Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom

Topic code	Area of conflict	Decision linked to
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=aa}}	politics, ethnic relations, and conflicts involving Armenia, Azerbaijan, or both	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Armenia and Azerbaijan
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=crypto}}	blockchain and cryptocurrencies	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=kurd}}	Kurds and Kurdistan	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Kurds and Kurdistan
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=mj}}	Michael Jackson	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Michael Jackson
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=pw}}	professional wrestling	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Professional wrestling
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=rusukr}}	the Russo-Ukrainian War	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Russo-Ukrainian War
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=sasg}}	South Asian social groups	Wikipedia:General sanctions/South Asian social groups
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=syria}}	the Syrian Civil War and ISIL	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Syrian Civil War and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=uku}}	measurement units in the United Kingdom	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Units in the United Kingdom
{{COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom|topic=uyghur}}	Uyghurs, Uyghur genocide, or topics that are related to Uyghurs or Uyghur genocide	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Uyghurs

Demographics

I applaud editors of this article for including data such as "Coronavirus risk and ethnicity" and not including data such as "Coronavirus risk and gender". Otherwise, article might be contaminated by such inessential and misleading phrases: "In the UK, men made up 46% of diagnosed cases but almost 60% of deaths and 70% of admissions to intensive care units" (see https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/908434/Disparities_in_the_risk_and_outcomes_of_COVID_August_2020_update.pdf), but who cares about those toxic masculine men dying? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.5.70.252 (talk) 03:36, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Overall graph of deaths - where?

Deaths from Covid and other causes in UK 2020,21 compared with average deaths

I've produced a graph showing the overall impact of Covid deaths on the death rate which seems to me a useful scene setter. It's taken from registration records and crucially these now distinguish deaths in which Covid was the main cause of death from those in which it was simply present (as determined by coroners). I've also included the same information for flu and pneumonia because this is a regular issue with conspiracy theorists, as well as the average from the previous 5 years.

But after 12 months the page is rather a mess. Most graphs were sloughed off to the Statistics page but have been replaced by sometimes worse graphs on this page; the timeline section is more like a journal than an encylopadia article but it's understandable that people want to chronicle this issue. I'm willing to help with reorganizing the page but we have to balance these two conflicting motives. In the meanwhile, where should I put this graph if anywhere? Chris55 (talk) 10:29, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi @User:Chris55, I could hardly agree more. At an early stage the page was a really valuable resource for the basic statistics and one could skip all the hyperbole and political point-scoring and incompetence of our 'leaders', and focus on the raw data to know what was going on. But as things have evolved, with the influence of denialists and minimisers the data I would deem important has become rather buried in a load of dross. Perhaps we need another 'sloughing off' effort, this time to remove the still much-too-detailed diary sections to another layer of summary elsewhere and replace it with a much more limited (100-word?) summary of 2020 up to the end of November on this page... and of course there's a need to update several sections which seemed so important when they started but which have not been either maintained of moth-balled with the progress of time.

So, as a first step, I would say that your graph is exactly what I would like to see on this page somewhere near the top of the 'Statistics' section (which itself also needs a significant facelift). It presents more clearly the information I was trying to get to with the graph at Statistics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom#Comparison of 2020 (England and Wales) with average death rates and the 2014–15 flu season and needs to be (together with references for its sources) out there, bold and clear. Thanks for offering this! Yadsalohcin (talk) 16:43, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I previously suggested moving the timeline as-is here to a History of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom article, and leaving an abbreviated summary in its place. I hesitate because the timeline articles already exist, although those are a bullet pointed record of granular events rather than a prose-style timeline. I definitely think the current timeline section should be maintained, whether here or at another page. Other editors seemed conflicted on the exact remedy. BlackholeWA (talk) 00:47, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Looking more closely, there are at least a dozen derivative timeline articles, if one includes England, Scotland, Wales & Ireland. And 20 derivative articles in all. So it's a major task. And whereas division by year is relatively straightforward, what goes in the UK page rather than a nation's page produces all sorts of complications. So I think the timeline section in this article needs to be drastically curtailed and kept as a pointer to the other articles.

