Did I read that right, 170,000 tests in a single day?
Target of 200,000 by end of the month Boris set in this month's first PMQs certainly not looking out of reach now.
Maybe not with all the fiddles the government is using to make our testing performance look better:
- counting all the tests being done for medical research purposes (rather than on ‘live’ genuine patients), within the total (these have reached 30,000 daily)
- counting tests posted out within the total, whether or not they are actually done and returned
- counting multiple tests done on the same patient (for example one nasal swab and one throat swab) at the same time as separate tests
- including failed tests and rejected tests within the total
Should be easy, especially with the extra antibody tests.
Curious if those have been introduced to survey testing already. This is such a leap it must be a big batch of something new (eg the days with previous survey testing adding 30k).
For context, 177k sustained would be the highest testing rate in the world, at about 2.64 per thousand. Germany are about 2.0, Russia 1.6ish, Spain 1.4, US and Italy 1.2. Dunno the French, maybe 1.5 at a guess based on previous comments.
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
Speaking as someone living here it's great news anyway. If it's true that some people are more susceptible than others (to infection) it is not a massive stretch to postulate that there exists a subset of the 'less susceptible" who are "not susceptible". Perhaps I am one of them. I've been out quite a lot in the last few weeks and I don't seem to have caught it. Touching wood (metaphorically) as I say this.
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
It's definitely possible, but as you say it's hard to prove (though I'm sure people are working on it).
I'm not sure that activity has bounced back to the levels we saw in early March, though. My local gym is still closed, and my local Tesco is limiting the number of people who can go in at a time, and maintains strict 2-meter limits in queues. The local church has suspended services. The GP surgery is highly discouraging of in-person visits. Everyone I know who can work from home is doing so, and everyone I know who was furloughed remains so. I have a view of part of the North Circular road from my flat, and although it's busier than it was a week ago, it's still much quieter than normal.
This has been my confusion with this virus all along and lockdown. This chap has not left the house for weeks apart from a bit of exercise yet somehow he has got the virus, fortunately with no symptoms. Its very hard to undertsand how it is possible for him to get infected.
And all the sampling says bugger all people have had it. Like what are the chances that given so few people have had that you go out to the park, maybe touch a bench and somebody catch it.
There are so many mixed smoke signals with this thing.
And according to that report on here last night about superspreaders the majority of people who have the virus do not spread it, yet you can catch it by staying at home all the time.
I think the report said that 80% of infections cam from super-spreaders.
If we take R0 as 3, that means that R for non-super-spreaders is about 0.8*. That's not the same as say "majority of people who have the virus do not spread it".
This is a direct quote from the report:
But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all. In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: “The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero. Most people do not transmit.”
I think that's what you'd expect with random variation with something that is Poisson-distributed. You get the same with rainfall. Large majority of days have near-zero rainfall, with a small number of super-rain days, giving an average of a middling amount of rain.
I feel like we have a reasonably good idea now of how this spreads. Inside, loud vocalizations, effort to be heard against background noise. Pubs, churches, meat-processing plants, and similar.
That leaves a lot else that is mostly safe.
It's a shame that the tracing apps don't seem likely to gather the data that would help to refine this, but too late now.
The latest on our island tracing App is that the developers have been asked to produce a revised version and that will now be introduced on the island before being rolled out Nationally. The need for a whole stack of changes has pushed the rollout back into June.
This has been my confusion with this virus all along and lockdown. This chap has not left the house for weeks apart from a bit of exercise yet somehow he has got the virus, fortunately with no symptoms. Its very hard to undertsand how it is possible for him to get infected.
And all the sampling says bugger all people have had it. Like what are the chances that given so few people have had that you go out to the park, maybe touch a bench and somebody catch it.
There are so many mixed smoke signals with this thing.
And according to that report on here last night about superspreaders the majority of people who have the virus do not spread it, yet you can catch it by staying at home all the time.
I think the report said that 80% of infections cam from super-spreaders.
If we take R0 as 3, that means that R for non-super-spreaders is about 0.8*. That's not the same as say "majority of people who have the virus do not spread it".
This is a direct quote from the report:
But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all. In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: “The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero. Most people do not transmit.”
I think that's what you'd expect with random variation with something that is Poisson-distributed. You get the same with rainfall. Large majority of days have near-zero rainfall, with a small number of super-rain days, giving an average of a middling amount of rain.
I feel like we have a reasonably good idea now of how this spreads. Inside, loud vocalizations, effort to be heard against background noise. Pubs, churches, meat-processing plants, and similar.
That leaves a lot else that is mostly safe.
It's a shame that the tracing apps don't seem likely to gather the data that would help to refine this, but too late now.
