This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.
Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.
Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.
So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
If Hague has made 30 net gains Howard wouldn't have become leader.
Didn't Hague say he had set himself a target of 250 seats or he'd resign.
IIRC in 1999/2000 the Telegraph ran a report with a member of the shadow cabinet privately saying they had at least 100 gains in the bag for the 2001 election.
Hague would have been a fantastic PM.
Post of the day. I’m still chuckling 15 minutes after originally reading it.
Hague would certainly have been one of our brightest PMs, probably the most intelligent PM we have had since Wilson however his judgement was not great
Like Ed Miliband.
Though Ed Miliband got a 2.1, Hague got a 1st
Cameron got a 1st but he still wasn't bright enough to avoid the disaster that is Brexit.
Cameron got average O Levels unlike Hague who got top grades all the way through his educational career
@HYUFD why do you think Sunak would sign up for EEA though? To get a deal doesn't mean going for EEA, even though I support that.
Just seems to have no upside for the Tories, that's all
It certainly means concessions on fishing and state aid though unless Barnier backs down and that would hit Tory support in fishing ports and ex industrial Red Wall seats
Okay but why do you think Sunak is against No Deal?
Well if Sunak backs No Deal what on earth is the point of replacing Boris with him given they both back the same policy?
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Positivity rate is rising. In the ONS gold standard.
Despite all his faults primarily laziness, he has a likability factor.
More so than SKS IMO
Of course i would never vote for him and would always want to see a Lab Govt but still.....
I find Johnson to be wretched, with the morals of a tomcat and equally lazy.
The benefit Johnson brings to the Conservative Party is that by comparison some normally rum characters appear more human. Hunt and May spring to mind.
What if the virus isn't weaker, nor are our bodies better at coping with it as we've had some exposure. What if the low numbers need hospital compared to the huge spike in the cases is because of the false positives?
Hospital admission lag case numbers.
In Georgia deaths and hospital admissions went down even as case numbers rose.
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
That makes no sense given the change in positive rates in recent weeks in the ONS survey and elsewhere.
Yes false positives may be an issue, but why would the positivity rate have gone up? That is the question that needs answering.
What are the ONS saying the rate is on their latest figures?
The issue isn't the number of cases it is the increase in the positivity rate. If there is a high baseline of false positives then there shouldn't surely be a reason to see that consistently rising, which means that the real rate of increasing cases (the R rate essentially) is even higher than we think, not lower.
So, I think if Starmer won around 320 seats, he could probably Govern with the LDs providing confidence and supply, completely sidestepping the SNP.
They therefore need to win 118+ seats, preferably more like 124.
The 124th target seat is Glasgow North West, held by the SNP. Majority 8359, swing required: 10.52%.
Of course as I have said before, if the Lib Dems would become relevant again, the challenge becomes easier.
He would only need SDLP , Alliance, Greens and Plaid. However, if Labour is close to 320 , I would expect circa 20 seats in Scotland.
There is a point at which the Conservatives will lose power, and that isn't the same as Labour forming a majority.
Conservatives lose 40 seats, leaving them on 325. Does anyone seriously believe they won't be the next government? Conservatives lose 50 seats, leaving them on 315. Again, much the same. Sinn Fein absenteeism and DUP support basically makes anything other than a Conservative government impossible. But lose 55 seats (or more) and things start to become hairy for the Conservatives. They could end up the largest party (possibly by a long way if the SNP and Lib Dems do well and are able to make up a significant minority of those 55 seat losses) but not able to form a government.
Lets say (not very realistically), Cons lose 55, 30 to Labour, 20(!) to the LD and 5 to the SNP. There will no doubt be other switches, but if the Conservatives are on only 310 and (say) the DUP have fallen back to say 8, Con + DUP doesn't work, but the next largest party, the Labour Party, are on only 232. All opposition parties equal about 324 or so, whilst Con+DUP equals 318. What happens then? (Second election probably)
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
How many are have been admitted to ICU in say, the last week? He's not saying there are no + cases. Just that the real number is ≈10x less than the number Huw Edwards tells us at 10pm every night.
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
How many are have been admitted to ICU in say, the last week? He's not saying there are no + cases. Just that the real number is ≈10x less than the number Huw Edwards tells us at 10pm every night.
You'd better hope that's not the case! Because if it is the case then counterintuitively that is very, very bad news.
