Mr. Dawning, it's legitimate to criticise that cartoon. There's been a distinction throughout the entire situation between a few who work and the many who don't.
Gardening Corner with @Cyclefree. Today's garden question - (13), I think.
I like hostas, as do slugs. My many clumps and pots of inherited hostas are about to break through. How do I protect them from slugs? Is it as simple as a band of eggshells on the soil (of which I have also inherited a fair quantity)?
"HealthSec Hancock is lumbered by his commitment to 100k tests a day by the end of the month. A fit Boris, surely, would have stopped such an announcement being made."
Come off it, Mike. Boris Johnson would have committed to 200,000 tests a day, and with the same pathetic prospect of achieving his target. But all the PB Tories would have come out, saying "Isn´t Boris wonderful! Such a card! What fun!" etc etc. As usual.
I see your 200,000 and raise you 250,000 6 weeks ago tomorrow Boris Johnson said "We're massively increasing the testing to see whether you have it now and ramping up daily testing from 5,000 a day, to 10,000 to 25,000 and then up at 250,000,"
I think the plan was to have the antibody test in place, which is why they ordered quite a few of them. Turns out they were all crap.
So the hapless Hancock was doing his master a favour really by reducing the taget and not making him look so ridiculous! Isn`t that right, you diehard loyalist Tories? Hancock, Hancock, ra, ra ,ra!
So whilst the media is criticised for stupid questions p clipp and those of his persuasion make ridiculous comments about testing. It really isn't constructive in any way... but then i guess they know that.
I don't agree that the return of Boris makes it less likely there'll be an early relaxation.
Ultimately while Boris was out his understudy was never going to rock the boat too much. I think the chances of lockdown being lifted early were zero as long as the PM was too sick to work due to the virus.
Now that Boris is back having undergone the virus and come close to the worst himself he's going to be naturally cautious. The chances of an early lockdown lift now are negligible.
But as anyone who bets on longshots understands, a negligible chance is more chance than no chance.
Tracing where spread occurs is pretty vital to effective social distancing.
I'm surprised that with their app-based contact tracing that S Korea does not have more information about where transmission is actually happening.
Did you see the paper? they traced very carefully. Even to the map of the call centre floor, blue being the infected desks.:
Anyone else experience the optical illusion where the desks in rows in the room at the bottom of the screen look smaller than the ones at the top ? (When in fact they're identical...)
Reuters has a pretty interesting article on the US prison testing in Ohio.
In one prison of 2,500, 2,300 were tested.
just over 2,000 were found to be positive. That's maybe not surprising considering the cramped conditions of prisons once the virus gets going.
The interesting bit is that 95% of the 2,000 positives had no symptoms. Yikes.
At the time of testing - what was the followup ? As @Foxy 's Korea paper suggests, the majority should develop some symptoms within 14 days.
We get very different numbers on tests on asymptomatic people. Some may be lack of follow up to see if they did later develop symptoms, some may be false positives, some may be genuine differences. It is hard to see through the murk exactly what is going on.
"The spokesman said that government now has the capacity to carry out 53,000 tests per day."
Even if we go with this spin, where are they going to magic up another 47,000 test capacity in 3-4 days?
I find this argument pedantic and petulant. Its not bad to aim for the moon, even if you miss you can reach the stars.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
If I were a cynic, which I am not, I might start thinking that the Government/Telegraph ramping of the idea the country is straining at the leash to get back to normal, and the lockdown “fraying”, without any real evidence either is the case, allows them to claim success if the rate of deaths continues to fall and blame the public if it starts to rise. But I am sure no one in HMG is Machiavellian enough to even contemplate such a thing.
Wales are also really struggling to expand the number of tests. They have quietly dropped their own target of 5,000 a day.
1137 tests is piss poor for Scotland, they should be around 8% of the entire UK.
All the whining about follow UK and so they wait on England sending the teams / processes / kit etc and now you whine that they are behind schedule. Why Sturgeon did not lead from start and say she would do what suited Scotland not follow Westminster orders is the issue.
"The spokesman said that government now has the capacity to carry out 53,000 tests per day."
