It seems to me that a focus on national borders really screws up people's perception of what is happening with #COVID19. If you compare the whole of Scotland with the whole of England you can construct an argument that says the government in charge of Scotland has done roughly >
seven times better than the government in charge of England. But if you compare the central belt with the rest of Scotland you can construct an argument that says the government in charge of the rest of Scotland has done roughly seven times better than the government in charge >
of the central belt. But of course that's the same government in both places. In reality it looks like demographics and geography have a lot more to do with success against #COVID19 than government policy. Why do we find that so difficult to acknowledge?
The focus on national borders also really hampers serious examination of where government has failed. Every conversation becomes a comparison rather than an assessment. Policy failures leading to unnecessary deaths do not become okay if something worse happened in England.
And if we don't properly assess failure we cannot learn from it and do better in future. Instead we just reinforce a false narrative. The irony of the idiots at Gretna was that those driving north past them were getting closer to a high risk hotspot (Glasgow), not further away.
Really good thread from @__ambell with a more detailed look at this in terms of data, differences and how differences are being reported. The point about conflating *reporting* of deaths with *occurrence* of deaths is also critical. These are all choices.