And there we go. two seconds into the BBC news and they are talking about 1000s of cases.
The vast majority of the rise in cases is with under 35s, no surprise as they have a miniscule risk of death even if they get Covid. Over 70s however have seen no net rise in cases at all, no surprise as they are most at risk of death from Covid.
Unless and until we get a vaccine, which could take years, we can lock down everyone on and off, deprive our young of their youth and hammer the economy or we can just focus on social distancing, masks, testing and keeping our elderly and those with pre existing conditions indoors as much as possible and everyone else can go about their business with precautions
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
How many are have been admitted to ICU in say, the last week? He's not saying there are no + cases. Just that the real number is ≈10x less than the number Huw Edwards tells us at 10pm every night.
Is there any mechanism by which the claims of the lockdown sceptics are falsifiable? For instance, if we do nothing and there's a large rise in hospitalizations and deaths, will that be proof that the cases were real after all, and what responsibility would the sceptics take for such an outcome?
According to the article that's the day he was met (albeit virtually) with the 1922 committee. Would have been pretty obvious if he wasn't in Downing street.
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
How many are have been admitted to ICU in say, the last week? He's not saying there are no + cases. Just that the real number is ≈10x less than the number Huw Edwards tells us at 10pm every night.
Is there any mechanism by which the claims of the lockdown sceptics are falsifiable? For instance, if we do nothing and there's a large rise in hospitalizations and deaths, will that be proof that the cases were real after all, and what responsibility would the sceptics take for such an outcome?
"Not even as many deaths as a mild flu season."
That was the cry of the sceptics at the start of all this.
Given they have been proven wrong ceaselessly you'd think they'd have a moment of self reflection every now and then.
Yes, but he is sort of right. The Sweden option would never have worked in the UK because it would demand an attitude of respectful trust in government which the UK has never had (and which no one could have in BJ). We might have started down that path, but we'd have caved. No question.
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
How many are have been admitted to ICU in say, the last week? He's not saying there are no + cases. Just that the real number is ≈10x less than the number Huw Edwards tells us at 10pm every night.
Is there any mechanism by which the claims of the lockdown sceptics are falsifiable? For instance, if we do nothing and there's a large rise in hospitalizations and deaths, will that be proof that the cases were real after all, and what responsibility would the sceptics take for such an outcome?
The "false positive" theory is falsifiable by looking at the positivity rate.
If there was a high(ish) false positive rate then that should be a baseline from which the false positives should form thus the net cases would be the difference above that. The positivity rate then would vary very limitedly.
EG the link hypothesises a 0.8% false positive rate and a 0.85% positivity rate thus a 0.05% real positive rate. So far so good. But then if we go from that to a 1.1% positive rate then we have seen a 0.25% increase in the positivity rate. If there is not a major false positive issue then that is a 30% increase in cases. If there is that hypothesised false positive scenario then that is a 500% increase in cases. A 500% increase in cases is far, far worse than a 30% increase in cases.
So, I think if Starmer won around 320 seats, he could probably Govern with the LDs providing confidence and supply, completely sidestepping the SNP.
They therefore need to win 118+ seats, preferably more like 124.
The 124th target seat is Glasgow North West, held by the SNP. Majority 8359, swing required: 10.52%.
Of course as I have said before, if the Lib Dems would become relevant again, the challenge becomes easier.
He would only need SDLP , Alliance, Greens and Plaid. However, if Labour is close to 320 , I would expect circa 20 seats in Scotland.
There is a point at which the Conservatives will lose power, and that isn't the same as Labour forming a majority.
Conservatives lose 40 seats, leaving them on 325. Does anyone seriously believe they won't be the next government? Conservatives lose 50 seats, leaving them on 315. Again, much the same. Sinn Fein absenteeism and DUP support basically makes anything other than a Conservative government impossible. But lose 55 seats (or more) and things start to become hairy for the Conservatives. They could end up the largest party (possibly by a long way if the SNP and Lib Dems do well and are able to make up a significant minority of those 55 seat losses) but not able to form a government.
Lets say (not very realistically), Cons lose 55, 30 to Labour, 20(!) to the LD and 5 to the SNP. There will no doubt be other switches, but if the Conservatives are on only 310 and (say) the DUP have fallen back to say 8, Con + DUP doesn't work, but the next largest party, the Labour Party, are on only 232. All opposition parties equal about 324 or so, whilst Con+DUP equals 318. What happens then? (Second election probably)
The Tories were only 10 seats away from that very situation in 2017.