Even if we go with this spin, where are they going to magic up another 47,000 test capacity in 3-4 days?
I find this argument pedantic and petulant. Its not bad to aim for the moon, even if you miss you can reach the stars.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
Er, I'm no astrophysicist (no, really) - but if you fail to get to the moon which stars exactly do you reach?
If I were a cynic, which I am not, I might start thinking that the Government/Telegraph ramping of the idea the country is straining at the leash to get back to normal, and the lockdown “fraying”, without any real evidence either is the case, allows them to claim success if the rate of deaths continues to fall and blame the public if it starts to rise. But I am sure no one in HMG is Machiavellian enough to even contemplate such a thing.
There is evidence. Did you miss the slides about transport usage (which have been getting published at the press conferences for a while now) showing that transport usage has started to go back up again? Considering we're still under lockdown, that's not a good thing and shouldn't be happening.
"The spokesman said that government now has the capacity to carry out 53,000 tests per day."
Even if we go with this spin, where are they going to magic up another 47,000 test capacity in 3-4 days?
I find this argument pedantic and petulant. Its not bad to aim for the moon, even if you miss you can reach the stars.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
Er, I'm no astrophysicist (no, really) - but if you fail to get to the moon which stars exactly do you reach?
"The spokesman said that government now has the capacity to carry out 53,000 tests per day."
Even if we go with this spin, where are they going to magic up another 47,000 test capacity in 3-4 days?
I find this argument pedantic and petulant. Its not bad to aim for the moon, even if you miss you can reach the stars.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
Er, I'm no astrophysicist (no, really) - but if you fail to get to the moon which stars exactly do you reach?
I had been thinking that the new in Intensive care admissions stat for Sweden would be a better figure to look at rather than daily deaths because it would be less lagged and it had been looking good for Sweden, however from watching it day to day it looks like it still has a fairly significant lag on it, indeed the 22nd of April now has the 3rd highest single day of admissions.
Diagnosis per day continues to rise (Huge Weekend effect)
Deaths per day the 8th is still the single highest day but it would be brve to call it the peak
I had been thinking that the new in Intensive care admissions stat for Sweden would be a better figure to look at rather than daily deaths because it would be less lagged and it had been looking good for Sweden, however from watching it day to day it looks like it still has a fairly significant lag on it, indeed the 22nd of April now has the 3rd highest single day of admissions.
Diagnosis per day continues to rise (Huge Weekend effect)
Deaths per day the 8th is still the single highest day but it would be brve to call it the peak
Am I misunderstanding it, I thought Sweden WANT a lot of people to test positive for it?
Cynically the announced "micro loan" scheme will massively improve the stats of number of loans issued without addressing the root cause of why these loans are needed.
CBILS is supposed to make the difference between a company surviving and going under due to CV19. That's not a commercial loan and CBILS wouldn't be needed if it were.
"The spokesman said that government now has the capacity to carry out 53,000 tests per day."
Even if we go with this spin, where are they going to magic up another 47,000 test capacity in 3-4 days?
I find this argument pedantic and petulant. Its not bad to aim for the moon, even if you miss you can reach the stars.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
Er, I'm no astrophysicist (no, really) - but if you fail to get to the moon which stars exactly do you reach?
What did I just say about being pedantic?
Don't blame me, Socrates started it.
If Patrick Moore taught me anything, it is that when people point at the sky and ask what's that bright star, the answer is the planet Venus.
"The spokesman said that government now has the capacity to carry out 53,000 tests per day."
Even if we go with this spin, where are they going to magic up another 47,000 test capacity in 3-4 days?
I find this argument pedantic and petulant. Its not bad to aim for the moon, even if you miss you can reach the stars.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
Yes absolutely. If Hancock had put it like that - "I know I've been piss poor but I will from now on strive to raise my game with a stretch target of excellence" - he would not (and would not deserve) a roasting for attaining mediocrity. On the contrary. He would merit praise for the direction of travel.
Some would take this as a sign that HMG should not have been holding Cabinet meetings via Zoom. Well, that and its openness to official Chinese government spooks.
