Your opinion on reporting of the pandemic

I’m afraid I have to agree that the media has been very negative when reporting about Coronavirus. Having said that, most reporting about anything is very negative all the time.
We certainly didn’t get everything right when the pandemic started, late lockdown, didn’t close borders, didn’t make travellers quarantine at the height of the pandemic, the treatment of care homes etc. However we appear to be managing the current situation well, with a few things not being managed as well as they should be. We’re actually doing better than many other countries now.

Sorry Alegrias pressed too quickly, didn’t respond to your post.
I think the reporting is always so negative, I don’t expect facts to be sugar coated, but some positive news at the same time would be cheering and there are positive news stories related too.

I don't know what I think about the reporting, and I'm not sure how anyone other than an epidemiologist can be sure.

The problem is that our opinions on the virus can only be informed by the way it has been reported, so it's a bit of a vicious circle.

I do, however, think that the government's response to the pandemic has been a disgrace, as evidenced by the rate of deaths in care homes and the delay with which we went into lockdown (such as it was). I also think that the televised briefings showed many of the cabinet for the incompetents they are, and will have reduced public confidence in the government as a whole, as, of course, did the Dominic Cummings fiasco.

I replied to your post, it’s the exponential rise 25.81 per 100,000:this week, 9.10 week before.

I have just started a thread about the removal of Trinidad and Tobago from the countries we can visit without quarantining on our return.
T&T have had 548 cases/million population, 9/m deaths
U.K. has had 4744 cases/million population, 609/m deaths
Something is very wrong here. We are a risk to them, not the other way round!
Frankly I think the government does not have a clue.

The desire to frighten the population into total submission has worked better than UK Gov could have ever hoped, with total cooperation from the media. I too follow the Worldometer figures, and they give a realistic encouraging picture.

Which ever country you look at, the pattern of infections rising and falling is the same - sharp rise in the first few months of the year, tailing off, slight increase when lockdowns were eased (if the country did lockdown, but Sweden seems to follow the same pattern even though it didn't) but nowhere is there a bigger second wave. Treatments have improved now to the extent that number of deaths per country continues to fall.

It is still out there, but it is less dangerous to catch it now that treatments are more effective. I do wish we would publish figures on numbers recovered, and numbers actually infected at any one time, virtually every other country does!

In my opinion there has been far too much scaremongering regarding the pandemic.

There is litttle if no reporting of the fact that for the eight week running the UK deaths have been below the five year average.

They seem to concentrate on doom and gloom stories as opposed to positive ones.