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The below Stuff headline is totally inaccurate, irresponsible, misleading and scaremongering in the extreme and Fairfax media should be ashamed.
“New model shows coronavirus could kill 80,000 Kiwis without lock-down ”
Henry Cooke – 17:44, Mar 26 2020
“It also shows that the lockdown may have to last far longer than a month to keep the strain on the healthcare system manageable.
But one of the paper’s authors said New Zealand’s speed at adopting a lockdown could mean we “stamp out” the disease much faster.”
So which is it? The media’s job is to report facts accurately. Both facts are correct but contradictory and tagged with a sensational and frightening headline. I can see the elderly being terrified after reading this.
“The modelling from the University of Auckland’s Te Punaha Matatini was provided to the Government before it made its lock-down decision, and builds on research overseas that has informed governments around the world in instituting dramatic lockdowns.
On Sunday, initial modelling suggested as many as 60,000 Kiwis could die if stringent measures weren’t implemented.”
So is it 80,000 Kiwis who could die as in the headline, or is it 60,000 as in this paragraph?
Actually, it’s another story in Stuff “Coronavirus: Controls could cut Kiwi deaths from 60,000 to 10,000″ by Nikki Macdonald at 11:25, Mar 22 2020 that gives us those figures which appear to come from the same study. One of the statements is fiction. The other is fact.
Let me be quite clear: This is in no way a criticism of the study or report: “Suppression and Mitigation Strategies for Control of COVID-19 in New Zealand”. The study and its report are extensive and Cooke’s article falls well short of being an accurate reflection of its findings. It’s cherry-picking and interpretation.
“It finds roughly that within 400 days roughly 89 per cent of the population would get infected, far exceeding the capability of our hospital system to cope and causing up to 80,000 deaths.”
This reads as though that was “roughly” one of the key findings of the report and that “roughly” 89 percent would get infected. Scientists don’t do reports “roughly”.
Nobody is going to let the virus run wild for 400 days without some kind of mitigation. Given that we are in a lock-down, which is the ultimate mitigation to stop Covid-19 in its tracks, it is ludicrous and irresponsible for a news organization to publish and highlight figures suggesting otherwise.
“The research models that New Zealand’s hospital [sic] could deal with about 40,000 cases – so if more than 4 million people had the disease it would be vastly exceeded.”
That is of course obvious mathematics and modelling. BUT it’s not going to happen unless we do absolutely nothing for those 400 days so it’s simply irresponsible to suggest this as a possibility.
“Only a full mix of suppression strategies – population-wide social distancing with a lockdown and the closure of almost all businesses and schools – could keep the case numbers down enough for the healthcare system to cope, with a mortality rate of just 0.0004 per cent: About 20 people.”
Well, guess what Henry Cooke? That is exactly what we’re doing.
A more accurate headline might be: “All things being equal, lock-down could result in no more than 20 Coronavirus fatalities in NZ”.
The Stuff article illustrates the dangers of statistical studies, complex mathematical equations and distribution of information without translation, to people who evidently don’t speak or understand the language.
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