Forget the language howler, the article she is talking about is very, very interesting indeed - a must-read IMO. It's a bit long, and hedged about with loads of caveats, but it looks quite convincing to me in terms of helping understand the dominant modes of transmission. It's worth reading the whole thing, but look in particular at his conclusion of where the main 'super-spreader events' (SSEs) took place:
When do COVID-19 SSEs happen? Based on the list I’ve assembled, the short answer is: Wherever and whenever people are up in each other’s faces, laughing, shouting, cheering, sobbing, singing, greeting, and praying. You don’t have to be a 19th-century German bacteriologist or MIT expert in mucosalivary ballistics to understand what this tells us about the most likely mode of transmission.
It’s worth scanning all the myriad forms of common human activity that aren’t represented among these listed SSEs: watching movies in a theater, being on a train or bus, attending theater, opera, or symphony (these latter activities may seem like rarified examples, but they are important once you take stock of all those wealthy infectees who got sick in March, and consider that New York City is a major COVID-19 hot spot). These are activities where people often find themselves surrounded by strangers in densely packed rooms—as with all those above-described SSEs—but, crucially, where attendees also are expected to sit still and talk in hushed tones.
The world’s untold thousands of white-collar cubicle farms don’t seem to be generating abundant COVID-19 SSEs—despite the uneven quality of ventilation one finds in global workplaces....
(He gives a few more examples in similar vein).
On the white collar farm bit the counter example is
Some would take this as a sign that HMG should not have been holding Cabinet meetings via Zoom. Well, that and its openness to official Chinese government spooks.
My understanding is they switched fairly quickly. But yes, an app that routes all traffic via Chinese servers, if that isnt a massive red flag, not sure what js.
I had been thinking that the new in Intensive care admissions stat for Sweden would be a better figure to look at rather than daily deaths because it would be less lagged and it had been looking good for Sweden, however from watching it day to day it looks like it still has a fairly significant lag on it, indeed the 22nd of April now has the 3rd highest single day of admissions.
Diagnosis per day continues to rise (Huge Weekend effect)
Deaths per day the 8th is still the single highest day but it would be brve to call it the peak
Am I misunderstanding it, I thought Sweden WANT a lot of people to test positive for it?
Huge numbers of test positive but not sick or test immune is what they want - and indeed what almost everyone wants.
An outstanding effort. Has to earn some points toward a knighthood
I'm almost speechless. I hope he's taking the piss but he almost certainly isn't. Extraordinary. I know there was some of this pass-the-sick-bucket idolatry with Jez but it tended to come from exuberant activists not from senior MPs.
I thought the story was that Boris wanted to promise 250,000 tests daily?
6 weeks tomorrow since he said
"We're massively increasing the testing to see whether you have it now and ramping up daily testing from 5,000 a day, to 10,000 to 25,000 and then up at 250,000,"
I had been thinking that the new in Intensive care admissions stat for Sweden would be a better figure to look at rather than daily deaths because it would be less lagged and it had been looking good for Sweden, however from watching it day to day it looks like it still has a fairly significant lag on it, indeed the 22nd of April now has the 3rd highest single day of admissions.
Diagnosis per day continues to rise (Huge Weekend effect)
Deaths per day the 8th is still the single highest day but it would be brve to call it the peak
Am I misunderstanding it, I thought Sweden WANT a lot of people to test positive for it?
Sweden doesn't do wide spread testing. Sweden's testing strategy is to test only key workers and those most at risk. So a large rise shows that the most vulnerable are getting Covid-19, exactly what they don't want to happen.
An outstanding effort. Has to earn some points toward a knighthood
I'm almost speechless. I hope he's taking the piss but he almost certainly isn't. Extraordinary. I know there was some of this pass-the-sick-bucket idolatry with Jez but it tended to come from exuberant activists not from senior MPs.
That means 149,000 per million have been infected.
With 1,153 per million already dead (and those who are going to die from existing infections are going to increase that number), that implies the true IFR (including asymptomatic individuals) is somewhere in excess of 0.77%. If the death toll continues linearly, that'd put the IFR on deaths from infections to this date at approximately 1.0%.