I'd like to suggest that all day-by-day graphs be retired at this point, or pushed well down the tree of pages. Those who listen to the news regularly are probably fed up with the daily numbers and anything less than a weekly graph doesn't make sense at this point, given the huge differences at weekends. I respect the enormous amount of data in the template:COVID-19 pandemic data/United Kingdom medical cases chart, but the display didn't really work after the first 6 months. And the data it uses is often out of date on the day after publication and is "revised" regularly by the government. Personally I prefer the more considered data from the ONS and they have refined their counts of "due to" against "associated with" over the last year, but that only deals with deaths.

From the point of view of statistics, the UK figures are inevitably dominated by England which has nearly 83% of the population, but policy and incidents are rather different and the UK article ought to emphasise these. Chris55 (talk) 17:00, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

For my money, the statistics section of the page feels about right- continuing the daily graphs allows an instant overview of everything that's happened and what the latest is in relation to all that has been going on throughout the pandemic period... exceptions being that it would be good to have a ref for the vaccinations graph and it would be nice if the bar chart of 'New cases by day reported' could default to show the right hand end of the axis rather than the left! And certainly I'd like to see your summary graph of weekly deaths up there.

But the journal could certainly be summarised so the article would be significantly shorter.Yadsalohcin (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Before anyone summarizes the current timeline/history let's move it to its own prose history article, I really do think the current content is valuable, and the "Timeline" articles aren't really comparable as they are so itemized and don't convey a narrative. BlackholeWA (talk) 00:55, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Is yet another layer needed? In both accounts there is much ephemera "Matt Hancock announced last night that..." which is really insignificant a year later even if one wants to provide a full historical account. And the bullet points would be better fleshed out a little. Chris55 (talk) 11:28, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I think there are distinct needs for both styles. The bullet points are for granular developments including things like stat updates organized strictly by date. The paragraphs here give a narrative overview with headings and more discussion, including illustrations. Also, a History article would essentially be an abstraction to another page of the section here, which I think is how it should be considered rather than a summary in its place being considered a "shortening" of the current content. In its form on this page, the bullet points and the history have been able to coexist. BlackholeWA (talk) 12:16, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Yadsalohcin, the graph I was saying ought to be retired is the one at the start of the Timeline section. The graphic says nothing. The total number of cases is a piece of fiction, as it always has been, useful only at the first or second order derivative. The number of deaths is compromised by the daily publication deadline as well as the weekly variation, etc. That's why an overall graph such as I've suggested should be the lead. Even a graph of new cases since the start is seriously misleading because the proportion of cases tested now is an order of magnitude higher than it was at the beginning. Chris55 (talk) 11:58, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

In addition to the above problems with this template, the version on the Wikipedia app on iOS or Android shows the full table with no options to suppress it. This is currently approaching 400 lines and makes the article difficult to read. Chris55 (talk) 10:59, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I share some concern for the amount of screen space occupied by the graphic in its default 15 days state. If it's misbehaving on some systems, it would be good to get that fixed; I can see that a 400-line scroll is far from ideal! And yes, its main use seems to me to be in allowing it to be expanded to show, say, a two-month time frame and investigate 2nd order differentials etc., but that does seem to me to be worthwhile. For example, at the moment, it tells a very valuable story albeit at a hopelessly wide-scale geographical level which is undoubtedly confused by the existence of much more local (and in some cases variant-specific) effects and trends. (Early on I found some very valuable databases at GitHub giving more detailed analysis by region, but I haven't been following that for a while). So in this instance, from the graphic I can see that just now the daily rate of growth of cases has come down over the last two months from ~2+% to ~0.2-% (but of course now, with the basic number so high, 0.15% still means 6,000+ new cases). So we can see the way things have been trending from the graphic... and the cases numbers are rather more up-to-the minute than weekly figures for deaths. I feel there might be a more efficient way of achieving this, but as yet I haven't stumbled upon or devised one. However, for completeness and consistency I'd like to see at least the data gathering for this graphic to continue.

