I expect carefully compiled information from a 'quality newspaper'. They can even boast of the self-proclaimed 'corona reporter' Maarten Keulemans, who - presumably at the request of the ministry - is fed by the RIVM with facts that fit into the government narrative. In the Volkskrant, this corona journalist was allowed to go all out on a spread about herd immunity on Saturday. In The digital version supported by animated figures that change color when infected. Is the UK putting its house in order?
No fewer than four authors/editors have been involved in the content of the 'analysis': Ronald Veldhuizen, Maarten Keulemans, Corinne van Duin and Janne Heling. They thank Casper Albers, professor of statistics at the University of Groningen and Quirine ten Bosch, infectious disease modeller at Wageningen University. I can assume that they have read along. No less than six professionals! That raises expectations!
What surprises me above all is: how do you find such a club together. Six people of whom you can assume that they are not only interested but also read and aware of the state of science. Especially if they are going to actively work on such a special. However, the document shows a few points of incomprehension, not to say far-reaching ignorance and ignorance or lack of knowledge. We now know that about Maarten Keulemans, but those five others, they should correct him, right?
Below are the 'Mistakes' that I, as an interested layman, fell over. These are telling details. If you understand how things work, you don't leave something like that alone. It suggests that this corona team is being interesting without a good understanding of the virus, they just overlooked too many things.
The animations on the square
"Even if two-thirds of the square is contaminated [...] the coronavirus is still around until almost everyone on the square is infected."
Most, rather static, animations take place on a square with stationary people. One infected male walks in between. The process of infecting that they try to show is difficult to comprehend. The infected male infects a few others and they pass on the infection, as can be seen from the green color. Finally.
First: a square is outside. It is inconceivable that almost everyone there is spontaneously infected. So a wrong image is being portrayed; The reader has now been casually familiarized with the idea of being infected outside. All of them, in fact. However, there are numerous studies that make it clear that the infection problem is indoors and not in an outdoor situation.
To avoid the appearance of cherry-picking, I urge you to search for it yourself. For example, start with this search: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=covid+transmission+indoors . This also applies to the claims I make later in the article: check them and try to form a well-founded opinion. Look for evidence to the contrary, too!
Male R=18 infects 12 people
The little green man with corona infects two others, as an example of the effect of R=3. The influenza male, which is described as R=2, infects one other person. The measles man, R=18, infects twelve... What do you actually want to illustrate, what kind of weird thing is that, in a childish information video. The R stands for the number of people who infect someone. That's not understandable, is it? Is that deliberately misrepresenting information – but why...
R=18: When entering the square, 1 person infects 12 others. We don't know why only 12, because an R=18 is illustrated.
Green = sick, blue is (now) immune.
Those distances seem at least 1.5 meters...
Most of the puppets are well, neatly at a distance of 1.5 meters, from each other. This clearly has no influence on contamination. Ok, that's a wrong signal – at least I don't care, because it's outside, but in the context of the measures it doesn't seem well thought out. By the way, they also look away from each other and that in the open air. Infecting is thus absolutely impossible.
Everyone gets infected, quickly or slowly – or is it?
In the corona and measles simulation, all dolls are infected. Apparently not with influenza, see the final shot below. This will erroneously understand that a lower R number means that fewer people will become infected. However, it doesn't have to mean that. Elements are smuggled in that are actually only distracting. While other, important elements have been omitted: existing immunity, for example. Very important, not shown, not involved in the story – research enough to pay some attention to this. Or is the view that there is no basic or cross-immunity in a healthy immune system, despite everything, still being held?
Final situation in influenza simulation.
Enough about those illustrations. If you want to see educational illustrations and animations, check out this article in El Pais. That is months old (and still underestimated the role of aerosols) but already gave many times better insight than the nonsensical vaccination panic we are in now.
I understand that the language area and therefore budget play a role, but in the UK things are simply presented incorrectly. On to the lyrics. Never before have we had such a great interest in correct information, and then the Volkskrant achieves this... Reprehensible, reprehensible, fill in the blanks.
Misleading texts
Wrong view of infection
After talking about the influenza and coronavirus, it says:
"The measles virus, which spreads through the air"
This suggests that only measles is spread through the air, unlike influenza and corona. If you are not well versed in language, you may say 'no, it doesn't say that'. However, it does mean that. If a commentator discusses two footballers and then says of a third 'who is left-footed', then the other two are not. Then he should have said 'who is also left-footed' or 'who is left-footed just like X. A journalist from a quality newspaper, with of course the accompanying careful use of language, knows that.
It is not only incorrect but also extremely harmful. As long as the population is kept in the dark about the modes of infection, they will not be able to protect themselves against them.
The A-word is still on the blacklist
A few weeks ago, Keulemans found out that he had cleaned shopping carts for nothing. So he did not follow the developments for almost a year. It looks like the coin still hasn't quite fallen.
The fact that corona (and influenza too, for that matter) 'goes through the air' just doesn't want to go in. Anything but aerosols. Is that misplaced pride, having to admit that as a 'corona journalist' you have been wrong for a year? Is it ignorance, RIVM propaganda or should people be kept afraid and ignorant because they are willing to do anything?
We have just heard from de Jonge that we have Korean figures in terms of vaccination readiness. Perhaps Korean information is part of that.
Hysterical R-number
"The new variants [..] such as the British and South African [...] have an R-number that is half a point to a whole point higher."
Am I misunderstanding the word 'point'? It's about the difference between the well-known virus and the British version with R numbers of 0.9 and 1.3 respectively (which is probably too high, by the way). Why is that difference of 0.4 between half a point and a whole point...? The statistician in question must have shouted something about points somewhere and someone thought that sounded good. But suppose the R-number 0.9 plus 1 point = 1.9, so that is more than twice as contagious! If you are even a little bit into the corona figures, you know that that is really big nonsense, those are just culpable lies. You could almost say: fear-mongering. Or is one point 1/10? Then, assuming 0.9, it is about super infectors with R-values from 0.905 to 0.91.
Superspreadevents work differently
The fact that the word 'superspreadevent' has now been removed from the blacklist of the Volkskrant has not led to advancing insight, let alone that it shows it. A Superspread event is caused by a room with a lot of contaminated breath. This can come from 1 or more people who have stayed in the room for a longer period of time. That is not clear from the text.
In the illustrative animation of superspread events (yes: inside! it apparently went too far for them to have that take place on the square) only people who come close to an infected person are infected. This is contrary to everything that scientific research, clinical and observational, has shown about superspread events. You could perhaps display a 'superspreader'; someone who emits an above-average amount of virus, a phenomenon that is being researched because it has been seen but not yet explained.
What we see in this animation is exactly NOT how super spread events are created. If you want to show that, it would be better to start with one dancing infected male, sweating and panting. A group that comes in a little later (male can actually leave) is then infected in its entirety in one go. This is due to the contaminated breath, in which aerosols transport the virus particles like nano-zeppelins. Which brings us back to the visuals.
In summary: the Volkskrant gives a wrong picture of how infections work and leaves people in the dark so that they do not understand how they can can protect themselves cheaply and effectively.
This is not an accident, this is structural. De Volkskrant is one of the most important spreaders of disinformation.
