There’s not a word about Scotland’s current 4 point lead, 31.5% to 27.6%, over England in delivering booster jags or the evidence that the pace shows no sign of slacking.
There’s sad desperation in how this graph is read:
The Scottish Government target date is ‘by the end of January’ but based on BBC Scotland’s estimate they’ll miss by one or two days. Really? They estimate based on current trends and ignore the obvious probability that the rate will be accelerated?
And, what about that angle of climb? You can do a lot with scaling the axes. See this alternative, more encouraging version of the same trend?
Looking at the above, it’s hard to see England completing the task till March. How will that be reported?
Footnote:
In the second paragraph, Sleight writes:
There are fears the strain could be more infectious, cause more serious illness and be better at evading vaccines than previous variants.
Cause more serious illness? Isn’t the evidence the other way on that?
Talking-up Scotland 
Not like the BBC to try to make a drama out of a crisis , eh ? But only in Scotland !
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I thought the entire BBC Scotland Politics page smacked of scraping the barrel. It was led by the fact that ‘some’ people (one person’s testimony was given) had been refused a third booster despite being scheduled for it because they were ‘three days’ short of 6 months. This refusal occurred the day after the decision had been taken to reduce the gap to three months, but on the day before the change was due to come into place. Then we had a Tory MSP saying ‘some people’ in Fife had been refused, and then the rentaquotes, Jackie Baillie and the Tory MSP who is a GP, forecasting chaos. By the way does the Tory MSP do ant GP work?
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Did that Tory GP not tell us he did 80 phone consultations in one day so he must work his ar** off.
Sotrovimab: New COVID drug never heard of it before but quick approval which is good but very different in the way the Valneva drug has been treated.
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Of course the BBC will report–“its not a race”.
Unless England wins, then by a sleight of hand, it will be headline news TWICE.
Once— that England “won”.
Second–That Scotland/Wales/N Ireland “lost”.
Predictable, pathetic, colonial broadcasting to the “territories”!
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A masterpiece in exploiting statistics selectively and on a subject whose outcome is actually influenced by multiple factors. But the BBC Scotland journalist speculates anyway – that’s OK – but does so within an imposed negative frame.
The same challenge could have been analysed in a similar way but with the positive frame of present and past successful track record on vaccinations of the Scottish Government and crucially of Scotland’s healthcare professionals.
And within this long piece what is the conclusion? Eligible people ‘offered’ (the almost trivial bit) by end January will result, according to the BBC, all eligible people being actually vaccinated around 5 February!
If that comes to pass then it will be another fantastic achievement for NHS Scotland.
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That positive frame rarely spotted
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Aye spotted that Sleight of hand and keyboard earlier and noted it specifically had Comments open… Not surprisingly led by a negative comment but surprisingly only 8 comments at the time of writing. Did SiU not get the memo ?
What I found hilarious was Sleight having steadfast avoided all comparison to England, and laboured at length to explain HIS analysis hitting 5th February, only then does “end of January” as the SG target date allow “Boris Johnson has set the same target for England” to make a guest appearance with absolutely none of the preceding context.
Their desperation for a daily dose of negativity is showing signs of strain…
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Cause more serious illness? Isn’t the evidence the other way on that?
Only if the vaccines still work.
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https://theconversation.com/it-looks-like-omicron-causes-milder-illness-is-this-how-covid-becomes-endemic-172754
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https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrica-festival-halted-after-36-test-positive-covid-site-2021-12-01/
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Maybe I should complain to the BBC about the SNHS because I missed my vaccine booster, because of me being daft and not leaving enough time to get to the centre for the appointment! It’s disgusting! 😉
New appointment made no problem, people very efficient on the phone. 🙂
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When ‘targets’ really became a ‘tsunami’ during the Labour Government of 1997/2010, one related to educational attainment (in England) and in one of the “Education, Education, Education” Acts, it was stated that if the target was not met, the Secretary of State for Education (Mr David Blunkett) would have to resign. When the due date arrived, the target was missed by one of two percentage points, at which the media were exultant and Mr Blunkett resigned (A practice that seems to have vanished). What was completely ignored by the media was that there had been a substantial advance from the baseline towards the target. Things had, indeed, only got better.
Since then targets have become a rod to beat people with. Notice how, despite significant progress towards various climate change targets set by ‘this SNP Government’, some indicative interim targets have not been met. Cue media shouts of FAILURE!!!!!!, followed by linear extrapolations from these ‘shortfalls’ to indicate a likely gross failure. There is no recognition of the fact that in the interim, things have been learned and that strategies can be adjusted and even given more resources.
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