Tom Harwood: Media too often alights upon the most extreme Covid scenario

On 15 September 2021, the headline of the Guardian newspaper read “Act urgently or face up to 7,000 a days in hospital, scientists tell PM”

We were warned that “the UK is now at a pivot point”, and “the burden on health and care settings could rise very quickly”.

Just for context, 7,000 hospitalisations a day would be 3,000 higher - yes, 3,000 higher - than the deadliest peak of the pandemic, last winter.

Well what has happened since last month’s doom mongering? The latest data from the official government dashboard shows that hospitalisations have almost halved. From over 1,000 a day down to the mid 600s.On 15 September, the same day as that Guardian headline, we had Dr Andrew Lilico on this show. He forensically took apart that weird and wild model of 7,000 hospitalisations a day.

Lilico told me that the media too often alights upon the most extreme scenario. As happened in this case. He was absolutely right, and we can see it in the data.

Hospitalisations rose very slightly a couple of weeks ago, and have been falling since. Any fool could look at this graph and see the idea we could reach 7,000 hospitalisations this month as an absurdity.

Covid cases, meanwhile - which are a leading indicator of hospitalisations - have bumped up and down with no sign of exponential growth. They are even a lot lower now than they were before our so called ‘freedom day’.

Enacting Step 4 of the roadmap when the government did in July was absolutely right. It was timed to perfection. We are clearly in as good a place as we could hope to be.

Nightclubs open, children back at school, and we're clearly immune enough to keep even the Delta variant bumping around rather than soaring to hundreds of thousands of cases a day. And even though Sir Keir Starmer won’t say it out loud, you can see what they really think from the Labour Party conference. Barely a mask to be seen. Labour delegates enjoying poorly ventilated drinks receptions, shoulder to shoulder with other maskless guests.

A crowded leader's speech, with just a small smattering of face coverings.Don't believe their theatre in Parliament, conference showed what they really think. And they're right.

I'm not counting my chickens here, it's prudent to keep a low intervention toolbox just in case, but as things stand we're in a fairly good place.