ABSTRACT
This paper addresses responses to news about the imposing of a local lockdown in a UK city. The opposition to the measure shows it to be controversial as does the associated rejection of the grounds for taking action against covid more generally, which comes alongside the devaluing of expertise, resistance to public health responses, a proliferation of conspiracy theories and misinformation and the harm that can be caused by focussing on non-adherence to covid measure. The research question for this analysis is therefore: how are arguments about the local lockdown discursively formulated in online discussions? Discursive analysis of online discussions following four newspaper articles identified six arguments used that range from scepticism to conspiratorial: scepticism over (1) the prevalence and;(2) severity of covid;(3) lockdowns generally do not work and (4) the specific city lockdown will not work;(5) lockdowns are overly risk averse;and (6) there are hidden political motives for lockdowns. The discussion shows how both the ‘conspiratorial' and non-conspiratorial arguments are potentially harmful from a public health perspective. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
Objectives: The burden of influenza varies across time and is affected by variations in circulating strains, population immunity, vaccination coverage and other risk factors including comorbidities and age. This study explored the impact of the presence of comorbidities on influenza-related hospitalisation costs and length of stay (LOS) in adults. Method(s): The study analysed four years of pre-COVID HES data (September 2016 - March 2020) and extracted adult patients with an influenza diagnosis (ICD-10 code J09-J11 in the primary or secondary location) in a day case or inpatient setting, identifying all patients with primary or secondary diagnosis related to any relevant comorbidity in the influenza spell. Hospitalisation costs and LOS were analysed by age, gender, and presence of comorbidities. Multi-level regression models were run on hospitalisation LOS and costs to ensure estimates captured any within-patient effects and adjusted for age, gender and other comorbid conditions. Result(s): In total, 119,495 patients were hospitalised with influenza generating a total cost of 401m, an average of 3,159 per spell. The average spell LOS and cost increased with age and the presence of comorbidities. There was a 4-day difference in median length of stay between those with and without comorbidities (6 and 2 days, respectively). Those with comorbidities recorded average costs of 3,569 compared to 1,458 for those without. Chronic heart disease was the most common comorbid condition and increased average cost even further to 4,397. Presence of comorbidities was significantly associated with hospitalisation cost;the cost for a patient with comorbidities was 214% of the cost for a patient without [95% CI 208-221%, p<0.01]. Conclusion(s): The study demonstrates the effect of comorbid conditions on influenza-related hospitalisation costs and length of stay (LOS) in adults. It strengthens the value of annual immunization for those in at-risk clinical groups in order to reduce the clinical and economic burden. Copyright © 2022