I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
I can only assume that the govt thinks Apple and Google will let them get around it. It will be an interesting moment if the government chooses to push them on this.
I believe they did.
Apple / Google know, however, that if they did allow a Government to ride roughshod over privacy settings Microsoft or Someone else (Amazon say) will be back in the mobile phone industry and rapidly the No 1 part of it.
So the odds of Apple / Google allowing it to be broken was
1) unlikely and commercial insanity 2) required Apple / Google to do work and they aren't going to do work that isn't of benefit to them.
Wasn't there a story some years ago about the iphone keeping a record of all the cell transmitters it had connected to? I remember checking mine and it transpired I'd unknowingly been to the Isle of Man. I concluded that I must have logged onto it briefly from the summit of Scafell.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
It was admitted yesterday that the official Italian stats were underestimated by 50%, whereas the UK has been adding additional categories into their daily numbers. It's no wonder the gap has closed.
Maybe it would be a good idea if those making claims about our figures read the BBC fact check and reflected
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Yeah, I'm asking if this is the case or not.
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
Government forcing homes to take patients back with positive test results is a problem, however you want to spin it.
TGOHF believes that families only put relatives in care homes because they smell a bit and interfere with their travel plans so I wouldn't take any notice of his pronouncements on the social care sector.
Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
Government forcing homes to take patients back with positive test results is a problem, however you want to spin it.
TGOHF believes that families only put relatives in care homes because they smell a bit and interfere with their travel plans so I wouldn't take any notice of his pronouncements on the social care sector.
You could be in with a shout of picking up Prof Ferguson's vacant gig with that degree of skill in inflationary extrapolation.
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Yeah, I'm asking if this is the case or not.
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
That's the thing, if it doesn't work just migrate to the other model. Its not the end of the world.
Hancock confirmed in his Sky interview just now that they have a Plan B.
And how much extra time in lockdown is that going to result in, how many billions will it cost?
If they did have to jump ship I'm sure it would be done while it's live like in Australia. What fraction use android phones in the UK? That'll give an upper bound on the effectiveness of the current version.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
It was admitted yesterday that the official Italian stats were underestimated by 50%, whereas the UK has been adding additional categories into their daily numbers. It's no wonder the gap has closed.
Maybe it would be a good idea if those making claims about our figures read the BBC fact check and reflected
30,000 dead is nothing to be smug about.
I am not smug in any shape of form but balance is necessary
That was the basis of my first post this morning. This for me is going to be a slow motion car crash.
Christ. Who signed off on this? British exceptionalism strikes again.
It doesn't look good, does it? But I haven't seen it confirmed that this is repeatedly popping up, and it wasn't an update of the app pushed during the test;
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
You should be able to because the app itself will store the IDs of other apps it has come into contact with in the last 7 days, it will then communicate the positive test result with those app IDs. The app itself could have an integrated appointment booking system or a linkout to one.
Is that a difference between requirements for the app as a whole, and for the coronavirus bit?
In the case of the NHSX app the app and coronavirus bit (presumably a background service) are effectively the same thing, as they are a single install with bundled requirements and permissions. For Google/Apple the apps merely act as a UI, the underlying service on Android is provided as part of Google Play Services and runs on Android 5.0 and above. An app using that service could have it's own separate requirements, though you would have to be plain daft to do anything that stopped it working on devices that can run the service itself.
To me it reads as though the NHSX app requires Android 8.0. Google are supporting as far back as Android 5.0, which covers 95% of Android devices using Play Services. If the NHSX app only runs on Android 8.0 and above that would mean only 60% of Android devices can run it.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy.
Both of these charges can be correct.
They can indeed. Probably are in fact.
Begs a question though -
Would an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining right wing leaning bureaucracy be more acceptable to the Tory sensibility?
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Yeah, I'm asking if this is the case or not.
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
That's the thing, if it doesn't work just migrate to the other model. Its not the end of the world.
Hancock confirmed in his Sky interview just now that they have a Plan B.
And how much extra time in lockdown is that going to result in, how many billions will it cost?
If they did have to jump ship I'm sure it would be done while it's live like in Australia. What fraction use android phones in the UK? That'll give an upper bound on the effectiveness of the current version.
