Earlier today, Amanda Pritchard, the head of NHS England, made the following claim:
There is no doubt that the NHS is running hot and there are some very real pressures on health and social care. We have had 14 times the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 than we saw this time last year.
Needless to say, this was faithfully reported by various media outlets. For instance, ITV News ran a story on it headlined: “Hospital Covid admissions 14 times higher than this time in 2020.”
There was only one problem: it isn’t true. The number of COVID-19 patients currently in English hospitals is 7,510 according to the Government’s Coronavirus Dashboard, whereas the number in November 2020 was over 11,000.
When the figures being reported by ITV – and Sky News, and iNews – were challenged, NHS England issued a ‘clarification’, explaining that she was comparing August 2021 with August 2020, neglecting to mention that in August of last year the virus had dwindled away to almost nothing. The reason she hadn’t cited more up to date figures, according to the poor flak at NHS England tasked with explaining away this misleading stat, was that “these are the latest figures they have”.
Unfortunately, the cover up was no more true than the initial claim. NHS England has access to more up to date figures than August of this year – the latest figures on the Coronavirus Dashboard, supplied by NHS England, are for November 2nd.
Worse, it seems very unlikely that Ms Pritchard was comparing August 2021 with August 2020 – NHS England just said that because that’s the only way they could get the ’14 times’ figure to work. Christopher Snowdon – yes, that Chris Snowdon – has helpfully tracked down the real source of this bogus stat in a piece for CapX:
Something about this claim dimly rang a bell with me so I went looking for previous mentions of it. This led me to Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, who had used almost exactly the same words in a press release a few weeks ago. He said: “There is no doubt the NHS is running hot, with the highest ever number of patients seen in A&E in September, 14-times as many covid patients in hospital compared to the same month last year and record 999 ambulance calls.”
Pritchard seems to have liked this statistic so much that she repeated Powis’s comments almost verbatim, complete with the reference to the NHS ‘running hot’. The only words she missed out were ‘in September’. Or maybe an assistant copied and pasted it into a briefing for her. Whatever the reason, a statistic that checked out in September and was just about defensible in October, so long as it was put in proper context, had become a lie by November.
In the not too distance past, it was the the lockdown sceptics who were accused of trafficking in misinformation. A few more howlers like this one, and people will start to realise it’s the lockdown zealots who are pumping out fake news to promote their agenda, not us.
Stop Press: Full Fact has checked Ms Pritchard’s claim and found it wanting. Read the full report here. Contains the following graph:
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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.
It can be seen from her profile on ‘Linked In’ that she is a career penpusher – overpaid and under qualified. She’s never had a job ‘on the shop floor’ or at the sharp end. Yet someone like this – with a degree in ‘modern history’ – is in charge of our health system. No wonder she’s out of her depth at the very first challenge.
Never mind – with her profile, she’ll no doubt be in line for ”Health Secretary” if anyone would vote for her. If we’re ever allowed to vote again, that is.
Christopher Snowdon – yes, that Chris Snowdon – has helpfully tracked down the real source of this bogus stat in a piece for CapX:
>Something about this claim dimly rang a bell with me so I went looking for previous mentions of it. This led me to Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, who had used almost exactly the same words in a press release a few weeks ago. He said: “There is no doubt the NHS is running hot, with the highest ever number of patients seen in A&E in September, 14-times as many covid patients in hospital compared to the same month last year and record 999 ambulance calls.”
NHS England : Press Release 14 October 2021
NHS staff experience busiest September on recordhttps://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/10/nhs-staff-experience-busiest-september-on-record/
Professor Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director said:
“There is no doubt the NHS is running hot …”
[…]
14 October 2021 = the day before David Amess MP was murdered …
An INClusive
= 666 months, 666 days since Boris Johnson was born
( Note : Normal date arithmetic to 15th Oct )
and an INClusive :
= 9 months, 11 days
since Boris announced Lockdown #3 on 4 th… Read more »
Head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard “NHS is running hot” on 8 th November 2021 :
= 9 years, 11 days
= 119 months
since UK PM David Cameron vetoed the new EU Treaty on 8 th December 2011 …
Correction :
Head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard “NHS is running hot” on 8 th November 2021 :
= 9 years, 11 months
= 119 months
since UK PM David Cameron vetoed the new EU Treaty on 8 th December 2011 …
Bonkers numerology
Why in my experience do all the particularly useless and professionally inept ‘senior’ women in a working environment have this same hairdo and same stretched insincere grin? Sorry I don’t normally criticise based on looks or gender but that photograph insenses me in the same way as any of Hancock, Javid etc. do.
