Leave voters blamed for spreading Covid – but Remain-voting London and Scotland ignored
Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2021
Academics forget correlation does not mean causation in search of Holy Grail of blaming Brexit
A Facts4EU.Org weekend editorial
New academic research on the geographic prevalence of Covid deaths has been used to blame Leave voters for the prevalence and spread of the virus.
Unfortunately for those prompting the theory – quickly picked up by Remainer media outlets (such as the New European) and pro-EU campaigns (such as the well-funded and smug Better for Britain) – it doesn’t stand the fact test.
Correlation versus causation
The two researchers from Oxford and Glasgow Universities claim that there is a correlation between high Covid death rates in high Leave-voting constituencies and low Covid death rates in Remain voting constituencies, and this may be true.
Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten a cardinal rule of such research – correlation does not mean causation – for outcomes can be caused by other factors that also happen to exist. Thus some constituencies might have a high incidence of elderly people susceptible to Covid, or other factors such as obesity, travel patterns, nursing homes that can exacerbate Covid or factors that might reduce it.
A more obvious example that has been suitably ignored is to look at the larger picture of poor Covid outcomes or vaccine uptakes (which are the researchers’ measurements).
How this is reported within the EU
Unsurprisingly media within the EU were quick to splash this story. Here is the headline from Euronews, which claims to be the most-watched TV news channel in the bloc.
© Euronews 2021
The first area cited in the Euronews report for worst deaths ‘due to Covid’ was Boston in Lincs. According to the Office for National Statistics Boston had a median age of 42.1 years in mid-2016, when the EU Referendum took place. By contrast in London – a heavily-Remain voting part of the country as we state below – the median age was just 34.8 years.
Given that all official statistics show that the mortality rate ‘due to Covid’ increases dramatically with age, this would seem to be an important point.
Scotland and London – Remain-voting but with high Covid rates
Readers might recall that one part of the UK that voted in favour of Remain was Scotland – by 62% to 38% – and yet it is Scotland that has regularly had the worst numbers of Covid cases and deaths. For many weeks it was the Covid capital of Europe according to the WHO – with 10 of the continent’s top 20 regions for Covid being in Scotland. Somehow that doesn’t fit the theory – so it was ignored.
Readers might also be aware that London had an especially high vote in favour of the EU (60% to 40%) – no surprise really when it is claimed by the French Consulate to have anything between 300,000-400,000 French men and women resident in the capital.
This ranks London as anywhere between between fifth and eighth in the world’s cities with a French population (fewer than Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, but possibly more than Nice: 340,017, Nantes: 340,017, Montpelier: 309,346 and Strasbourg: 280,966.) Then there all the other EU residents and beneficiaries of free movement. Should they be considered as “anti-vaxxers” and “anti-social superspreaders”, whatever those terms might mean?
Yet, the reality is that one in three Londoners have apparently not even had one jab – but nearly two out of three voted for the EU.
“Does not compute, does not compute” a rational person might suggest. Time for the authors to move on?
Observations
The efforts to smear Leave voters are really becoming rather tiresome. The latest is clearly an attempt to make out that those people against vaccines and lockdowns are knuckle-dragging troglodytes who also happened to vote for Brexit and must have been right wing nut jobs – rather than to consider they are simply standing up for their liberties and defending the Nuremberg Convention that rules Citizens cannot be forced to have vaccines against their will.
Reports of children in German schools being shamed in front of classmates if they are unvaccinated and new Austrian laws to fine unvaccinated citizens do not sit easy with most British people – whether they voted Leave or Remain.
Those Remainers guilty of talking-up their own supposed intellectual superiority by trying to demean people who think for themselves should stop playing games. We can all see they have already given up any possible moral superiority by their craven and judgemental name calling.
The reality is there were people from all walks of life that voted Leave or Remain and that afterwards respected the democratic vote and moved on, putting their shoulder to the job of making it work for the best of all.
Ironically, had we not left the EU then the UK Government would not have had the courage to go with British regulatory approval of the vaccines instead of waiting on the long-drawn out EU process.
Whichever way people voted it is time to be looking forward at what can be achieved rather than still seeking to blame Brexit – like the falsehoods around HGV driver shortages – for every challenge we face.
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[ Sources: World Health Organisation | OWID/Johns Hopkins University | Euronews | Office for National Statistics population figures by region and age ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sat 18 Dec 2021
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