The UK is one of a few countries where iPhones make up the majority of mobile internet usage. If it doesn't work on iOS then it's basically not worth anything.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
You should be able to because the app itself will store the IDs of other apps it has come into contact with in the last 7 days, it will then communicate the positive test result with those app IDs. The app itself could have an integrated appointment booking system or a linkout to one.
How's that different from the centralised version, I thought that operated in the same way in that regards? To link it to an official test you'd could have some form of authorisation to send the alert from a code generated by someone in the NHS, kind of like two-factor authorisation, but the doctor holds the key fob.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
More than half the workforce at a US meat processing plant have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials have revealed.
Some 730 employees at Tyson Foods in Perry, Iowa, representing 58% of staff, have contracted the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health told a daily news conference.
I think giving good idea of the sort of work situations where this things spreads easily.
One where you'd hope the staff were practising good hygiene, and by necessity of swinging meat cleavers around, keeping a safe distance from each other?
Maybe the staff canteen is small and gets crowded.
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
I can only assume that the govt thinks Apple and Google will let them get around it. It will be an interesting moment if the government chooses to push them on this.
I believe they did.
Apple / Google know, however, that if they did allow a Government to ride roughshod over privacy settings Microsoft or Someone else (Amazon say) will be back in the mobile phone industry and rapidly the No 1 part of it.
So the odds of Apple / Google allowing it to be broken was
1) unlikely and commercial insanity 2) required Apple / Google to do work and they aren't going to do work that isn't of benefit to them.
Wasn't there a story some years ago about the iphone keeping a record of all the cell transmitters it had connected to? I remember checking mine and it transpired I'd unknowingly been to the Isle of Man. I concluded that I must have logged onto it briefly from the summit of Scafell.
Yes. This is why courts are clogged up with techies explaining where some dealer's mobile phone was at time X.
Is that a difference between requirements for the app as a whole, and for the coronavirus bit?
In the case of the NHSX app the app and coronavirus bit (presumably a background service) are effectively the same thing, as they are a single install with bundled requirements and permissions. For Google/Apple the apps merely act as a UI, the underlying service on Android is provided as part of Google Play Services and runs on Android 5.0 and above. An app using that service could have it's own separate requirements, though you would have to be plain daft to do anything that stopped it working on devices that can run the service itself.
To me it reads as though the NHSX app requires Android 8.0. Google are supporting as far back as Android 5.0, which covers 95% of Android devices using Play Services. If the NHSX app only runs on Android 8.0 and above that would mean only 60% of Android devices can run it.
I read that as the NHSX app supports v8 and higher, but the Google part of the Apple/Google solution (which the NHSX app is NOT using) goes back to v5, thus supporting many more devices.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
You should be able to because the app itself will store the IDs of other apps it has come into contact with in the last 7 days, it will then communicate the positive test result with those app IDs. The app itself could have an integrated appointment booking system or a linkout to one.
How's that different from the centralised version, I thought that operated in the same way in that regards? To link it to an official test you'd could have some form of authorisation to send the alert from a code generated by someone in the NHS, kind of like two-factor authorisation, but the doctor holds the key fob.
It's different because this alert is app triggered rather than database triggered. The key is how to properly ensure that testing data is uploaded, I think the best way is is to basically force a user click to a link which gives results and also has a linkout to the app so that testing data is added automatically by a browser trigger. The app could also do what WhatsApp does and intercept texts from specific numbers/IDs and then input positive results from a code via a text.
There's loads of ways to do it without a centralised database which is why the decision to go down that route is even more puzzling.
Ouch. Starmer waves the graph of international comparisons which is used every night in the press conference, just after Johnson says it is too early to look at international comparisons.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
I said we are doing worse than Germany, better than Belgium, Spain and Italy. Middle of the road.
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
Yes. This is why courts are clogged up with techies explaining where some dealer's mobile phone was at time X.
You don't need the phone itself to do any recording for that.
Any phone, from the oldest 2G Nokia to the lastest iPhone, has to perform signalling with the base stations it can see to perform call routing. It basically says "I can see these base stations with these signal strengths" the network then says in reply "in that case use base station X and I will route your calls to that". Those records are recorded and with a bit of processing can show "phone A was at location B at time C".
Ouch. Starmer waves the graph of international comparisons which is used every night in the press conference, just after Johnson says it is too early to look at international comparisons.
You mean the graph where every night the scientists presenting it say to treat the data with caution.
More than half the workforce at a US meat processing plant have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials have revealed.