Meanwhile, suitably referenced and explained, I'd love to see your weekly barchart somewhere near the start of the article, as that also tells a story- in this case immediate and without need for further effort- albeit with less up-to-the minute news... In my utopian world there is room for both of these elements. Yadsalohcin (talk) 23:46, 3 March 2021 (UTC)#

PS having the medical cases chart graphic up there near the top of the article is consistent with most of the other COVID-19 national pages that I've seen, but if it is a REAL pain, one solution would to be to display it collapsed as default by slipping in a

<div class="wikitable mw-collapsible autocollapse" > before the {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United Kingdom medical cases chart}}{{anchor|COVID chart}}{{-}} then close the <div section with </div>

I tried a similar approach at the template page, but it seemed to hide the rest of the article...

or to avoid having to scroll past it we could move it to the foot of the article... but the preferred way would be to fix the way it displays in the mobile / Wikipedia app! HTH Yadsalohcin (talk) 01:35, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Chris, I've been keeping a similar graph based on the same data which was moved to the Statistics sub-page. I prefer the presentation of your version, though suggest adding 2020/2021 below your months for readability. I agree I think this article would be better served having summary data, not having all the daily cases etc. This will naturally transition as time goes on, and the reporting becomes more historical in nature. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  12:31, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Spaully. Yes, in time the years might be important. But there are significant differences because your figures both for Covid and flu/pneumonia appear to be incidence figures (those who happen to have the disease at death) and the mortality figures are very different. For Covid it's pretty consistent at 91% whereas for flu/pneumonia it's only 18%. The ONS took some time to reanalyse all their data and produce figures which reflect the chief cause of death: they did an initial study in August and started doing it in real time at the end of last year. Of course the government use an even more ad hoc measure: those who've died with 28 days (or now more) of a Covid test. Also most of your figures appear to be for England & Wales only. Adding Scotland and N Ireland ups the figures some. (Unfortunately those two countries haven't reanalysed their flu/pneuomnia figures so I had to estimate those.) Chris55 (talk) 16:21, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

UK-wide is definitely preferable, but was not possible when I was researching it due to different reporting times and types of figures from Scotland/NI. That you've found a way to include them is great. I am a little concerned about estimating figures as for me that tends too close to original research, hence I have been sticking to regularly updated and transparent figures but I haven't looked in detail at the various figures out there for some time now. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  20:35, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree there are inconsistencies, which would make a table difficult to achieve at the present time, but on a graph these differences are negligible. The graph raises some interesting questions which I have seen no discussion of anywhere, such as why the "other deaths" are substantially below normal since around November. Chris55 (talk) 13:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 March 2021

Add "The government introduced an "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme, announced on July 8, to offer 50% off food and non-alcoholic drinks up to £10 per person every Monday-Wednesday in August. 86.5.120.158 (talk) 12:09, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 14:04, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC for refactoring of "Timeline" section

Should the timeline section be kept, refactored, or split into a new article? BlackholeWA (talk) 06:42, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

The timeline section on this article is two months out of date now, and while I was regularly updating it before, I have held off as, as I see it, there's an open question regarding how the section should be handled. As has been pointed out, the timeline section is getting exceedingly long and is taking up much of the article. It seems likely that the content should be reduced significantly on this page. Normally I'd say it's an open-and-shut case for spinning the prose timeline content off into its own article, except in this case, three "timeline" articles already exist (e.g. Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United_Kingdom (January–June 2020)). However, these are bullet-pointed day-by-day records of minutia, whereas the timeline on this page is in a paragraph-formatted narrative style that I think is helpful in describing the "story" of the pandemic. As such I am unwilling to delete it all out of hand for a briefer summary, so I thought I'd ask editors here for comment.

As I see there are three, maybe four options for how to handle the timeline section:

• Option 1: Status quo - We don't change anything, and keep the timeline section content on this page, with little modification to its current form.
• Option 2: A new page - We keep the content of the current timeline section and spin it off into its own new page, potentially called something like History of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. I personally think the prose style summary is different and useful enough from the bullet point timeline articles that such an additional page would be justified, but some editors might disagree.
• Option 3: Major cutdown - We don't create any new pages, and rather remove the long timeline section from this article with a much smaller few-paragraph summary, nuking the current content.
  • Option 3.1: Compromise? - Another option might be to keep the general form of the current timeline section, but trim it at length such that it fits better in with the rest of the page, somewhere between options 1 and 3. But this might just be delaying the issue as the pandemic history continues to write itself.