The latest on our island tracing App is that the developers have been asked to produce a revised version and that will now be introduced on the island before being rolled out Nationally. The need for a whole stack of changes has pushed the rollout back into June.
Do you have insight into the changes being made? The change to the google API would be a backend change like that.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
Looks plausible UK will be worst in Europe and likely we will be relegation zone.
Note that the Italian statistics in that are only up to March 31st. I would expect that would put them way worse than anyone else, so far, when updated to May.
This has been my confusion with this virus all along and lockdown. This chap has not left the house for weeks apart from a bit of exercise yet somehow he has got the virus, fortunately with no symptoms. Its very hard to undertsand how it is possible for him to get infected.
And all the sampling says bugger all people have had it. Like what are the chances that given so few people have had that you go out to the park, maybe touch a bench and somebody catch it.
There are so many mixed smoke signals with this thing.
And according to that report on here last night about superspreaders the majority of people who have the virus do not spread it, yet you can catch it by staying at home all the time.
An image of people staying at home all the time and never going out:
It's inexplicable how anyone could catch it during lockdown, it really is.
But they have queued perfectly outside - how can being close to each other, inside, have any effect?
Yes, shops are definitely the danger area.
I made the mistake of going into Poundland yesterday during an unavoidable trip to the bank to deposit cheques. It was terrible. Just as busy as usual, something the store could tackle but chose not to. I should have realised that just because I was being required to queue to go in, I couldn't trust the store to make sure that it would be reasonably safe inside. It wasn't and the queue for the number of self-service tills at the one exit (out of two) in operation was 20 deep. I'm not going back there for the duration. Clearly there are some stores turning a blind eye to the reality of compliance to keep up turnover while covering themselves by going through the motions of putting notices and floor markings up. I suspect that many of those in that photo also trusted the store to create a safe environment, although there is no excuse for queuing so close together. If the person behind you is standing too close, you politely tell them to back off.
By contrast, they were doing things by the book in Boots and things were quiet and felt safe in there. One in, one out on the door and few inside. They weren't profiteering either - just 75p each for two mini own brand hand sanitisers.
Otherwise it's down to one big weekly shop at the near-deserted Sainsbury's megastore at 8.30pm. The aisles are wide, you can scan your own goods as you go and in the absence of many customers the biggest risk is navigating around late evening shelf stackers. Exorbitant prices put up with for now until it feels safe to return to Aldi.
I raise (or lower) you "Europe should brace for second wave, says EU coronavirus chief" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/top-eu-doctor-europe-should-brace-itself-for-second-wave-of-coronavirus Mind you, unless it's just the grauniad being true to it's name and mistyping the quote, she also says "Looking at the characteristics of the virus, looking at what now emerges from the different countries in terms of population immunity – which isn’t all that exciting, between 2% and 14%, that leaves still 85% to 90% of the population susceptible", which is a bit worrying from a maths point of view. I appreciate that 100% of the population may not be susceptible, but the implied % susceptible originally ranges from 99% to 92% depending whether the number infected so far is 2% or 14%. Unless there's some fancy modelling that links number infected so far to the number never susceptible.
Just proves how there's no consensus amongst the experts.
Looks plausible UK will be worst in Europe and likely we will be relegation zone.
Note that the Italian statistics in that are only up to March 31st. I would expect that would put them way worse than anyone else, so far, when updated to May.
Seems like they'd be the only competitor to the UK on highest number (given Germany and France are the only other ones who realistically could with their populations and it won't be them), though per capita would introduce others into the mix.
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
It's definitely possible, but as you say it's hard to prove (though I'm sure people are working on it).
I'm not sure that activity has bounced back to the levels we saw in early March, though. My local gym is still closed, and my local Tesco is limiting the number of people who can go in at a time, and maintains strict 2-meter limits in queues. The local church has suspended services. The GP surgery is highly discouraging of in-person visits. Everyone I know who can work from home is doing so, and everyone I know who was furloughed remains so. I have a view of part of the North Circular road from my flat, and although it's busier than it was a week ago, it's still much quieter than normal.
According to the data presented at the briefing on the 18th, the Tube was running at 7% of normal. previous numbers were bouncing around 5-6%
So possibly a small uptick - but hard to tell at this point.
First thought was, a lot of stammering and stumbling by all. You expect it from Johnson, because he’s always been a bumbler, but Starmer confused testing and tracing and Hoyle amusingly forgot which one of Starmer and Johnson was PM. Can’t think why. Maybe it was hot in the chamber?
Secondly, Starmer seemed quite nervous, and Johnson was trying to bully him. Wouldn’t say he succeeded, but it wasn’t the massacre of previous weeks.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Fourth, both Hancock and Johnson still look pretty unwell, and Johnson seems to be losing his hair. I would say both are value to leave office in the autumn.