Some 730 employees at Tyson Foods in Perry, Iowa, representing 58% of staff, have contracted the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health told a daily news conference.
I think giving good idea of the sort of work situations where this things spreads easily.
One where you'd hope the staff were practising good hygiene, and by necessity of swinging meat cleavers around, keeping a safe distance from each other?
Maybe the staff canteen is small and gets crowded.
So the features of meat packing plants seem to be: - Fairly crowded, workers up close to each other - Noisy, so people who are talking to each other have to shout - Low-paid work with rapacious employers, so workers won't have the luxury of staying home if they're feeling a bit sick, employers won't give them sick leave, and in some cases once they started losing people to covid19 they apparently tried to make sure the others had strong incentives to keep showing up...
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
You should be able to because the app itself will store the IDs of other apps it has come into contact with in the last 7 days, it will then communicate the positive test result with those app IDs. The app itself could have an integrated appointment booking system or a linkout to one.
How's that different from the centralised version, I thought that operated in the same way in that regards? To link it to an official test you'd could have some form of authorisation to send the alert from a code generated by someone in the NHS, kind of like two-factor authorisation, but the doctor holds the key fob.
It's different because this alert is app triggered rather than database triggered. The key is how to properly ensure that testing data is uploaded, I think the best way is is to basically force a user click to a link which gives results and also has a linkout to the app so that testing data is added automatically by a browser trigger. The app could also do what WhatsApp does and intercept texts from specific numbers/IDs and then input positive results from a code via a text.
There's loads of ways to do it without a centralised database which is why the decision to go down that route is even more puzzling.
I thought it would be as simple as you get your test results and on it is a QR code or some key code that you scan with the app which authorises it to send the alert. But maybe that doesn't work for some reason.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy.
Both of these charges can be correct.
They can indeed. Probably are in fact.
Begs a question though -
Would an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining right wing leaning bureaucracy be more acceptable to the Tory sensibility?
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
It was admitted yesterday that the official Italian stats were underestimated by 50%, whereas the UK has been adding additional categories into their daily numbers. It's no wonder the gap has closed.
IMO the gold standard is the macro 'excess deaths over trend' - if we end up as the worst in Europe on that measure (per pop) the government will face some tough questions and will struggle to retain the support and confidence of the public.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
It was admitted yesterday that the official Italian stats were underestimated by 50%, whereas the UK has been adding additional categories into their daily numbers. It's no wonder the gap has closed.
IMO the gold standard is the macro 'excess deaths over trend' - if we end up as the worst in Europe on that measure (per pop) the government will face some tough questions and will struggle to retain the support and confidence of the public.
Yeah, and Italy's numbers on those statistics are over a month out of date. Yet the comparisons continue...
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
You should be able to because the app itself will store the IDs of other apps it has come into contact with in the last 7 days, it will then communicate the positive test result with those app IDs. The app itself could have an integrated appointment booking system or a linkout to one.
How's that different from the centralised version, I thought that operated in the same way in that regards? To link it to an official test you'd could have some form of authorisation to send the alert from a code generated by someone in the NHS, kind of like two-factor authorisation, but the doctor holds the key fob.
It's different because this alert is app triggered rather than database triggered. The key is how to properly ensure that testing data is uploaded, I think the best way is is to basically force a user click to a link which gives results and also has a linkout to the app so that testing data is added automatically by a browser trigger. The app could also do what WhatsApp does and intercept texts from specific numbers/IDs and then input positive results from a code via a text.
There's loads of ways to do it without a centralised database which is why the decision to go down that route is even more puzzling.
I thought it would be as simple as you get your test results and on it is a QR code or some key code that you scan with the app which authorises it to send the alert. But maybe that doesn't work for some reason.
That's an insecure method, but is still better than self reporting. It also relies on user input of the QR code or keycode, this links viewing a test result to inputting it the information into the app and requires minimal user interaction.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
Spooky. (Not sure why an American university would be interested in making the UK look less bad though).
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy.
Both of these charges can be correct.
They can indeed. Probably are in fact.
Begs a question though -
Would an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining right wing leaning bureaucracy be more acceptable to the Tory sensibility?
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
Spooky. (Not sure why an American university would be interested in making the UK look less bad though).