@HYUFD why do you think Sunak would sign up for EEA though? To get a deal doesn't mean going for EEA, even though I support that.
Just seems to have no upside for the Tories, that's all
It certainly means concessions on fishing and state aid though unless Barnier backs down and that would hit Tory support in fishing ports and ex industrial Red Wall seats
Okay but why do you think Sunak is against No Deal?
Well if Sunak backs No Deal what on earth is the point of replacing Boris with him given they both back the same policy?
Because Boris is a lazy arse and sunak actially looks like he works at the job rather than flaunting around the place going I am pm me
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Looks like some of these false positives are finding themselves in ICU.
How many are have been admitted to ICU in say, the last week? He's not saying there are no + cases. Just that the real number is ≈10x less than the number Huw Edwards tells us at 10pm every night.
I'm not sure how many have been admitted to ICU but the dashboard tells us there were 138 in ventilator beds on Friday compared with 77 a week previous. It had been fairly static at 60-70 for a while
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
Jason Leitch, Clinical Director at the Scottish Government was talking about what I assume is the problem referred to here. The test tells you the virus is present, but it doesn't tell you what you really want to know: is the person infectious?
The lockdownsceptics man is barking up the wrong tree, I suspect. There is nothing massively wrong with the statistics. The test tests what it does. If there are ten times more positives it's because the epidemic has grown tenfold. What does he want? Stop all testing so we have no idea what's going on?
The problem is people being asked to self isolate because they are no longer infectious or because they have come into contact with someone who is no longer infection. Also Test and Protect can't focus on the traces that really matter because they don't know who is infectious and who isn't.
Why? Italy is not on the quarantine list and has fewer new cases than the UK does
If there's not a problem with BoJo having a weekend away, why deny it?
There is no problem as far as I am concerned it was the weekend after all, as Brown and May showed some of our worst PMs have been those who tried to work 24/7.
Reagan was one of the best US presidents and spent most evenings watching soap operas and most summers at his ranch in California
Anyway youngest has a cold. As do all but one of his bubble. We know it isn't Covid as it is a sneezy mucous one. But there are no tests available so he'll be off school. As will the rest. Not a great start to week 3 of A-levels.
Why? Italy is not on the quarantine list and has fewer new cases than the UK does
If there's not a problem with BoJo having a weekend away, why deny it?
There is no problem as far as I am concerned it was the weekend after all, as Brown and May showed some of our worst PMs have been those who tried to work 24/7.
Reagan was one of the best US presidents and spent most evenings watching soap operas and most summers at his ranch in California
That's the rum thing. If he did have a weekend away, it's not that shameful. And the lie (if there is one) will be pretty easy to expose.
So either the story is wrong, and the airport messed up their press release, or No 10 is doing a stupid lie about something trivial.
What if the virus isn't weaker, nor are our bodies better at coping with it as we've had some exposure. What if the low numbers need hospital compared to the huge spike in the cases is because of the false positives?
Despite the somewhat breathless and dramatic style, Dr MikeYeadon is right about the potentially seriously misleading impression that false positives can give about the scale of infection. It seems to me that there are clearly issues here which should be debated openly in public. Kudos to Julia Hartley-Brewer for her efforts in that direction.
What if the virus isn't weaker, nor are our bodies better at coping with it as we've had some exposure. What if the low numbers need hospital compared to the huge spike in the cases is because of the false positives?
Despite the somewhat breathless and dramatic style, Dr MikeYeadon is right about the potentially seriously misleading impression that false positives can give about the scale of infection. It seems to me that there are clearly issues here which should be debated openly in public. Kudos to Julia Hartley-Brewer for her efforts in that direction.
Having got through the opening 700 paragraphs of his article and actually got to some numbers and assumptions I can immediatly spot the bollocks.
He has assumed that the people getting pillar 2 tests are a completely random sampling of the population.
He writes a lot of purple prose to try and justify this but that is unsupportable.
The second point is if the case rate is driven by the alleged massive false postivie rate we should have seen an enourmas rise in cases for 2-17 year olds in Scotland when there was the massive post school start spike in tests for that age group.
There was no massive spike in the case rate for that age group.
Reality is once again staring the Covid sceptic straight in the eye and the Covid Sceptic does not blink.