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
Three consecutive days with under 3,000 positive tests is very good.
Its still too soon to see the effect of more people being active last week but its pretty clear that the bank holiday weekend did not increase R.
Did I read that right, 170,000 tests in a single day?
Target of 200,000 by end of the month Boris set in this month's first PMQs certainly not looking out of reach now.
Maybe not with all the fiddles the government is using to make our testing performance look better:
- counting all the tests being done for medical research purposes (rather than on ‘live’ genuine patients), within the total (these have reached 30,000 daily)
- counting tests posted out within the total, whether or not they are actually done and returned
- counting multiple tests done on the same patient (for example one nasal swab and one throat swab) at the same time as separate tests
- including failed tests and rejected tests within the total
Why on earth wouldn't you count tests done on for medical research purposes etc when that's part of the national response?
Yesterday there were roughly 2k live cases identified. To get to 200k tests we'd need to be doing approximately 100 tests per live case which is unlikely. The alternative tests being done on top of the live cases is a critical part of the national response which is why they were always intended to be included so its not a fiddle.
As for posted out tests we've coincidentally received our posted out test today (my wife is frontline and its been sent out because of her) and we requested it and 100% will return it immediately. Why on earth would we or anyone else order a test and not return it?
MPs have just voted 350:258 in favour of abolishing the virtual parliament on the June 2nd.
Inevitable.
Seen a lot of people saying on Facebook how can children go back to school if MPs won't go to work.
Anyone would think that people didn't want their kids to back to school, they must be driving some parents barmy by now, the schools are not closed, children of key workers and some classed as vulnerable have been there all the time.
There's a lot more to an MPs work than shouting and bawling in the House of Commons, it's amazing how many people think that when Parliament is in recess, the politicians are lounging around on holiday.
As regards Starmer, he's not exactly Mr Charisma I see him as a Neil Kinnock type character who will do all the hard work cleaning up the Labour Party, ready for his successor to win power (of course in the case of Kinnock, his successor died so it was his successor's successor Blair who got the benefit).
I think that the very best Starmer can do is reduce the Tories to a minority government in 2024, but that would be quite an achievement, the Tories would soon get rid of Boris if he didn't look like a winner.
If the Tories lose their majority at the next general election then Starmer will be PM.
The LDs, SNP, Plaid, the Greens and even the DUP would all prefer the whole UK to be in the single market with Starmer than WTO terms with Boris and the Tories
The criticism over schools is bizarre. The key consideration is 2m social distancing. Which practically speaking means kids are going back part time. Which practically speaking means their working parents can only go back part time. Schools are open to keyworkers, lessons are being set online, students are being spoken to on the phone and via email. The idea teachers are sat with their feet up refusing to "go back to work" is just dumb.
So, that 2m distancing. Until it gets completely removed our kids are not going back to school - not full time normal school. You need to set aside the 1st June hysteria and start looking at the start of the new academic year. If 2m spacing remains in place, schools remain part time things for kids and with it employment for their parents. Permanently. Until its dropped. Even 1m with mandatory masks like in South Korea means part time schooling and with it part time employment. Pitiful whining about teachers from some doesn't change this rather large problem...
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
I came up with the same hypothesis at the weekend. It is clear that the infection rate is dropping faster in many of the locations that had the early crises than you’d expect if the numbers not infected are as high as implied by the data being reported.
Lockdowns alone aren’t enough to explain the differences in declining infection rate; in particular there is tons of anecdotal that the lockdown in London isn’t that thorough, yet London’s new case rate has dropped faster than any other region.
Some researchers are positing that this implies much wider infection levels than any of the (few) random testing exercises has so far uncovered.
An alternative explanation is that a good proportion of the population somehow starts with either immunity or significant resistance.
Did I read that right, 170,000 tests in a single day?
Target of 200,000 by end of the month Boris set in this month's first PMQs certainly not looking out of reach now.
Maybe not with all the fiddles the government is using to make our testing performance look better:
- counting all the tests being done for medical research purposes (rather than on ‘live’ genuine patients), within the total (these have reached 30,000 daily)
- counting tests posted out within the total, whether or not they are actually done and returned
- counting multiple tests done on the same patient (for example one nasal swab and one throat swab) at the same time as separate tests
- including failed tests and rejected tests within the total
There's an easy solution. Going from what is announced to the real world figure is exactly the same as converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius. You deduct 32 and then multiply by 5/9.
So today's 177,216 becomes 98,435.
Not bad - nearly reaching the 100k target now. Maybe tomorrow.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
This has been my confusion with this virus all along and lockdown. This chap has not left the house for weeks apart from a bit of exercise yet somehow he has got the virus, fortunately with no symptoms. Its very hard to undertsand how it is possible for him to get infected.