Coincidence, more like. They probably want the US to look worse more than anything.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Incidentally, does anyone know how South Korea get their app to work? The Google/Apple solution wasn't available earlier.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
You should be able to because the app itself will store the IDs of other apps it has come into contact with in the last 7 days, it will then communicate the positive test result with those app IDs. The app itself could have an integrated appointment booking system or a linkout to one.
How's that different from the centralised version, I thought that operated in the same way in that regards? To link it to an official test you'd could have some form of authorisation to send the alert from a code generated by someone in the NHS, kind of like two-factor authorisation, but the doctor holds the key fob.
It's different because this alert is app triggered rather than database triggered. The key is how to properly ensure that testing data is uploaded, I think the best way is is to basically force a user click to a link which gives results and also has a linkout to the app so that testing data is added automatically by a browser trigger. The app could also do what WhatsApp does and intercept texts from specific numbers/IDs and then input positive results from a code via a text.
There's loads of ways to do it without a centralised database which is why the decision to go down that route is even more puzzling.
I thought it would be as simple as you get your test results and on it is a QR code or some key code that you scan with the app which authorises it to send the alert. But maybe that doesn't work for some reason.
That's an insecure method, but is still better than self reporting. It also relies on user input of the QR code or keycode, this links viewing a test result to inputting it the information into the app and requires minimal user interaction.
Ah, good point.. anyone in your post code could use the same code as you can't limit it to a specific user of the app since you don't have that information.
I am quite liking Starmer's approach and if he can finally slay antisemitism and Corbynism he will lead a genuine opposition for the first time in five years
Ouch. Starmer waves the graph of international comparisons which is used every night in the press conference, just after Johnson says it is too early to look at international comparisons.
I think they show that graph in terms of trends rather than comparisons. I’ve always thought it odd that they do that, though.
Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
Government forcing homes to take patients back with positive test results is a problem, however you want to spin it.
TGOHF believes that families only put relatives in care homes because they smell a bit and interfere with their travel plans so I wouldn't take any notice of his pronouncements on the social care sector.
You could be in with a shout of picking up Prof Ferguson's vacant gig with that degree of skill in inflationary extrapolation.
Have no fear, I shall be reminding people of that obnoxious comment on a regular basis. It speaks volumes.
I am quite liking Starmer's approach and if he can finally slay antisemitism and Corbynism he will lead a genuine opposition for the first time in five years
Agreed - decent effort by Starmer who is so much better than Corbyn
Such a contrast to Blackford who like Sturgeon wants to keep people locked down for as long as possible.
Boris has confirmed that the plan is coming on Sunday - let's hope that it is clear, comprehensive and with target timescales for all industries
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Incidentally, does anyone know how South Korea get their app to work? The Google/Apple solution wasn't available earlier.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
Government forcing homes to take patients back with positive test results is a problem, however you want to spin it.
TGOHF believes that families only put relatives in care homes because they smell a bit and interfere with their travel plans so I wouldn't take any notice of his pronouncements on the social care sector.
You could be in with a shout of picking up Prof Ferguson's vacant gig with that degree of skill in inflationary extrapolation.
Have no fear, I shall be reminding people of that obnoxious comment on a regular basis. It speaks volumes.
Why are you so keen for me to validate your decisions ?
I think we can cautiously conclude Britain has an opposition again.
Johnson will need to up his game. No doubt his spirit of the Blitz bombast and personal story of having the virus will buoy him up for a while. But were his answers about the frustration he feels about PPE shortages really adequate? It's his Government's job and, in several key areas, it just hasn't been done well enough at all. Starmer is forensic enough to dig at those points.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
I said we are doing worse than Germany, better than Belgium, Spain and Italy. Middle of the road.
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
The key thing though is have what Governments have done made much difference to how they have "performed" or is it just the way the virus has operated. As an example in the middle this worldwide pandemic Denmark have had 0% of excess deaths. What did their Government do to achieve this incredible figure as it could be used as the model for any future pandemics. Was Germanys extensive testing capacity in Late February/Early March really the main reason their excess deaths was kept to 3%.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Incidentally, does anyone know how South Korea get their app to work? The Google/Apple solution wasn't available earlier.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
GPS tracking on iOS can only be continuous if your app is registered as a navigation app. Apple won't let it into the App Store if you claim it to be a navigation app when it isn't.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
Spooky. (Not sure why an American university would be interested in making the UK look less bad though).