Personally, I'm leaning towards Option 2, but I feel some people might find adding another page redundant given the current timeline pages. Personally I think that a prose "history" of the sort found in this article currently is useful and has a place on Wikipedia, but other editor opinions would be welcome, especially as not many people have been updating this section of the page of late. BlackholeWA (talk) 06:42, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Option 3.1. The timeline section in this article has WP:PROSELINE issues. This sometimes happens when we write encyclopedia articles about recent events. This is usually a sub-optimal style for prose, and it usually suggests that the prose needs to be condensed, and suggests that many of the dates should be removed. Condensing moves the focus from dates, to important ideas/concepts. In this particular case, I think the "timeline" section could possibly be renamed to history, and then the size of the section cut by about half. Just my two cents, feel free to disagree. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:28, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• @BlackholeWA: what is your brief and neutral statement? At over 2,700 bytes, the statement above (from the {{rfc}} tag to the next timestamp) is far too long for Legobot (talk · contribs) to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/History and geography. The RfC may also not be publicised through WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:59, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Redrose64: - I'm not overly worried about publicization through those channels, although if it's possible to retroactively add a statement manually, something like "should the timeline section be kept, refactored, or split into a new article?" could work. BlackholeWA (talk) 20:44, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 - We have to stop kidding ourselves into thinking that there will ever be brief and straightforward pages for Covid-related subjects. They will always be very long and detailed, through the very nature of their topic. As such, I would much rather have a handful of very large pages dealing with the topic, rather than arbitrarily dividing them into who knows how many pages that only cover a few months of the pandemic at a time. I'm sure there are ways to improve this page that don't include spinning yet another Covid-related article out of it. PraiseVivec (talk) 12:45, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 - I objected to spitting the timeline into a new page in the past as I though it would be less up to date and cause arguments over what should be kept here. But as the pandemic draws to a close I think there is a fairly compelling argument for splitting the timeline into a new article so that it doesn't overwhelm this page whilst also insuring a full account of the events of the last year or so is preserved. Llewee (talk) 09:37, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Might need to figure out a way to get some more eyes on this RfC to get consensus on this, heh. BlackholeWA (talk) 11:38, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I've mentioned the discussion on the rest of the projects that this page is in the remit of to see if that gets it more attention. Llewee (talk) 21:50, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
  • May also be worthwhile putting some kind of notice at the top of the article at some point though that probably isn't appropriate right now as it isn't a clear splitting question at the minute. Llewee (talk) 21:58, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• option 2 per Llewee rationale--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:23, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 - My opinion is that the timeline section should only describe major events and trends. That approach for this article would have 1 or 2 paragraphs for each current subsection of the timeline section, so 5-10 total paragraphs, and would make the article easier to update and maintain. Velayinosu (talk) 03:32, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
• I agree that as time passes the current format becomes inappropriate for this main article, so would support the content being split off into a History of... article, with a short summary remaining here. That I think best aligns with Option 2 though also has the effect of a significant cut down for this overall summary article. The key difference between options 2 & 3 above is whether the current content is kept anywhere, and I would argue it provides a more useful detailed summary to future readers than the individual timeline articles - this then forms a hierarchy of articles (Overall - History - Timeline). |→ Spaully ^~talk~  09:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
• I've created a draft of a potential new article which can be seen here if anybody is interested. Llewee (talk) 10:51, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
  • That looks good - pretty much what I imagined. The content itself will need some cleanup (the point about it being WP:PROSELINE stands), and the last two months will also need coverage, and we'll need to write a new shorter section in the main article here, but that looks like a promising starting point and I'd be totally on-board if that is where consensus falls. BlackholeWA (talk) 11:12, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2, but keep a ~three paragraph summary of the key points in this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Inquiry draft to be merged here

It has been suggested that Draft:Proposed COVID-19 inquiry in the United Kingdom, a draft I created, be merged into this article. I have merged a lot of its content into the page on the government's response to pandemic [1]. I hope it is not excessive on that page, and could do with experienced editors trimming down the information appropriately. Thank you --82.23.242.26 (talk) 23:02, 4 May 2021 (UTC)