A Place to Stand

    The media have been pushing a claim that the heat wave has killed 760 people. Remarkably the UPI report, the media's own prime source, on this omitted to say where it came from which certainly looks suspiciously like they don't care in the least about its veracity.

    After a certain amount of searching I found it originated with a theoretical calculation by a Professor Armstrong of the London Hospital of Tropical Diseases, based on a previous model he had made up.  In his favour he actually said 650 people but, the media being what it is, that got mistranslated into 760. None of this peer review rubbish when a good scare story is needed.

   I have put up this comment:

"Or 760 as the media have translated it.

Clearly the calculation is entirely theoretical and the professor has not attempted to find a single one of these.

I would be interested to know how many, by the same calculation, die each year because of cold .  I would assume, since cold is much more dangerous than heat and winter lasts much longer the total must be at least hundreds of times greater - and at least half could be prevented by ending the government's deliberate policy of increasing fuel poverty.

Unaccountably the media seem less interested in the professor's figures of the 10s, perhaps hundreds,  of thousands killed deliberately killed by our politicians.   Assuming winter cold does kill 200 times as many and that half could be saved if energy costs were not a significant limit that makes government  responsible for killing 76,000 people annually. Doubtless if this is not the figure the professor agrees with he will say what is.

Of course a hundred times greater figure of deliberate state murder, even if not disputed by the LSHTM is unlikely to be considered as newsworthy by our media - or alternately so newsworthy as  to have to be censored. "


   I'll let you know if  Armstrong  officially gives a better figure than 76,000, as he certainly will if doing science rather than just pandering to the media scaremongers but until they do 76,000 seems to be at least as reliable a factoid as the 760.

   I'll also let you know if the LSHTM issue a statement that the government is indeed deliberately killing 76,000 a year (or any other number)

   And if the media report it as if it were as important as this scare story. Don't hold your breath.