Me neither. It probably is just co-incidence. But people do have contacts over there - especially Conservatives. Liam Fox, for example. He is always phoning people in America and trying to wheel and deal. And we all remember the Cambridge Analytica affair. That had a very strong transatlantic dimension. But anyway, best not to get dragged in. I just thought I'd mention it as a point of potential concern. Because it is a potential concern.
Ouch. Starmer waves the graph of international comparisons which is used every night in the press conference, just after Johnson says it is too early to look at international comparisons.
Has Sir K had polling evidence that smug patronising hindsighting is popular with the voters ?
London and New York are the most "connected" cities in the world, and so maybe they (and the surrounding areas) were always going to be hardest-hit by this type of virus.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Incidentally, does anyone know how South Korea get their app to work? The Google/Apple solution wasn't available earlier.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
GPS tracking on iOS can only be continuous if your app is registered as a navigation app. Apple won't let it into the App Store if you claim it to be a navigation app when it isn't.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Incidentally, does anyone know how South Korea get their app to work? The Google/Apple solution wasn't available earlier.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
AFAIK GPS, but they also track a number of other "vectors" e.g. when you make an electronic payment, when you use your smart card / phone for public transport, CCTV.
It is basically state surveillance. They worked on this for a number of years after SARS and MERS, passing special laws and building out the tech, so that if something like this every hit again they would switch this system on.
The testing system is also linked into this. You keep beeped to say, you might have been exposed, you need to get a test, here is your appointment #. And the underlying system also works out the priority of who should be getting tests (and just as importantly the results).
I said at the time, the West will never ever go for something like this and instead try to hack something together while respecting privacy. The problem is the virus doesn't respect such things.
More than half the workforce at a US meat processing plant have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials have revealed.
Some 730 employees at Tyson Foods in Perry, Iowa, representing 58% of staff, have contracted the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health told a daily news conference.
I think giving good idea of the sort of work situations where this things spreads easily.
One where you'd hope the staff were practising good hygiene, and by necessity of swinging meat cleavers around, keeping a safe distance from each other?
Maybe the staff canteen is small and gets crowded.
So the features of meat packing plants seem to be: - Fairly crowded, workers up close to each other - Noisy, so people who are talking to each other have to shout - Low-paid work with rapacious employers, so workers won't have the luxury of staying home if they're feeling a bit sick, employers won't give them sick leave, and in some cases once they started losing people to covid19 they apparently tried to make sure the others had strong incentives to keep showing up...
The last point covers a multitude of problems, but I would put it down not to low pay per se, but to employer/employee relationships. In many US states the employer may fire people with no notice and no reason. If you work for a company which has previous for sacking people for trivial reasons, then in the middle of an unemployment explosion you are going to avoid taking sickleave unless you really cannot get out of bed.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
Ouch. Starmer waves the graph of international comparisons which is used every night in the press conference, just after Johnson says it is too early to look at international comparisons.
Has Sir K had polling evidence that smug patronising hindsighting is popular with the voters ?
Stop gaslighting.
The view that Britain acted slowly, that it's been reactive rather than proactive, that care homes were a big problem, that testing was very slow to ramp up... none of these are about perfect hindsight; they were all being discussed weeks ago and are all areas where we have performed poorly internationally.
This "how on earth could we have known?" BS is for the birds.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy. Both of these charges can be correct.
They can indeed. Probably are in fact. Begs a question though - Would an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining right wing leaning bureaucracy be more acceptable to the Tory sensibility?
We don't know it's never been tried.
Come off it!!! They all went to the same schools and universities. And they are elitist to the very core.
Ouch. Starmer waves the graph of international comparisons which is used every night in the press conference, just after Johnson says it is too early to look at international comparisons.
Has Sir K had polling evidence that smug patronising hindsighting is popular with the voters ?
You'd think a lawyer would be able to think on his feet.
Don't welcome the NHS app. Criticise it, because it isn't going to work properly.
He welcomed the idea of an NHS app. So that when it goes splat he can point to the collected expertise of the industry which the government had somehow managed not to listen to...
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
I said we are doing worse than Germany, better than Belgium, Spain and Italy. Middle of the road.
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
Credit where it is due, we definitely prevented our health service becoming overwhelmed and that certainly didn't look like a given in the early stages.
I remain convinced that the government were slow off the mark primarily down to Johnson not realising the threat as early as he should have done. I think he took his eye off the ball for the last 2 weeks of Feb when he went MIA to sort out his private life. When he returned he failed to take precautions seriously and ended up with a serious bout of the infection himself.