And all the sampling says bugger all people have had it. Like what are the chances that given so few people have had that you go out to the park, maybe touch a bench and somebody catch it.
There are so many mixed smoke signals with this thing.
And according to that report on here last night about superspreaders the majority of people who have the virus do not spread it, yet you can catch it by staying at home all the time.
An image of people staying at home all the time and never going out:
It's inexplicable how anyone could catch it during lockdown, it really is.
But they have queued perfectly outside - how can being close to each other, inside, have any effect?
Yes, shops are definitely the danger area.
I made the mistake of going into Poundland yesterday during an unavoidable trip to the bank to deposit cheques. It was terrible. Just as busy as usual, something the store could tackle but chose not to. I should have realised that just because I was being required to queue to go in, I couldn't trust the store to make sure that it would be reasonably safe inside. It wasn't and the queue for the number of self-service tills at the one exit (out of two) in operation was 20 deep. I'm not going back there for the duration. Clearly there are some stores turning a blind eye to the reality of compliance to keep up turnover while covering themselves by going through the motions of putting notices and floor markings up. I suspect that many of those in that photo also trusted the store to create a safe environment, although there is no excuse for queuing so close together. If the person behind you is standing too close, you politely tell them to back off.
By contrast, they were doing things by the book in Boots and things were quiet and felt safe in there. One in, one out on the door and few inside. They weren't profiteering either - just 75p each for two mini own brand hand sanitisers.
Otherwise it's down to one big weekly shop at the near-deserted Sainsbury's megastore at 8.30pm. The aisles are wide, you can scan your own goods as you go and in the absence of many customers the biggest risk is navigating around late evening shelf stackers. Exorbitant prices put up with for now until it feels safe to return to Aldi.
Yes, I think it depends on how seriously the shops take their organisation. Our Tesco and M&S both operate one-in, one-out and aren't crowded inside; I can't speak for Aldi as I gave up on them quite early on in the panic buying phase. Boots only appear to allow about three customers to be in store at any one time.
The criticism over schools is bizarre. The key consideration is 2m social distancing. Which practically speaking means kids are going back part time. Which practically speaking means their working parents can only go back part time. Schools are open to keyworkers, lessons are being set online, students are being spoken to on the phone and via email. The idea teachers are sat with their feet up refusing to "go back to work" is just dumb.
So, that 2m distancing. Until it gets completely removed our kids are not going back to school - not full time normal school. You need to set aside the 1st June hysteria and start looking at the start of the new academic year. If 2m spacing remains in place, schools remain part time things for kids and with it employment for their parents. Permanently. Until its dropped. Even 1m with mandatory masks like in South Korea means part time schooling and with it part time employment. Pitiful whining about teachers from some doesn't change this rather large problem...
It's almost the summer hols now anyway. Seems obvious what will happen.
MPs have just voted 350:258 in favour of abolishing the virtual parliament on the June 2nd.
Inevitable.
Seen a lot of people saying on Facebook how can children go back to school if MPs won't go to work.
Anyone would think that people didn't want their kids to back to school, they must be driving some parents barmy by now, the schools are not closed, children of key workers and some classed as vulnerable have been there all the time.
There's a lot more to an MPs work than shouting and bawling in the House of Commons, it's amazing how many people think that when Parliament is in recess, the politicians are lounging around on holiday.
As regards Starmer, he's not exactly Mr Charisma I see him as a Neil Kinnock type character who will do all the hard work cleaning up the Labour Party, ready for his successor to win power (of course in the case of Kinnock, his successor died so it was his successor's successor Blair who got the benefit).
I think that the very best Starmer can do is reduce the Tories to a minority government in 2024, but that would be quite an achievement, the Tories would soon get rid of Boris if he didn't look like a winner.
If the Tories lose their majority at the next general election then Starmer will be PM.
The LDs, SNP, Plaid, the Greens and even the DUP would all prefer the whole UK to be in the single market with Starmer than WTO terms with Boris and the Tories
If the Tories lose their majority but are largest party the other parties should be able to extrat some pretty major concessions from Labour if they play their cards right - Labour will be desperate to avoid a Tory minority government whatever the cost even if some figured it would not last.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Yes that was striking from one who is normally imperturbable - of course Bercow would have wasted 5 minutes trying to sound clever - what a breath of fresh air Hoyle is.
Did I read that right, 170,000 tests in a single day?
Target of 200,000 by end of the month Boris set in this month's first PMQs certainly not looking out of reach now.
