It’s bad news all round if you’re a Herald reporter.
Hospital admissions fell for the second day, down from 2 053 on the 22nd January to 2 011 in the last 24 hours.
ICU bed occupancy also fell for the second time from 161 to 157.
Almost certainly triggering these falls, new cases reduced for the 17th day in a row, from 2 649 on 7th January to 1 195 in the last 24 hours. The fall may be accelerating in the last three days, falling from 1 591 to 1 195.
There were 30 004 new cases across the UK, nearly 3 times the infection rate in Scotland.
The Herald will do what they have always done…..change topic to drug deaths, a carefully selected part of a FOI, a cat up a tree (no doubt chased there by evil Nats) , a quote from a shocked anonymous expert on (insert topic here) etc etc
If all else fails simply cut and paste a Unionist Party press release or a page from the Mail.
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“The Herald will do what they have always done…..change topic to drug deaths ..”
The number of deaths due to drug misuse in Scotland is indeed appalling, something now acknowledged by the Scottish Government. I think it is a reasonable position to take that the SG should have recognised much earlier that what it had been doing on this issue was not having enough of a desired effect quickly enough.
However, the recurring focus on this issue, it seems, only in Scotland by the corporate media and the BBC IMHO reveals a blatant political agenda. The statistics in Scotland are indeed bad. However, albeit relatively at a lower level, the increase in deaths due to drug misuse in England over the past decade or more is far from reassuring in terms of the effectiveness of Westminster’s drug policies.
The Office for National Statistics reports this: “Since 2012, rates of drug-related poisoning have generally been on a steep upward trend in England and Wales, something that has previously been attributed mainly to rises in heroin and cocaine deaths. Latest figures show that the rate in the population increased to its highest level at 76.7 deaths per million people in 2019, as shown in Figure 1, increasing from 46.6 deaths per million people in 2012.”
The same ONS report gives age-standardised mortality rates for deaths related to drug misuse in England and Wales as:
2012: 29.1 per million people
2019 (latest): 50.4 per million people
Age-standardised rates of deaths related to drug misuse vary greatly by region of England. ONS reports this: “In 2019, the highest rates for males and females were observed in the North East (134.2 male and 57.1 female deaths per million), while the lowest rates were in the East of England (49.0 male and 18.4 female deaths per million).”
And in the worst affected region, NE England (population c. 2.6 million):
2019: 134.2 per million people
2008: 73.0 per million people
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales/2019registrations#main-points
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Small point Drugs policy is dictated by Westminster. Scotland needs to be able to implement different options such as clean, drug checked injection rooms.
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WE WILL EVER HEAR THAT INFO FROM “THE DROSS”
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Good news, indeed.
Therefore not for publication in Scotland.
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Out of curiosity this morning, thought to find an equivalent to BBC in Scotland’s “Covid in Scotland: Where are the latest cases? ” piece but found none.
The nearest I came across first was this “Coronavirus: Latest figures for London” https://archive.vn/R3VPu which is an altogether less “detailed” picture than PQ project.
I didn’t search any of the other regions, but presume this is the level of information in circulation for England generally.
What jumped off the page was the difference between the average positivity per 100k for England of 452 versus Hounslow of 850.
Now compare that 850 with the 299 for the worst affected area of North Lanarkshire presented by PQ, and DRoss being platformed to pronounce Scotland not doing any better than England.
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Also there’s a good presentation of how much better Scotland doing on https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/local
less good https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map
Won’t probably see this on ABC Scotland though.
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