Since then we have recovered ground but I definitely think our overall response has been a lot nearer the bottom rather than in middle of the road.
I have not had time to follow the discussion on the tracing app but if that does turn out to be a failure where does that leave our lockdown strategy?
I am quite liking Starmer's approach and if he can finally slay antisemitism and Corbynism he will lead a genuine opposition for the first time in five years
Agreed - decent effort by Starmer who is so much better than Corbyn
Such a contrast to Blackford who like Sturgeon wants to keep people locked down for as long as possible.
Boris has confirmed that the plan is coming on Sunday - let's hope that it is clear, comprehensive and with target timescales for all industries
You're not one of the more prolific posters, but an awful lot of your posts include 'the plan is coming'. I think it's nice that you've got a theme.
Lets not forget South Korea doesn't also piss about when it comes to new arrivals. Quarantine and now looking to roll out tracking bracelets, so if any smart arse tries to go out without their phone it won't matter.
Also, you break these rules, you are out of there.
I am quite liking Starmer's approach and if he can finally slay antisemitism and Corbynism he will lead a genuine opposition for the first time in five years
Agreed - decent effort by Starmer who is so much better than Corbyn
Such a contrast to Blackford who like Sturgeon wants to keep people locked down for as long as possible.
Boris has confirmed that the plan is coming on Sunday - let's hope that it is clear, comprehensive and with target timescales for all industries
You're not one of the more prolific posters, but an awful lot of your posts include 'the plan is coming'. I think it's nice that you've got a theme.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
I said we are doing worse than Germany, better than Belgium, Spain and Italy. Middle of the road.
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
Hovering around the relegation zone is not middle of the road.
The government has no intention of returning to the 'A' word
Which means tax rises in reality, if we’re not cost cutting anymore. I’m happy with that.
I do like the idea of a hypothecated tax to pay down the response, or a specific set of debt that is paid off separately.
We're borrowing at 0.1% interest. Why pay it off?
After the crisis hits there will undoubtedly be a deficit to deal with. We will need to resolve the deficit as we had to a decade ago but paying off the debt is never going to happen, lets be real.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
I said we are doing worse than Germany, better than Belgium, Spain and Italy. Middle of the road.
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
Credit where it is due, we definitely prevented our health service becoming overwhelmed and that certainly didn't look like a given in the early stages.
I remain convinced that the government were slow off the mark primarily down to Johnson not realising the threat as early as he should have done. I think he took his eye off the ball for the last 2 weeks of Feb when he went MIA to sort out his private life. When he returned he failed to take precautions seriously and ended up with a serious bout of the infection himself.
Since then we have recovered ground but I definitely think our overall response has been a lot nearer the bottom rather than in middle of the road.
I have not had time to follow the discussion on the tracing app but if that does turn out to be a failure where does that leave our lockdown strategy?
I don't think the app will fail outright if the problems are as they are claimed. They will just pivot to the alternative solution. Remember that this is a long-term thing they will need people to use for months on end, not just in the next week or so.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy.
Both of these charges can be correct.
They can indeed. Probably are in fact.
Begs a question though -
Would an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining right wing leaning bureaucracy be more acceptable to the Tory sensibility?
I am quite liking Starmer's approach and if he can finally slay antisemitism and Corbynism he will lead a genuine opposition for the first time in five years
Can Sir Keir get you to vote for him though BigG? As you last voted Labour under Blair when Labour last won a general election you are clearly exactly the type of swing voter he needs to become PM
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
I said we are doing worse than Germany, better than Belgium, Spain and Italy. Middle of the road.
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
Hovering around the relegation zone is not middle of the road.
But being mid table is.
If we were to make a football analogy then Germany would be Liverpool, Italy would be Norwich City - while the UK would be around the likes of Tottenham or Crystal Palace.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Incidentally, does anyone know how South Korea get their app to work? The Google/Apple solution wasn't available earlier.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
GPS tracking on iOS can only be continuous if your app is registered as a navigation app. Apple won't let it into the App Store if you claim it to be a navigation app when it isn't.
Ironically I actually think Apple would give more leeway on that rule than on the bluetooth thing they are trying to push.
Tracking where someone is at this moment is justifiable, creating a social graph (which is what the bluetooth app is doing) is far more problematic.