So a senior figure in a large organisation having absolutely no clue about key numbers that are within their responsibility for resource allocation. What else has this executive been doing if they don’t look at their own statistics?
They are fucking shameless murdering LIARS every last one of them. There is a special place in Hell reserved for the lot of ’em. How desperate do you have to be to keep making up this FULL FAT bullshit? How stupid do you have to be to keep believing it?
“How stupid do you have to be to keep believing it?”
Go to your nearest supermarket and observe the people spraying the handles of their shopping trolleys. Then you will know.
Yes I’m sure he knows that. We know one through our friend they are married. You would not believe the things he says to his wife. Words fail me. She’s shows him articles lots of them, videos by well qualified decent guys and gals. All he can say is this…..’how do you know these people are who they say they are’!!!! Fortunately we don’t see him…..otherwise I’d get very very angry.
Well said Ian 100% agree. I’d logged out but logged back in to tell you 👍. Stupid is one word there are too many to type!!!
“Head of NHS England Caught Out Spreading
MisinformationLIES About Covid Hospital Admissions”DS please don’t beat about the bush – thanks.
Well knock me down with a soggy face mask; the head of NHS England has been caught lying. The day must have a y in it.
Given that she took over from the previous liar why are we surprised? In the state sector an incompetent boss always has someone worse than him/her so they’re not shown up.
The only outcome will be that the copier/paster will be sacked.
It’s OK, I’ve cracked it.
They are just playing one of those funny word games, where the players have to insert a Rolling Stones lyric into the messaging …
Amanda Pritchard – You make a grown man cry …
That’s so funny 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Westminster has made the decision to terrorise the British people with lies and propaganda for nearly two years. Everything it says or publishes is to be instantly dismissed as rubbish until proper democracy is restored.
So basically I presume this is propaganda to get the mindless TV consumers to rush out and get boosted, “doing their bit for the NHS” and all that.
And if the Booster is so vital why does it not appear on the NHS ‘vaccination’ record?
Hospitals in USA and in first world countries are refusing life-saving Ivermectin treatment even with court orders. Big Pharma doing everything they can to jab us no matter what, while alternative COVID cures EXIST! There happens to be heavy censorship who are looking for these treatments. The Research Is Clear: Ivermectin Is a Safe, Effective Treatment for COVID. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
They can lie as much as they want, it doesn’t matter, the MSM will ignore it.
The vaxtards will believe it, bang their saucepans on Thursday and demand another booster ASAP.
See my confirmation of Full Fact Lies immediately above.
MrTea excellent comment!
There is no justification for a leader in the NHS to utter a boldface…mistake. She doesn’t need data from August or October. She should be connected to the work enough to know that numbers are down. If you want more money or more concern, try this thing called honesty. Oh wait, that would make people less concerned and accepting of panic.
Toby’s stop press by Full Fact
I would not question Toby’s journalistic credentials but late last week I posted a graphic here of a Full Fact ‘story’ that contained anti sceptic lies and mist-tuths as plain as your face.
I’m not in a position to trail back to it but I can assure you it is there.
Full Fact, Ful of shite IMHO.
Here we go. Posted in the comments to a 4th November DS article Joe Bidens Mask Mandate.
Full Fact telling lies about the Nuremberg code and saying the AZ vaccine has been fully tested and Cleared
Absolutely disgraceful. How does that woman sleep at night?
So I guess we can expect Facebook and Twitter to label the relevant stories with covid misinformation labels and to suspend the NHS and MSM accounts that spread this nonsense.
“Now comes the part where we throw our heads back in laughter…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q35PgSXhKg
https://youtu.be/uCGD9dT12C0
Theme song for the article.
I’m sick to death of these arseholes spreading misinformation and getting away with it. I’m banned from twitter for spreading “misinformation” because I said lockdown clearly don’t work. Apparently it was harmful content. How is it that the media and people like this never get punished?
Lockdowns don’t work. They haven’t worked anywhere. Anybody with a smidgen of common sense would know that Lockdowns are the height of stupidity.
I despair why don’t they….
These awful NHS bureaucrats. Why don’t they do something useful such as increase critical care capacity?
The journos were more than happy to report this nonsense, as long as they covered it with ‘says NHS chief’ or some such duplicitous form of words.
