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But first...
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has included several graphs depicting hospital admission rates for Covid-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter).
But the problem is that these aren’t actually based on any real data.
Only after X users later highlighted that the graphs depicted do not reflect genuine trends for this period did the UKHSA acknowledge in a separate post (which has also now been deleted) that the graphs are “not based on data”.
Instead, they are simply “indicative of what they will look like once published”, it said. Full Fact contacted the UKHSA and the posts were subsequently deleted.
X user ‘Cat in the Hat’ told Full Fact: “In fact the charts for 2023/24 won’t look anything like this when published because, apart from a very brief period in the middle of winter, there has been virtually no flu or RSV across the rest of the year, whereas Covid cases have remained at high levels across the year.”
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Best wishes,
Craig, Digital Campaigns Manager—Full Fact
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Over the last week, there’s been some speculation about whether Labour will raise employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) in its first Budget, later this month.
The phrase “National Insurance” appears once in Labour’s 2024 election manifesto.
It said: “We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.”
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One of the dominant themes in British politics and a critical issue during the recent general election has been NHS waiting lists. Recently we’ve seen examples of NHS England getting this data wrong:
First, NHS England corrected a press release, a statistical notice and a dataset after Full Fact spotted an error in its waiting list data.
- All of these originally said that the estimated number of patients waiting for non-emergency care in its referral to treatment (RTT) data fell by about 57,000 in August 2024, to 6.33 million. In fact, this number rose by about 31,000 to 6.42 million.
Then, an interactive report published by NHS England incorrectly claimed that its figures count the number of “patients” receiving or waiting for treatment.
- The figures in the report actually count the number of “pathways” or cases where somebody is waiting for treatment or has just started to receive it. The number of patients is different, as some patients are waiting for more than one thing.
It's important on an issue where there is clear public interest that government departments and public bodies take extra care to present accurate data.
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Online misinformation has circulated widely after Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane. At least 16 people were killed and millions were left without power.
One video shared on social media claims it shows a HAARP research facility positioned “perfectly” off the coast of Florida, which was “activated” ahead of Hurricane Milton.
This isn’t what the video shows. The structures seen underwater are actually underwater farms to encourage coral growth.
Professor Chris Scott, Professor in Space and Atmospherics at the University of Reading, told Full Fact that “The technology to artificially create storms—especially Category 5 storms—does not exist. It is pure science fiction to suggest we have the technological prowess to develop deadly hurricanes.”
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