What if the virus isn't weaker, nor are our bodies better at coping with it as we've had some exposure. What if the low numbers need hospital compared to the huge spike in the cases is because of the false positives?
Despite the somewhat breathless and dramatic style, Dr MikeYeadon is right about the potentially seriously misleading impression that false positives can give about the scale of infection. It seems to me that there are clearly issues here which should be debated openly in public. Kudos to Julia Hartley-Brewer for her efforts in that direction.
Having got through the opening 700 paragraphs of his article and actually got to some numbers and assumptions I can immediatly spot the bollocks.
He has assumed that the people getting pillar 2 tests are a completely random sampling of the population.
He writes a lot of purple prose to try and justify this but that is unsupportable.
The second point is if the case rate is driven by the alleged massive false postivie rate we should have seen an enourmas rise in cases for 2-17 year olds in Scotland when there was the massive post school start spike in tests for that age group.
There was no massive spike in the case rate for that age group.
Reality is once again staring the Covid sceptic straight in the eye and the Covid Sceptic does not blink.
Allegedly massive FPR? 0.8%? 99.2% accuracy? Where does he allege that this rate is massive?
Highly doubtful whether pillar 2 testees are far enough from a truly random sample to make a difference. Self diagnosis of symptoms by lay people of average intelligence is a pretty random process.
My boy Dave (pbuh) gained the Tories 108 seats in on election, he took the party from 198 MPs in 2005 to 306 MPs in 2010.
But it's a much harder task facing Starmer than what was facing Cameron. Although the Tories didn't make all that many gains in 2005, a lot of seats were brought into play.
Obviously everyone starts with 0 votes in all seats, but we all know that past results do matter.
One thread I always keep on planning to right is a what if thread.
Just imagine if William Hague had managed to make say thirty net gains in 2001 instead of just one net gain, and Howard and Cameron made the same number of net gains that they did then in 2010 Dave wins a majority of 20.
So we'd have had no coalition, what would politics be like this day? What would have been the outcome of the 2015 GE?
Cameron would have won GE2015.
He'd have had bigger problems with his backbenches, and the fight over Europe would have come earlier, and he'd also have done things like a British Bill of Rights, IHT cuts and attempted to licence fox-hunting (which would have narrowly failed) but he'd have governed ok.
I think there were two key factors behind the Tory win in 2015. Firstly, Scotland. I think that would have played out more or less the same with the Lib Dems in opposition. The Tories would have been seen as the safe option in England. And secondly the fall in the price of oil. That was a godsend for the Tories and would obviously have been a factor irrespective of who was governing.
What about the elephant in the room. " I will give you an in/out referendum".
This piece by Dr Michael Yeadon is absolutely devastating, if correct. It utterly blows the current covid panic and crisis completely and utterly out of the water. We are being deluged with case figures and scary graphs showing huge leaps and seeing demands for lockdown 2.0, when
"The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty."
I'm really hoping some other scientists can show the flaw in his workings, because if not then we are living through easily the biggest public policy disaster since the War. We are about to cause more untold misery, mental health breakdowns, smashing our economy to pieces and killing many through neglect and lack of normal NHS treatment based on numbers that are a false. Not by a bit, but massively, massively wrong.
What tests are they using in other countries?
I want to see a public debate on this next week. I want MPs demanding answers from Hancock on this.
If you take specifically just the Pillar Two tests (as he says) and allocate 0.8% of them as false positives, and deduct these from the results to get a "true" level of positives, you get this (bars are actual numbers, line is smoothed 7-day average):
If he's right, then for quite a bit of July, we'd need to have had a negative number of cases in the day (the number of false positives more than drowned out the real positives).
It also indicates that we're up by a factor of 50 or more from the "true" level of cases per day in July - from a "true" average dipping below 40 per day in mid-late July to over 2000 per day recently.
This does not add up. If this lockdown sceptic guy is right, that is.
If it doesn't add up, his logic is flawed.
I cannot see how we can get negative cases per day. That's beyond zero covid. Would it mean that infected people would step off of a plane and become miraculously cured?
Comments
62% say the nominee should be picked by the winner of the election , 23% said before the election with 15% undecided .
Oh dear, if true
That cannot be explained by false positives.
https://twitter.com/shershovitz/status/1307704249220911105
The benefit Johnson brings to the Conservative Party is that by comparison some normally rum characters appear more human. Hunt and May spring to mind.
