Governments Changing Message

Since the UK Government began the daily briefings, they have been showed a chart comparing the UK to other nations but it obviously got a bit uncomfortable as we moved towards the top of the chart because they suddenly stopped showing it and explained that it was unreliable because: 'We now publish data that includes all deaths in all settings and not all countries do that so I’m not sure that the international comparison works'.
Luckily the Worldometers website has continued collecting the international figures and the UK is not looking good no matter what search query we pick.
The UK sits 4th for Total Cases with 243,303, 4th for New Cases (3,142), 2nd for Total Deaths (34,636), 6th for Deaths per 1 million population (511), and 38th for tests per 1m of population. Population size and nations being at different stages of the outbreak makes it hard to compare nations like for like but to use the figures for seven weeks and then quietly stop showing them because we have broken out of the pack is cynical but not as much as the use of the much mentioned Reproduction or R number which suddenly, the government isn't so sure is quite so important.
Boris Johnson told the nation that: 'keeping the R rate down is absolutely vital to our recovery' and 'Whatever we do, we must take care that the R does not exceed one' and the easing of any lock-down measures will be conditional to that factor, and with a R number last week between 0.6 and 0.9, it was precariously close before the light easing of this week.
The government's scientific advisory committee SAGE announced that the R rate had gone up and is now between 0.7 and 1 and it went from being absolutely vital to being important but the real outcome that we're looking for is a reduction in the number of cases and 'That is the focus, not R. and 'one of the tests is that it isn't above one…the data confirms that test'.
Support for Boris Johnson's handling of the crisis stood at 72% on 23 March when he announced the lock-down, the same poll this weekend found only 47% still thought the same.