Thread by @jburnmurdoch

A side note: I’ve seen it said that the media is putting a positive spin on things despite SAGE members and other experts being much more worried.

This is a surprise to me, since the people we speak to for our reporting and quote in our articles are SAGE members and experts 🤔

We probably spent 20+ hours each reporting these stories, running well into Friday night and Saturday. This involved speaking to experts in immunology, epidemiology and broader public health, including the very people who did the analysis on vaccine efficacy and transmissibility.

I get why some think there’s not sufficient alarm. 150k have died in the UK, and a reluctance to act early has played a part.

But to accuse us of spinning when we’re working our asses off to get data & expert comment to the public as quickly as possible, is quite something.

I was asked today why I don’t speak to epidemiologists for our stories. I do, they’re quoted in them.

The real issue seems to be "the epidemiologists who did the research & wrote the reports don't share my interpretation of their work. And they’re not using 🚨 in their quotes."

Today it was 'ok you spoke to the scientists doing the work on vaccine escape and transmissibility, but you didn’t speak to this one particular person [who is not involved in that work at all but who I like]'.

Not helpful.

To conclude, this work is stressful enough without people jumping in with completely baseless accusations of bias and worse, usually demonstrating a complete ignorance of what we’ve actually written along the way.

We can deal with it, but we’d rather not have to.