Maybe not with all the fiddles the government is using to make our testing performance look better:
- counting all the tests being done for medical research purposes (rather than on ‘live’ genuine patients), within the total (these have reached 30,000 daily)
- counting tests posted out within the total, whether or not they are actually done and returned
- counting multiple tests done on the same patient (for example one nasal swab and one throat swab) at the same time as separate tests
- including failed tests and rejected tests within the total
Why on earth wouldn't you count tests done on for medical research purposes etc when that's part of the national response?
Yesterday there were roughly 2k live cases identified. To get to 200k tests we'd need to be doing approximately 100 tests per live case which is unlikely. The alternative tests being done on top of the live cases is a critical part of the national response which is why they were always intended to be included so its not a fiddle.
As for posted out tests we've coincidentally received our posted out test today (my wife is frontline and its been sent out because of her) and we requested it and 100% will return it immediately. Why on earth would we or anyone else order a test and not return it?
I recommend you listen to this morning’s More or Less on R4.
Deduct the research tests, double counted tests, tests sent out but not returned, and failed tests from the government’s total, and we are still WAY short of the required testing capacity.
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
It's definitely possible, but as you say it's hard to prove (though I'm sure people are working on it).
I'm not sure that activity has bounced back to the levels we saw in early March, though. My local gym is still closed, and my local Tesco is limiting the number of people who can go in at a time, and maintains strict 2-meter limits in queues. The local church has suspended services. The GP surgery is highly discouraging of in-person visits. Everyone I know who can work from home is doing so, and everyone I know who was furloughed remains so. I have a view of part of the North Circular road from my flat, and although it's busier than it was a week ago, it's still much quieter than normal.
According to the data presented at the briefing on the 18th, the Tube was running at 7% of normal. previous numbers were bouncing around 5-6%
So possibly a small uptick - but hard to tell at this point.
My gym started doing 1:1 PT outside from Monday this week, inclusive of membership since the gym is obvs still closed. Distancing, and clean down between sessions.
The head coach is busy as half of the members - hardly any of whom have left or accepted the offer of reduced fees - have signed up :-) .
Intriguing in Barnier's letter than williamglenn just Tweeted that there are 0 (zero) references to the EU's demands for access to our sovereign fishing waters.
There's been a number of media reports recently that Barnier was preparing to give up on demanding that and the fact that he hasn't even referenced it in the letter whereas Frost did certainly seems to indicate that. Barnier seems to know full well he's lost that battle and is moving on to other areas.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Did I read that right, 170,000 tests in a single day?
Target of 200,000 by end of the month Boris set in this month's first PMQs certainly not looking out of reach now.
Maybe not with all the fiddles the government is using to make our testing performance look better:
- counting all the tests being done for medical research purposes (rather than on ‘live’ genuine patients), within the total (these have reached 30,000 daily)
- counting tests posted out within the total, whether or not they are actually done and returned
- counting multiple tests done on the same patient (for example one nasal swab and one throat swab) at the same time as separate tests
- including failed tests and rejected tests within the total
Why on earth wouldn't you count tests done on for medical research purposes etc when that's part of the national response?
Yesterday there were roughly 2k live cases identified. To get to 200k tests we'd need to be doing approximately 100 tests per live case which is unlikely. The alternative tests being done on top of the live cases is a critical part of the national response which is why they were always intended to be included so its not a fiddle.
As for posted out tests we've coincidentally received our posted out test today (my wife is frontline and its been sent out because of her) and we requested it and 100% will return it immediately. Why on earth would we or anyone else order a test and not return it?
I recommend you listen to this morning’s More or Less on R4.
Deduct the research tests, double counted tests, tests sent out but not returned, and failed tests from the government’s total, and we are still WAY short of the required testing capacity.
Why would you deduct the research tests? The research tests were meant to be counted from day one.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Yes that was striking from one who is normally imperturbable - of course Bercow would have wasted 5 minutes trying to sound clever - what a breath of fresh air Hoyle is.
Hoyle seems to me to be quietly impressive. I think with all his many faults Bercow was an underrated Speaker, but so far Hoyle is better. I like the unflashiness and quiet courtesy he generally uses, but also the fact he can show steel when needed.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
First thought was, a lot of stammering and stumbling by all. You expect it from Johnson, because he’s always been a bumbler, but Starmer confused testing and tracing and Hoyle amusingly forgot which one of Starmer and Johnson was PM. Can’t think why. Maybe it was hot in the chamber?
Secondly, Starmer seemed quite nervous, and Johnson was trying to bully him. Wouldn’t say he succeeded, but it wasn’t the massacre of previous weeks.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Fourth, both Hancock and Johnson still look pretty unwell, and Johnson seems to be losing his hair. I would say both are value to leave office in the autumn.
Surely there was more to Hoyle's intervention than Hancock barracking Starmer? I thought he must have done something serious to be threatened with ejection.
Recently home from work and just catching up on the news of zero new Covid diagnoses in London in a 24-hour period.