In Georgia deaths and hospital admissions went down even as case numbers rose.
And then hospital admissions and deaths shot up.
The issue isn't the number of cases it is the increase in the positivity rate. If there is a high baseline of false positives then there shouldn't surely be a reason to see that consistently rising, which means that the real rate of increasing cases (the R rate essentially) is even higher than we think, not lower.
Conservatives lose 40 seats, leaving them on 325. Does anyone seriously believe they won't be the next government?
Conservatives lose 50 seats, leaving them on 315. Again, much the same. Sinn Fein absenteeism and DUP support basically makes anything other than a Conservative government impossible.
But lose 55 seats (or more) and things start to become hairy for the Conservatives. They could end up the largest party (possibly by a long way if the SNP and Lib Dems do well and are able to make up a significant minority of those 55 seat losses) but not able to form a government.
Lets say (not very realistically), Cons lose 55, 30 to Labour, 20(!) to the LD and 5 to the SNP. There will no doubt be other switches, but if the Conservatives are on only 310 and (say) the DUP have fallen back to say 8, Con + DUP doesn't work, but the next largest party, the Labour Party, are on only 232.
All opposition parties equal about 324 or so, whilst Con+DUP equals 318.
What happens then? (Second election probably)
Disaster
Complete panic.
It's coming
Crazy person
Unless and until we get a vaccine, which could take years, we can lock down everyone on and off, deprive our young of their youth and hammer the economy or we can just focus on social distancing, masks, testing and keeping our elderly and those with pre existing conditions indoors as much as possible and everyone else can go about their business with precautions
That was the cry of the sceptics at the start of all this.
Given they have been proven wrong ceaselessly you'd think they'd have a moment of self reflection every now and then.
If there was a high(ish) false positive rate then that should be a baseline from which the false positives should form thus the net cases would be the difference above that. The positivity rate then would vary very limitedly.
EG the link hypothesises a 0.8% false positive rate and a 0.85% positivity rate thus a 0.05% real positive rate. So far so good. But then if we go from that to a 1.1% positive rate then we have seen a 0.25% increase in the positivity rate. If there is not a major false positive issue then that is a 30% increase in cases. If there is that hypothesised false positive scenario then that is a 500% increase in cases. A 500% increase in cases is far, far worse than a 30% increase in cases.
The lockdownsceptics man is barking up the wrong tree, I suspect. There is nothing massively wrong with the statistics. The test tests what it does. If there are ten times more positives it's because the epidemic has grown tenfold. What does he want? Stop all testing so we have no idea what's going on?
The problem is people being asked to self isolate because they are no longer infectious or because they have come into contact with someone who is no longer infection. Also Test and Protect can't focus on the traces that really matter because they don't know who is infectious and who isn't.
Can't see how we make it to October half term, to be honest.
Reagan was one of the best US presidents and spent most evenings watching soap operas and most summers at his ranch in California
Not a great start to week 3 of A-levels.
So either the story is wrong, and the airport messed up their press release, or No 10 is doing a stupid lie about something trivial.
Rum.
He is a lying scumbag, and is mainly paid by foreign powers to undermine the UK's best interests. There is a word for that.
He has assumed that the people getting pillar 2 tests are a completely random sampling of the population.
He writes a lot of purple prose to try and justify this but that is unsupportable.
The second point is if the case rate is driven by the alleged massive false postivie rate we should have seen an enourmas rise in cases for 2-17 year olds in Scotland when there was the massive post school start spike in tests for that age group.
There was no massive spike in the case rate for that age group.
Reality is once again staring the Covid sceptic straight in the eye and the Covid Sceptic does not blink.
Highly doubtful whether pillar 2 testees are far enough from a truly random sample to make a difference. Self diagnosis of symptoms by lay people of average intelligence is a pretty random process.
Good morning.
If he's right, then for quite a bit of July, we'd need to have had a negative number of cases in the day (the number of false positives more than drowned out the real positives).
It also indicates that we're up by a factor of 50 or more from the "true" level of cases per day in July - from a "true" average dipping below 40 per day in mid-late July to over 2000 per day recently.
This does not add up. If this lockdown sceptic guy is right, that is.
If it doesn't add up, his logic is flawed.
I cannot see how we can get negative cases per day. That's beyond zero covid. Would it mean that infected people would step off of a plane and become miraculously cured?