So why won't the Welsh Government publish the hyper local data for coronavirus?

It looks like we have an answer.

[Thread]

This issue has been rumbling on for over a month.
The Welsh Conservatives in particular have been obsessed with raising this as they are advocating for hyper local lockdowns where, for instance, just a council ward will be locked down.

Every week the UK Government release maps like this for England. It shows, at a very local level, how many Covid-19 cases there are.

By contrast, the Welsh Government will only release it on a local authority basis.

This means Hay-on-Wye, Ystradgynlais and Welshpool will have the same rate because they are all in Powys despite being 90 mile apart.

There is no doubt they have the data. They used it to put Llanelli and Bangor into lockdown and some local authorities are already publishing it of their own accord like Bridgend:

For weeks WalesOnline pressed the health minister Vaughan Gething in press conferences to commit to publishing the data on a weekly basis like they do across the border.

Each time he dodged the question with vague reasons such as "not providing a running commentary".

However, speaking in Plenary this week the First Minister provided more explanation.

He claims the reason for not publishing the data is because it is too "volatile" and "it's impossible to draw sensible and reliable conclusions from it."

He went on to say "the data we publish needs to be data that can be sensibly used, and where it can be, then we do".

In one sense this is understandable. In a sparsely populated area, a couple of positive tests could make it look like every person has the virus when looked at as cases per 100,000

We also know that many young people are asymptomatic. This means an area with a young population may seem safer than it is, giving people a false sense of security.

Additionally, with such small sample sizes the data may swing wildly from day to day make accurate analysis hard.

However, and this is just my opinion, this seems very much like treating people in Wales as children.

All data is open to misinterpretation.

Providing it is published with all the needed caveats & disclaimers why shouldn't people understand what is happening in their community.

In an era of fake news, where people believe that vaccines are dangerous and 5G causes pandemics, verifiable, well explained information is even more critical. It fills in the gaps of information which would otherwise be filled with crap, lies and misinformation.