The downside is that location tracking would be far harder to perform the tracing information on.
Don't welcome the NHS app. Criticise it, because it isn't going to work properly.
I guess its sensible to not criticise it until it does actually fail?
It won't fail, it'll just be updated.
That is right; they will ditch it for the OS solution but keep the interface and claim it is NHX 2.0. Or even 1.1.
As I understand it, it would just be a backend change that the user wouldn't even notice.
Indeed that's what I've said, the app will be patched and it will remain the same app. The whole point of a beta test is to identify any issues and then address them. If there's an issue that needs a backend revamp then just do it.
Don't welcome the NHS app. Criticise it, because it isn't going to work properly.
I guess its sensible to not criticise it until it does actually fail?
It won't fail, it'll just be updated.
That is right; they will ditch it for the OS solution but keep the interface and claim it is NHX 2.0. Or even 1.1.
As I understand it, it would just be a backend change that the user wouldn't even notice.
Indeed that's what I've said, the app will be patched and it will remain the same app. The whole point of a beta test is to identify any issues and then address them. If there's an issue that needs a backend revamp then just do it.
I'm still incredulous about the whole thing if it is indeed the case for iOS it needs to be awakened every few minutes. That should have been a show-stopper.
The government has no intention of returning to the 'A' word
Which means tax rises in reality, if we’re not cost cutting anymore. I’m happy with that.
I do like the idea of a hypothecated tax to pay down the response, or a specific set of debt that is paid off separately.
We're borrowing at 0.1% interest. Why pay it off?
After the crisis hits there will undoubtedly be a deficit to deal with. We will need to resolve the deficit as we had to a decade ago but paying off the debt is never going to happen, lets be real.
''After the crisis hits there will undoubtedly be a deficit to deal with''
Understatement of the year.
See that CIPS construction number? sheesh These economic data are even shocking me and I'm expecting a bigger downturn than anybody.
And we need to stop furlough after 30 June except for those businesses which legally cannot operate eg pubs.
A lengthy list just in hospitality, and don't forget all of the supply and support businesses below them who have no customers. Unless you extend the scheme to the wholesalers and the cleaners and the service companies and the suppliers then you'll not be able to reopen restaurants as they won't be able to get food to cook.
So thats hospitality. As the guidance remains WFH unless you cannot, that means public transport not running fully as you cannot social distance people on trains buses and planes. Which is all their staff, their support staff, the businesses who sell stuff to the people who use public transport.
Schools and nurseries? Can't reopen as you can't socially distance kids. A possible limited part time reopening is in the offing. I'd already covered wholesalers who supply school meals in the first paragraph, but as kids aren't going back their parents can't go back regardless of the sector they work in. Nor can you say "get the grandparents to look after them whilst you work" as they are in the protected group.
Etc etc. Its not as simple as "end the furlough scheme" when so many people will be unable to return to work. And thats to say nothing of businesses who will be thrown under the bus by "restaurants can reopen for takeaway only" which means no support which means they fail. With March rents barely paid it seems unlikely that June rents will be paid, so expect an avalanche of insolvencies from mid-June onwards...
Surely public transport needs to open as fully as possible to enable those who have to travel to work to do so as safely as possible. One of the things that caused overcrowding on the Tube at the beginning of lockdown was the reduction in serviced
Transport is going to be the biggest problem to solve, especially in the larger cities. White-collar staff in London are going to be WFH for probably the rest of the year, and an awful lot of companies will be looking at the whole business model of having thousands of people spend several hours a day and a lot of their income to all congregate together in the most expensive offices in the country.
The Tube, even running a full service (which the Unions and their Mayor don't want to do) barely provides enough capacity for the blue-collar and key workers, without serious overcrowding.
Maybe it will encourage the arses to look at diversifying the UK rather than previous policy of concentrating all the resources and expenditure in London, they are reaping what they sowed,
Completely agree Malc. I think there will be a lot of office capacity in London going forward.
Comments
To me it reads as though the NHSX app requires Android 8.0. Google are supporting as far back as Android 5.0, which covers 95% of Android devices using Play Services. If the NHSX app only runs on Android 8.0 and above that would mean only 60% of Android devices can run it.
Begs a question though -
Would an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining right wing leaning bureaucracy be more acceptable to the Tory sensibility?
Germany 3%
Portugal 10%
As someone else implied earlier. "As long as the UK is not the worst" is a bonkers attitude.