They have been doing this at Southampton Hospital for weeks, my friend was admitted with an irregular heart beat and he was tested despite showing no symptoms.
An outstanding effort. Has to earn some points toward a knighthood
Boris dumped him from Govt, of course.
Halfon also recently accused the Board of Deputies of British Jews of shilling for Labour, which would have been news to Jeremy Corbyn. I blame lockdown.
Comments
As @Foxy 's Korea paper suggests, the majority should develop some symptoms within 14 days.
Ultimately while Boris was out his understudy was never going to rock the boat too much. I think the chances of lockdown being lifted early were zero as long as the PM was too sick to work due to the virus.
Now that Boris is back having undergone the virus and come close to the worst himself he's going to be naturally cautious. The chances of an early lockdown lift now are negligible.
But as anyone who bets on longshots understands, a negligible chance is more chance than no chance.
(When in fact they're identical...)
I think we'd all be better off if a magic talking lion who is also Jesus was in charge.
Assume average salary £20k (as it's likely to be well below median salary) - cost to Govt is 80% = £16k = £1,333 per month.
4 million * £1,333 = £5.333bn per month
3 month cost = £16bn
Really not very much at all - though of course it's only a very small part of the total cost.
There's been roughly a five-fold increase in testing capabilities in the past few weeks and further capabilities are coming online rapidly. Whether the target is met on Thursday or not is less important than what those increased capabilities that followed that target meant.
If a student who was currently getting D's were to say they realise they need to buckle down, study and try to strive for an A-grade were to study hard and achieve a B would you mock them saying "You got a B? Hah! That's pathetic you said you were going to get an A!" Or would you say "You've done well, that's much improved."
Why Sturgeon did not lead from start and say she would do what suited Scotland not follow Westminster orders is the issue.
Up there with Richard "MMR" Horton at the Lancet to be viewed with considerable scepticism!
And if we'd had Prime Minister Corbyn, what a cavalcade of wit and genius we would have enjoyed!
https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1254775717990002690?s=20
I had been thinking that the new in Intensive care admissions stat for Sweden would be a better figure to look at rather than daily deaths because it would be less lagged and it had been looking good for Sweden, however from watching it day to day it looks like it still has a fairly significant lag on it, indeed the 22nd of April now has the 3rd highest single day of admissions.
Diagnosis per day continues to rise (Huge Weekend effect)
Deaths per day the 8th is still the single highest day but it would be brve to call it the peak
https://twitter.com/mediaguido/status/1254727550636625920?s=21
number of loans issued without addressing the root cause of why these loans are needed.
CBILS is supposed to make the difference between a company surviving and going under due to CV19. That's not a commercial loan and CBILS wouldn't be needed if it were.
ETA article link:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-has-exposed-boris-johnson-s-cabinet-weakest-living-memory
https://order-order.com/2020/04/27/zoom-boom-ft-reporter-suspended-hacking/
Naughty naughty.
*boom tish*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52441428
Big call, from both a privacy stance and if the technology doesn't work (as Apple will say told you so).
What could possibly go wrong.
How is it that moving between those two particular organs tells me all I need to know about a journalist?
https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1254792999080349697
I do hope that Trump loses in November. His tantrum will boost the popcorn economy tenfold.
14.9% infection rate. At 100% = 7738 / 1 million.
Our deaths/1 million = 305. Indicates just under 4% infection rate.
6 weeks tomorrow since he said
"We're massively increasing the testing to see whether you have it now and ramping up daily testing from 5,000 a day, to 10,000 to 25,000 and then up at 250,000,"
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/tomswalkforthenhs
Still, according to the ‘model’ being touted on this site by Henrietta and Eadric not so long ago, we should be at 200 million confirmed cases by now.
With 1,153 per million already dead (and those who are going to die from existing infections are going to increase that number), that implies the true IFR (including asymptomatic individuals) is somewhere in excess of 0.77%. If the death toll continues linearly, that'd put the IFR on deaths from infections to this date at approximately 1.0%.
That's a touch higher than most estimates so far.
Given what Foxy was saying about issues on non-COVID specific wards, this sounds like a good idea.