good Morning Britain this morning, Financial Times Data journalist John Burn-Murdoch dispelled the mythology surrounding Covid by using statistics to explain them.
Speaking to Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain, Mr Burn-Murdoch dispelled the myth that it's no different to a bad flu season.
Referring to the graph which showed the number of people admitted to ICU with flu in a typical year in England, he explained what the red line - signifying 2020/21 - means.
"What we see in 2021 is that it has blown everything out of the water with Covid. The number of people going into ICU with Covid are far far higher than they have always been with people with flu including in really bad years like 2017/18 which was one of the worst flu seasons for quite some time," he said.
"The red line shows that this year it’s been a completely different order of magnitude. It’s not bad flu. It’s far far worse than that."
The second graph focused on the myth that "hospitals are always this full in December."
After pointing out the trajectory of previous years, Mr Burn-Murdoch explained: "The red line shows the number of people coming into ICU this year for any given reason.
He went on to say: "The fact that the red line is much higher shows that we’re seeing much more people severely ill this year than usual and that can only be put down to Covid. We know from our data that we’re seeing fewer people in hospitals for other reasons including stroke and heart disease so the only explanation for why those numbers are so much higher this year has to be Covid.
Watch John Burn-Murdoch's full explanation above.