Maybe the staff canteen is small and gets crowded.
There's loads of ways to do it without a centralised database which is why the decision to go down that route is even more puzzling.
John Simpson has launched a YouTube channel. Latest video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UddWj3QtQhQ
Claiming that we are in the middle does not mean we are the best and can't improve or learn lessons. We should recognise where is doing better and learn.
Any phone, from the oldest 2G Nokia to the lastest iPhone, has to perform signalling with the base stations it can see to perform call routing. It basically says "I can see these base stations with these signal strengths" the network then says in reply "in that case use base station X and I will route your calls to that". Those records are recorded and with a bit of processing can show "phone A was at location B at time C".
- Fairly crowded, workers up close to each other
- Noisy, so people who are talking to each other have to shout
- Low-paid work with rapacious employers, so workers won't have the luxury of staying home if they're feeling a bit sick, employers won't give them sick leave, and in some cases once they started losing people to covid19 they apparently tried to make sure the others had strong incentives to keep showing up...
If is refreshing from the Corbyn days
Don't welcome the NHS app. Criticise it, because it isn't going to work properly.
Does it just use GPS tracking (which can be continuous, unlike bluetooth)?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-statistics-are-politics-by-other-means
Such a contrast to Blackford who like Sturgeon wants to keep people locked down for as long as possible.
Boris has confirmed that the plan is coming on Sunday - let's hope that it is clear, comprehensive and with target timescales for all industries
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/06/905459/coronavirus-south-korea-smartphone-app-quarantine/
Serious questions and serious answers.
Johnson will need to up his game. No doubt his spirit of the Blitz bombast and personal story of having the virus will buoy him up for a while. But were his answers about the frustration he feels about PPE shortages really adequate? It's his Government's job and, in several key areas, it just hasn't been done well enough at all. Starmer is forensic enough to dig at those points.
Was Germanys extensive testing capacity in Late February/Early March really the main reason their excess deaths was kept to 3%.
It is basically state surveillance. They worked on this for a number of years after SARS and MERS, passing special laws and building out the tech, so that if something like this every hit again they would switch this system on.
The testing system is also linked into this. You keep beeped to say, you might have been exposed, you need to get a test, here is your appointment #. And the underlying system also works out the priority of who should be getting tests (and just as importantly the results).
I said at the time, the West will never ever go for something like this and instead try to hack something together while respecting privacy. The problem is the virus doesn't respect such things.
The government has no intention of returning to the 'A' word
The view that Britain acted slowly, that it's been reactive rather than proactive, that care homes were a big problem, that testing was very slow to ramp up... none of these are about perfect hindsight; they were all being discussed weeks ago and are all areas where we have performed poorly internationally.
This "how on earth could we have known?" BS is for the birds.
I remain convinced that the government were slow off the mark primarily down to Johnson not realising the threat as early as he should have done. I think he took his eye off the ball for the last 2 weeks of Feb when he went MIA to sort out his private life. When he returned he failed to take precautions seriously and ended up with a serious bout of the infection himself.
Since then we have recovered ground but I definitely think our overall response has been a lot nearer the bottom rather than in middle of the road.
I have not had time to follow the discussion on the tracing app but if that does turn out to be a failure where does that leave our lockdown strategy?
Also, you break these rules, you are out of there.
About as useful as the nothing to declare channels to combat smugglers.
After the crisis hits there will undoubtedly be a deficit to deal with. We will need to resolve the deficit as we had to a decade ago but paying off the debt is never going to happen, lets be real.
https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1257992953441681408
If we were to make a football analogy then Germany would be Liverpool, Italy would be Norwich City - while the UK would be around the likes of Tottenham or Crystal Palace.
Tracking where someone is at this moment is justifiable, creating a social graph (which is what the bluetooth app is doing) is far more problematic.
The downside is that location tracking would be far harder to perform the tracing information on.
Asked if he thinks Prof Ferguson should be prosecuted, the health secretary tells Sky News: "It's a matter for the police.""
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-matt-hancock-speechless-at-extraordinary-actions-of-govt-scientist-11983885
The armed forces are mostly apolitical in my experience. All politicians are just a particularly contemptible sub-genus of the useless civvie.
Understatement of the year.
See that CIPS construction number? sheesh These economic data are even shocking me and I'm expecting a bigger downturn than anybody.