Fact Checker (former)
Health
Allison Pearson claimed Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance cherry-picked rising hospital bed occupancy figures in the coronavirus briefing last week. They didn’t. Read
Economy, Business & Finance
We don’t know how much better the UK-Japan trade deal is compared to the EU-Japan deal, but it isn’t expected to be worse. Read
Health
A Spectator article suggests a new study which found mask-wearing didn’t lower Covid-19 infection rates is proof masks don’t work. But the study didn’t look at whether masks help others. Read
Health
The research claims dog walkers have a higher risk of catching Covid-19 but it has a number of methodological flaws. Read
The post claims that the Covid-19 death rate is much lower than the estimated 0.5%-1% and makes baseless claims that a vaccine would kill more people than the virus. Read
Health
The claim made by Independent SAGE is based on the £12 billion cost of the test and trace programme, which is mostly testing not tracing. Read
Health
New trial results show rapid lateral flow tests return very few false positives but a considerable number of false negatives. Read
Health
Ruth Jones claimed the contact tracing system in England costs £1,700 per person. This was based on a calculation which was out by a factor of ten. Read
Europe
The Daily Mirror claimed a new poll shows that 62% think Britain was wrong to leave the EU. Read
A post on Facebook compares the death toll this year in England in Wales with the UK death toll in previous years to incorrectly suggest we are on course for a normal yearly death toll. Read
