Daniel Kahneman called it anchoring; I call it tunnel vision. It’s when we depend too heavily on our pre-existing ideas and first pieces of information – the anchor – to inform our judgments. How a problem is perceived, how it is described, how it makes us feel alongside our individual experience and expertise shapes the decisions we make. Anchoring ensures emerging evidence is ignored. Even in the face of this new contradictory evidence, we refuse to change our early decisions.
In the week ending the 24th of July, 8,891 deaths were registered in England and Wales (161 fewer than the five-year average). This is the sixth week in a row that we have observed fewer deaths, a total of 1,413 fewer deaths than expected. While the number of deaths in care homes and hospitals remains below the average, the number in private homes remains higher than the five-year average. There were 727 more deaths in private homes in the week ending the 30th of July.
Deaths at home have been almost 40 per cent higher than the number registered with Covid-19 in any other setting in the last six weeks, (4,526 versus 2,799).
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