It is also more than a week since Boris Johnson dumped the Stay Home message and started encouraging people to go back to work. One is therefore entitled to wonder what has happened to the much-feared disease spike caused by passengers allegedly cramming back into buses and the Tube, going back into workplaces, and spending as much time as they please enjoying sunny parks. Indeed, if this continues to fail to materialise for very much longer then it'll be the best news since this whole miserable saga began.
I also wonder if it might be possible - just possible - that, as contagious as it is, this disease finds it a lot more difficult to infect some people than others. If a substantial fraction of the population is quite simply resistant to Covid - something that would be very hard to prove, given that a scientific study of such a possible phenomenon could only be conducted by trying to deliberately infect a group of volunteers - then this would correspondingly reduce the numbers of people who would need to have contracted the illness and developed antibodies, before at least some degree of collective immunity develops in the population as a whole.
Yes, I know - another notion for the "too good to be true" collection. But I'm not sure what the alternative explanation for new infections having crashed to nil in a densely-packed city of nearly nine million people could be.
Perhaps the virus is mutating ?
The pre-existing immunity has been mentioned and it would help explain quite some of the behaviour of the virus. It is surely possible that some or many people will not catch it, or just shrug it off. Possibly from related common cold corona virus exposure. Who knows. The initial studies of confined environments (Diamond Princess etc) lend some credence to this. It's now looking much less likely that there is an iceberg of those who have had it asymptomatically. but maybe a lot will just never allow the virus to take hold and thus won't show antibodies, but also won't become ill. The decline around the world, with all kinds of different levels and types of lockdowns all look a bit similar, and maybe this is why.
The criticism over schools is bizarre. The key consideration is 2m social distancing. Which practically speaking means kids are going back part time. Which practically speaking means their working parents can only go back part time. Schools are open to keyworkers, lessons are being set online, students are being spoken to on the phone and via email. The idea teachers are sat with their feet up refusing to "go back to work" is just dumb.
So, that 2m distancing. Until it gets completely removed our kids are not going back to school - not full time normal school. You need to set aside the 1st June hysteria and start looking at the start of the new academic year. If 2m spacing remains in place, schools remain part time things for kids and with it employment for their parents. Permanently. Until its dropped. Even 1m with mandatory masks like in South Korea means part time schooling and with it part time employment. Pitiful whining about teachers from some doesn't change this rather large problem...
I've made this point before about the schools, only I'm not so sure in most cases that it will mean part-time working for parents. It'll most likely mean parents slung out of work and replaced by people without childcare responsibilities. It is not as if there won't be plenty of surplus labour available.
Unless this thing is somehow over, or close to it, by September then stay-at-home Mummies (because it will mostly be women who fall victim to this issue) are due to make a major comeback this Autumn.
Yes, Johnson was flustered thus blustered - in this case blurting out a promise on Matt Hancock's life to have a "world beating" track & trace system in place by 1st June. The inevitable will no doubt ensue.
This has been my confusion with this virus all along and lockdown. This chap has not left the house for weeks apart from a bit of exercise yet somehow he has got the virus, fortunately with no symptoms. Its very hard to undertsand how it is possible for him to get infected.
And all the sampling says bugger all people have had it. Like what are the chances that given so few people have had that you go out to the park, maybe touch a bench and somebody catch it.
There are so many mixed smoke signals with this thing.
And according to that report on here last night about superspreaders the majority of people who have the virus do not spread it, yet you can catch it by staying at home all the time.
I think the report said that 80% of infections cam from super-spreaders.
If we take R0 as 3, that means that R for non-super-spreaders is about 0.8*. That's not the same as say "majority of people who have the virus do not spread it".
This is a direct quote from the report:
But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all. In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: “The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero. Most people do not transmit.”
I think that's what you'd expect with random variation with something that is Poisson-distributed. You get the same with rainfall. Large majority of days have near-zero rainfall, with a small number of super-rain days, giving an average of a middling amount of rain.
I feel like we have a reasonably good idea now of how this spreads. Inside, loud vocalizations, effort to be heard against background noise. Pubs, churches, meat-processing plants, and similar.
That leaves a lot else that is mostly safe.
It's a shame that the tracing apps don't seem likely to gather the data that would help to refine this, but too late now.
The latest on our island tracing App is that the developers have been asked to produce a revised version and that will now be introduced on the island before being rolled out Nationally. The need for a whole stack of changes has pushed the rollout back into June.
Do you have insight into the changes being made? The change to the google API would be a backend change like that.
I have nothing personally, but this is worth a read:
First thought was, a lot of stammering and stumbling by all. You expect it from Johnson, because he’s always been a bumbler, but Starmer confused testing and tracing and Hoyle amusingly forgot which one of Starmer and Johnson was PM. Can’t think why. Maybe it was hot in the chamber?
