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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » And to take you gently into the weekend (remember those?) the PB NightHawks Cafe
The lockdown continues with no real idea when this is going to come to an end. So while it remains the PB Nighthawks cafe will continue – a place to interact without worrying about physical differences.
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That's not 7% a year.
That's 7% over 10 years. That's 0.7%.
If you were to buy Microsoft shares, by contrast, you'd get almost twice the yield.
Have to admit I've never gotten into Banks. I read Consider Phlebas and thought it ok, and read Excession after rave reviews on here, but thought it was crap.
Been trying to read more sci-fi this year though. Neal Asher was fun, and I finally read the Foundation trilogy.
Regardless of some jiggery-pokery, clearly a lot of people have worked really hard on ramping up the testing capacity. From the army squaddies to the lab tech, etc. They at least deserve a bit of bloody credit.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keisha_Lance_Bottoms
The crazy bit is that the Hillary bet is far, far more certain.
https://twitter.com/RockboltG/status/1256276939800752139?s=20
The whole you did people twice is also horseshit, that happens every day and is a good thing. Trying to make it sound like it was a cunning plan just for today is totally disingenuous.
Disappointing from Neil. He is normally straight shooter. The jiggery-pokery with home tests is a fair comment, but still gets you up to 80-90k, which I think is fine in terms of the target, but 122k is spin.
However he is the closest thing we have to a modern Isembard Kingdom Brunel.
Anyway, pleasant dreams all. I think I'll have to distract from thoughts of sentient spiders by further adventures of Richard Sharpe in the Penninsula, nothing horrifying went on there.
The genuine test for this is next week. If they can't keep up the 100k, then it is going to look suspect.
What will happen on the ground will depend on the overall concept and its implementation.
Dishing tests out that liberally might backfire a little bit in a week or so, when the tests are back. There's a chance that new cases found might jump from 6k/day into five figure territory. People will ask questions, other people will scream that the stupid, evil and corrupt journos need to be silenced.
I cannot even imagine trying to list my 100 favourite books. I'd certainly end up putting large numbers from a few authors in there.
"WTAF??? That can't be right...."
The UK will carry out 100,000 tests for coronavirus every day by the end of this month, Health Secretary Matt Hancock pledged today.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/health-secretary-sets-out-plan-to-carry-out-100000-coronavirus-tests-a-day
Its odd how the media don't seem to be able to find this website or the actual footage of Hancock speaking, but can find one incorrect tweet. Fact checking, hey....
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18421834.david-icke-says-nicola-sturgeon-moronic-grasp-truth-covid-19/
The conspiracy theorist David Icke has claimed Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon "lacks the brainpower" to understand the coronavirus pandemic is part of a megalomaniacal global elite's secret plan for world domination.
In my career I always found the way to achieve the maximum was to set an ambitious target and challenge everyone involved to find ways to meet it. There's a time and place for the 'under-promise and over-deliver' approach but this is neither the time nor the place.
Saying 100k and only hitting 50k with no obvious way to increase is a headline, but not what they've actually achieved. Bizarrely, pretending that you've hit the target, when you'll actually hit it within days looks much worse. Can't understand the thinking behind it at all.
To get out of lockdown, they have to start doing this. If they are struggling with capacity etc, they need to ask for help.
The foundations of PB Torydom are quivering.
This disingenuous false claim that it was 100k people (when 2 sec google search shows you it wasn't) and trying to make it sound like testing people multiple times in a day is so new sneaky shit way of boosting numbers (when in fact we haven't been doing it enough).
Given that you can see why Hancock has spun his number.
Simon Dolan, whose Jota Aviation company has been delivering personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS, has put the health secretary on notice that he intends to issue proceedings for a judicial review, unless the government reverses some of the lockdown measures and reinstates freedom of movement."
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/may/01/uk-government-faces-legal-challenge-coronavirus-lockdown-businessman-simon-dolan
At any rate, it is good that we are testing so much more.
If it's up to 200k or 250k a day in a weeks' time then the original target will be quickly forgotten. If, on the other hand, it stalls, well...
"Pillar 4 [testing]: serology and swab testing: a national surveillance programme supported by PHE, ONS and Biobank to learn more about the prevalence and spread of the virus"
Pillar 4 cumulative tests = 12,771. Pillar 4 positive tests = 0 (zilch, none)
So much for all those asymptomatic cases then.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public
But for weeks we keep getting absolute horse crap, stuff you can check in 2 seconds. The death numbers, the PPE delboys, Prof Peston bollocks on chemicals, this "100k people", Times story claiming an academic was present at a meeting and said he disagreed (and he wasn't there and didn't say anything of the sort).
It is just f##king basic fact checking. At a time when disseminating correct information is crucial, they have more incompetent than the government.
After you hear that, what are you surprised by?
Surely the whole point of a global elite is that they already hold effective world domination. They wouldn't be much of an elite if they didn't.
Slightly strange story too
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8256109/Social-distancing-two-metres-apart-based-figure-says-government-adviser.html
https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1256337038220988417?s=20
One is that it's like the "£350 million per week." Even if it's a somewhat dodgy number, it gets people talking. If they question the details, they're broadcasting your talking points and sounding like carping moaners. "Outside the SW1 media bubble, people are just glad that testing is being done so well..."
The other is that parts of the government are at the "making their own reality" stage of things.
The fact that one can't automatically dismiss either of these possibilities is a problem in itself.
These are the samples that have been sent to Porton Down. The explanatory text says For serology testing (pillar 4), some protocols allow for samples to be tested repeatedly. Samples are anonymised prior to sending to the lab for testing, therefore the identification of individuals tested is not possible in the current reporting process, and so the number of people tested is not reported.
In other words, they've taken almost thirteen thousand samples (starting in February, it's not just that these results "aren't back yet") but those samples are going to be subjected to multiple "tests". Partly because they're trying to see if the different tests agree with each other when given a sample from the same source. For that reason, I don't think it makes sense to state the number of "positive test results" for the pillar 4 samples.
See also https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/878121/coronavirus-covid-19-testing-strategy.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/air-pollution-smoking-deaths-compare-a8818851.html
https://twitter.com/homelesshorse/status/1256349388638752769?s=20
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Main Headline
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What a fiddle! Matt Hancock boasts he has hit 100,000-a-day testing target but only if you don't mind counting multiple tests on the same person
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Secondary Story
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Health Secretary Matt Hancock claims the Government carried out 122,000 tests yesterday but they were done on 73,191 people - so WHY are some people tested more than once?
Dr Paul Hunter, a medicine lecturer at the University of East Anglia, said it was 'valid' for people to be tested more than once and that tests are not perfect so may have to be repeated.
Edit: When the one character looked at the code and was physically sick, I commented to my other half that it must be written in PHP. I just got a pitying look.