Newspaper Elements Terminology

Instructions for Newspaper Analysis

Article: The UK’s Covid-19 strategy dangerously leaves too many questions unanswered

Journalist: Anthony Costello: professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the World Health Organization.

Date: Sun 15 Mar 2020

Summarise the main points of the article:

• It outlined how the Chinese followed WHO guidance and stopped the virus, including population testing and mobilizing the community.
• China and others now face the challenge of loosing up for the economy. The virus is in control and we just need to wait for a vaccine.
• But the UK government decides to let the virus spread and do nothing about it.
• They recommend only testing cases in hospitals and self-isolation only for people with symptoms, which doesn’t make sense.
• Mitigation might not work; herd immunity might not work
• We need local strategies and share of information around a national policy.
• We can suppress this epidemic in the way that China and other countries have done.

State the purpose of the article: persuade the UK to make proper plans to control the virus

Explain your choice of purpose:

“I had assumed that the UK would do the same, that the authorities would be building their resources and plans around nationwide testing, contact tracing, quarantine and progressive policy of social distancing.”

“But we need to act now. Every day of delay will mean more people become infected or die.”

Identify the tone: Sarcastic

Justify your choice of tone with evidence from the text:

“They appear to have concluded” -> Indicating that the author doesn’t agree with the conclusion

“Won’t this strategy ensure that the spread of the virus is intense and will cause more infections and more deaths in the near term?” -> rhetorical question shows the sarcastic tone

“Does coronavirus induce strong herd immunity or is it like flu” -> directly points out the flaws of the UK’s strategy.

Identify 3 techniques:

Rhetorical question. -> emphasize the absurdness of herd immunity strategy. Make the audience think and reach the conclusion by themselves, to avoid sounding like a lecture and increase people’s acceptance.

Contrasting the UK and China (and Singapore, South Korea)  -> Emphasizing the difference (and distance…) to let the audience understand the consequences of different policies.

Quoting authority (WHO) -> reference WHO a few times to raise reliability.

Quote 3 words from the article that are unfamiliar to you. Look up and provide their definitions from a dictionary or www.dictionary.com.

quarantine: strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease.

nudge: to push slightly or gently, especially with the elbow, to get someone’s attention, prod someone into action, etc.

plummet: fall or drop straight down at high speed.

Personal response: I agree with this article. The UK government really should be more active in this. When coronavirus is China’s problem, all the Western media criticized us for our mistake on the beginning stage, and “no human right” for Wuhan lockdown. Now they do worse. And then the media starts to recognize China’s strategy and effort. Such a big attitude change within a few days. How sarcastic. The UK really shocked everyone this time. Not sure how they would do afterwards.