She was head of NHS Improvement between 2019 and 2021
Listed among the improvements made are…….. Oooops!!! apologies there were none
Joined the NHS in 1997, so it’s 25 years of serial failure rewarded eventually by the top job
That’s public service for you.
The picture tells you all you need to know.
A woke, useless liar who bows the knee to the LGBT agenda.
We really are at war folks, medically, and for truth.
Changing the subject if I may, Neil. Was it you who mentioned some time back that you were hoping to go to the bike show at the NEC? If so, and in case you weren’t aware, it’s double vaccination/negative test 48 hours before bollocks.
Note that full fact picked up on this immediately.
Only because it made people wonder about how ineffective the clot-shots are.
“Oh shit, the stupid bitch has come out with such an obvious whopper that we’ll lose whatever tattered remnants of credibility we still have unless we point out that she’s lying”
A stopped clock is right twice a day!
I think that comment proves that the Nudge Unit does employ external apparatchiks to actively monitor what spews out of the mouths of liars like Pritchard, so they can get their “excuses” in early.
What an obviously stupid and very desperate tactic – being on the back foot habitually in the face of data that continues to destroy the narrative, let’s get a “Bancroftian” figure to say absolute bollox, and then ” retract/revise/disemble/deflect” – however that tactic has crashed and burned brightly given the statement that “its the latest data we have” has been smashed out of the stadium – quoting the NHS/HMG/DHSC/ONS data already published – you just have to laugh.
Keep “backing this horse” – at least you give everyone a belly laugh in the process.
We’ve had 20 months of lies
Actually it could be a useful exaggeration. It’s so absurd that anyone with a modicum of understanding will question its truth. Bring on more unbelievable whoppers. How many people will believe that factor of 14 when they stop to think?
How many stop to think?
If they haven’t so far…
It’s very easy to dismiss as a simple faux pas. And there is a lot of cognitive dissonance to work through before the light comes on.
Sheeple don’t think.
Zombies don’t think.
Morons don’t think. That only leaves us.
At least the Mail is on the case https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10177849/NHS-boss-Amanda-Pritchard-accused-abusing-Covid-statistics.html
Boris dodges Commons sleaze showdown claiming ‘nothing more to say’
https://mol.im/a/10177829
Lets go Johnson (and his NHS cronies)
‘Care bosses call on No10 to ditch no jab, no job policy’
https://mol.im/a/10177945
I must be missing something still.Covid 19 has all the cardinal symptoms of known respiratory disorders.We all know that the PCR test is fraudulent again how do we determine a true case?.All those victims of the state Euthanasia programme I attended to last year had either no or generic symptoms of respiratory disease.I had full multiple exposures and all I caught was a speeding ticket on the way home.
It’s not like a government official and the press to spread misinformation, what’s going on? They have been so reliable for the last eighteen months!
Before that, they were all liars though 🤔
Except on Climate Change of course; on that they are as true as every word in the Bible! Oh.
Oh, don’t even get me started with that nonsense.
They were all proven right that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that this nation was a national security threat to America. Iraq, as it turns out, was planning to steal some of Americans freedoms. So that plan was nipped in the bud. We were good to listen to those government officials and those think tanks and the press.
That reminds me, what was the “official” reasoning behind Gulf War Syndrome again? It was nothing to do with the jabs was it?
I don’t know if you and others have noticed that over the past week numbers on the Government dashboard for Covid have been delayed or qualified by omissions. Are they massaging the figures? Surely not!
Well looking at the inflation figures that were massaged (hedonically adjusted to include things that are falling in price and exclude things getting more expensive) they’ve just about given up even trying to lie and knowing the so-called Bank (central committee on credit pricing) of England will ignore their own remits to control inflation.
You also have to consider the recent fuel crisis, nobody using Texas tea for months on end, so they had to stockpile it. But they ran out.
Bit like a hosepipe ban after it’s been raining non stop for ten months.
Perfectly believable.
Nah, can’t be. Not the immovable pillars of truth!
I think they got demolished a while ago!
What about the pillars of integrity?
Those too!
How much more of this government corruption and NHS lies are the general public expected to take? I want the whole lot flushed out with Jeyes Fluid as the stench is unbearable.
And I hope Sky and co., issue a retraction. I know, I know, fat chance of that…
A lot more. They really want to test whether the public will tolerate a compulsory annual vaccination regime.