Secondly, Starmer seemed quite nervous, and Johnson was trying to bully him. Wouldn’t say he succeeded, but it wasn’t the massacre of previous weeks.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Fourth, both Hancock and Johnson still look pretty unwell, and Johnson seems to be losing his hair. I would say both are value to leave office in the autumn.
Surely there was more to Hoyle's intervention than Hancock barracking Starmer? I thought he must have done something serious to be threatened with ejection.
The spectre of Bercow lives on.
AIUI he tried to address Starmer directly, which isn’t allowed, and when Hoyle intervened he then said something rude or cross to Hoyle. That was what led to the ‘do that again and you leave the chamber’ moment.
First thought was, a lot of stammering and stumbling by all. You expect it from Johnson, because he’s always been a bumbler, but Starmer confused testing and tracing and Hoyle amusingly forgot which one of Starmer and Johnson was PM. Can’t think why. Maybe it was hot in the chamber?
Secondly, Starmer seemed quite nervous, and Johnson was trying to bully him. Wouldn’t say he succeeded, but it wasn’t the massacre of previous weeks.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Fourth, both Hancock and Johnson still look pretty unwell, and Johnson seems to be losing his hair. I would say both are value to leave office in the autumn.
Surely there was more to Hoyle's intervention than Hancock barracking Starmer? I thought he must have done something serious to be threatened with ejection.
The spectre of Bercow lives on.
AIUI he tried to address Starmer directly, which isn’t allowed, and when Hoyle intervened he then said something rude or cross to Hoyle. That was what led to the ‘do that again and you leave the chamber’ moment.
If he was disrespectful to Hoyle that is fair enough.
I think Boris is on the right track with the dismissive rudeness, Starmer was taken off guard. After last week's knockout a comprehensive points win to Starmer seems more like a win for Boris.
"Scots are now locked in a woke chamber: virtue signalling, pandering to perceived victimhood, punishing any who assert biological fact, placing a halter of criminality on free thought when articulated by speech, abandoning common sense. It is all there in the Scottish government’s hate crime and public order bill. From the towering height of the Enlightenment, the Scottish nation’s leaders have fallen to a low where intellectual rigour is not only an unknown concept, but can put those who practice it in the clink."
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden to do the presser....I think 99.99999999999% of people will go who.....
MP for Cecil Parkinson's Hertsmere constituency.
Poor old Cecil. In a different time (now) he would not only have got away with it, he could have become Prime Minister.
Not really. Theresa May would not have got away with such a history of philandering and children out of wedlock. It is a poor reflection on the present day Tory Party in Parliament that such low moral standards matter so little to it.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden to do the presser....I think 99.99999999999% of people will go who.....
MP for Cecil Parkinson's Hertsmere constituency.
Poor old Cecil. In a different time (now) he would not only have got away with it, he could have become Prime Minister.
Not really. Theresa May would not have got away with such a history of philandering and children out of wedlock. It is a poor reflection on the present day Tory Party in Parliament that such low moral standards matter so little to it.
And yet Labour had a leader with just as dodgy a sexual history and nobody ever seems to comment on it. Including you.
Comments
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1263121115934855168
- counting all the tests being done for medical research purposes (rather than on ‘live’ genuine patients), within the total (these have reached 30,000 daily)
- counting tests posted out within the total, whether or not they are actually done and returned
- counting multiple tests done on the same patient (for example one nasal swab and one throat swab) at the same time as separate tests
- including failed tests and rejected tests within the total
For context, 177k sustained would be the highest testing rate in the world, at about 2.64 per thousand. Germany are about 2.0, Russia 1.6ish, Spain 1.4, US and Italy 1.2. Dunno the French, maybe 1.5 at a guess based on previous comments.
I'm not sure that activity has bounced back to the levels we saw in early March, though. My local gym is still closed, and my local Tesco is limiting the number of people who can go in at a time, and maintains strict 2-meter limits in queues. The local church has suspended services. The GP surgery is highly discouraging of in-person visits. Everyone I know who can work from home is doing so, and everyone I know who was furloughed remains so. I have a view of part of the North Circular road from my flat, and although it's busier than it was a week ago, it's still much quieter than normal.
https://twitter.com/MichelBarnier/status/1263118957944483842
I made the mistake of going into Poundland yesterday during an unavoidable trip to the bank to deposit cheques. It was terrible. Just as busy as usual, something the store could tackle but chose not to. I should have realised that just because I was being required to queue to go in, I couldn't trust the store to make sure that it would be reasonably safe inside. It wasn't and the queue for the number of self-service tills at the one exit (out of two) in operation was 20 deep. I'm not going back there for the duration. Clearly there are some stores turning a blind eye to the reality of compliance to keep up turnover while covering themselves by going through the motions of putting notices and floor markings up. I suspect that many of those in that photo also trusted the store to create a safe environment, although there is no excuse for queuing so close together. If the person behind you is standing too close, you politely tell them to back off.
