Shocking

Today's Guardian has an absolutely shocking story about swine flu. Shocking because someone - the subs presumably - doesn't know the difference between could and will. It is nevertheless good news.

The headline says that swine flu won't be as dangerous as was thought. But the subheadline gets all mixed up:

The estimate of the number of Britons who will die of swine flu this winter has fallen dramatically after health experts admitted the virus is less lethal then they feared

When it was estimated in July that that up to 65,000 people could be killed across the UK, a few tabloids made a meal of this worst case scenario but it was generally clear that that was what it was. Now the official estimate of the number of Britons who could die this winter from swine flu is to be reduced substantially to roughly 20,000.

In both of these cases, I've quoted from the Guardian article itself, which in both cases talks about the number of people who could die. The article also quotes Scottish health minister Nicola Sturgeon as saying "that that (sic) official worst case scenario had been revised downwards".

"Worst case scenario", "could" and "could". Which bit of that did the sub on this story not get? Thankfully it is a story that is about the numbers being revised downwards, which lessens the impact. If the story was that more people "will" die such sloppiness would be outrageous.