Some people are suggesting that the recent surges and drop-offs in Covid infections in England and Scotland can be pinned on the football. The idea is that infections rose as fans mixed during the Euro 2020 championship and declined once Scotland was eliminated and England lost in the final.
It’s true that the summer surges in England and Scotland broadly coincided with when their teams were active in the tournament. Scotland’s new daily infections dropped off a few days after its exit on June 22nd, and England’s a few days after their loss to Italy on July 11th. Also, the male to female ratio of new infections briefly went up during the tournament.
However, that’s about where the coincidences end. The fact that the decline has continued for weeks in Scotland suggests it’s not a short term effect.
Perhaps more important, though, is the different shape of the curves in the two countries during June when both teams were still in the competition.
Scotland saw its daily ‘case’ count hit record highs on June 28th-30th following the team’s three games in the competition.
England also played those three games in the group stage, but by the same point at the end of June the country’s new daily ‘cases’ were a fraction of its winter peak, on a par with autumn levels.
If it was all about the football, why did Scotland’s three matches cause such a spike whereas the same three matches in England caused only a ripple? If the football was the cause you would expect parity of effect in both countries.
Furthermore, after the tournament prevalence was then very high, and the only form of mixing that stopped was watching football. None of the Covid models has suggested that the rate of spread depends entirely on one form of mixing such as this. Is the suggestion really that Covid spreads if and only if there is an international football tournament on? The idea is plainly implausible, but it’s what seems to be implied by the claim that the fall was caused by the end of the Euros.
Mixing to watch football is likely to have contributed to spread in June and July. But how much of that spread would have happened in a similar amount of time anyway? It’s hard to tell.
The lack of correspondence between the curves in England and Scotland during June, when both teams were playing their three group stage games, plus the continued decline in infections in Scotland weeks later, is an indication that football did not play a large role in the rise and fall of the Delta surge in the U.K.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The government in 2020 – “We need to dish out money as quickly as possible to anyone who asks for it.”
Labour etc – “Do it quicker!”
Yes and Labour wanted / want earlier, harder and longer lockdowns, too.
In the North West it is well known that the curry industry enjoyed record, erm , “sales” during the “Eat out to Help out” free for all. Some of the businesses had rather short lifespans and mysteriously disappeared once the free cash scheme ended. I don’t know why. Very strange.
“Covid” was the biggest fraud in history
Governments everywhere stole our money and gave it to rich firms selling “tests” and “vaccines” that were not fit for purpose
True and Nut zero running a very close second!
Actually Nut Zero may be bigger as it will end up having a much longer run
Members of the House of Lords had fingers in the pie too. Baroness Michelle Mone was associated with the PPE scandal. She is currently on leave of absence. I suppose it was only several millions of pounds of public money anyway.
Ah yes Michelle. Did us for a paltry twenty six million (£) wasn’t it? She would probably be classed as a lightweight dipper.
The intention behind all the ridiculous and apparently reckless spending is to bankrupt the country. Clearly the Tories have been given that honour and Kneel has been given the job of selling the country. I expect a financial disaster within the next two years. And of course once the wholly engineered financial crisis hits some pretty severe restrictions on human rights will be required because even some of the sheep will be upset.
Didn’t Nadine Dorries in her book describe ‘blob’ controlling the tories and their intention was wipe out the Conservative party. That would make sense because if that was their intention what would they be doing any different. I would also extend that to what would the Archbishop of Canterbury be doing differently is the intention was to destroy the church from within?
Precisely, but I have long held the view that bankrupting the country is deliberate. Just look at the latest article ATL – the Navy spending £2.4 million on a diversity team when the service can’t even manage to protect us from dinghy invaders.
It’s a very sick joke.
Rather like the Pentagon shifting uncomfortably on a $2.3trn unexplained deficit the day before a provident ‘9/11’ airliner hitting amidships and destroying all the records, there was surely no more expeditious an opportunity to hide an awful lot of skulduggery and double-dealing than a seasonally normal respiratory virus the better to enrich the usual favoured few.
I am sure that their thirty pieces of silver will ease the progress of their souls.
I need to bind my head up tightly to try and prevent it exploding. I’ve run out of fingers and toes to keep count on, even at a billion per digit.
I really feel that a trip out with a pair of large pliers is called for.
My wife was subject to a fraud over the Covid support for business but the bank involved, HMRC and the regulators were not interested.