By contrast, they were doing things by the book in Boots and things were quiet and felt safe in there. One in, one out on the door and few inside. They weren't profiteering either - just 75p each for two mini own brand hand sanitisers.
Otherwise it's down to one big weekly shop at the near-deserted Sainsbury's megastore at 8.30pm. The aisles are wide, you can scan your own goods as you go and in the absence of many customers the biggest risk is navigating around late evening shelf stackers. Exorbitant prices put up with for now until it feels safe to return to Aldi.
So possibly a small uptick - but hard to tell at this point.
https://twitter.com/DaveWallsworth/status/1263144671947227138?s=20
First thought was, a lot of stammering and stumbling by all. You expect it from Johnson, because he’s always been a bumbler, but Starmer confused testing and tracing and Hoyle amusingly forgot which one of Starmer and Johnson was PM. Can’t think why. Maybe it was hot in the chamber?
Secondly, Starmer seemed quite nervous, and Johnson was trying to bully him. Wouldn’t say he succeeded, but it wasn’t the massacre of previous weeks.
Third, massive shoutout to Hoyle for his very fierce bollocking of Hancock.
Fourth, both Hancock and Johnson still look pretty unwell, and Johnson seems to be losing his hair. I would say both are value to leave office in the autumn.
Its still too soon to see the effect of more people being active last week but its pretty clear that the bank holiday weekend did not increase R.
Yesterday there were roughly 2k live cases identified. To get to 200k tests we'd need to be doing approximately 100 tests per live case which is unlikely. The alternative tests being done on top of the live cases is a critical part of the national response which is why they were always intended to be included so its not a fiddle.
As for posted out tests we've coincidentally received our posted out test today (my wife is frontline and its been sent out because of her) and we requested it and 100% will return it immediately. Why on earth would we or anyone else order a test and not return it?
The LDs, SNP, Plaid, the Greens and even the DUP would all prefer the whole UK to be in the single market with Starmer than WTO terms with Boris and the Tories
Not viable even before covid
So, that 2m distancing. Until it gets completely removed our kids are not going back to school - not full time normal school. You need to set aside the 1st June hysteria and start looking at the start of the new academic year. If 2m spacing remains in place, schools remain part time things for kids and with it employment for their parents. Permanently. Until its dropped. Even 1m with mandatory masks like in South Korea means part time schooling and with it part time employment. Pitiful whining about teachers from some doesn't change this rather large problem...
Lockdowns alone aren’t enough to explain the differences in declining infection rate; in particular there is tons of anecdotal that the lockdown in London isn’t that thorough, yet London’s new case rate has dropped faster than any other region.
Some researchers are positing that this implies much wider infection levels than any of the (few) random testing exercises has so far uncovered.
An alternative explanation is that a good proportion of the population somehow starts with either immunity or significant resistance.
So today's 177,216 becomes 98,435.
Not bad - nearly reaching the 100k target now. Maybe tomorrow.
Horrible, but not unexpected.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Discuss.
Deduct the research tests, double counted tests, tests sent out but not returned, and failed tests from the government’s total, and we are still WAY short of the required testing capacity.
The head coach is busy as half of the members - hardly any of whom have left or accepted the offer of reduced fees - have signed up :-) .
There's been a number of media reports recently that Barnier was preparing to give up on demanding that and the fact that he hasn't even referenced it in the letter whereas Frost did certainly seems to indicate that. Barnier seems to know full well he's lost that battle and is moving on to other areas.
It is too big - bit like the hyper sized oil tankers that were tried a while back.
The C5 was shit product that also had essentially no demand.
Did Turkey get a Canada? Nope. They got a Turkey. Same as we'll be getting if we don't pull a finger out.
Starmer? I thought he must have done something serious to be threatened with ejection.
The spectre of Bercow lives on.
The A380 was, er...
The decline around the world, with all kinds of different levels and types of lockdowns all look a bit similar, and maybe this is why.
Unless this thing is somehow over, or close to it, by September then stay-at-home Mummies (because it will mostly be women who fall victim to this issue) are due to make a major comeback this Autumn.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/nhs-covid-19-app-security-two-weeks-on
I think Boris is on the right track with the dismissive rudeness, Starmer was taken off guard. After last week's knockout a comprehensive points win to Starmer seems more like a win for Boris.
"Scots are now locked in a woke chamber: virtue signalling, pandering to perceived victimhood, punishing any who assert biological fact, placing a halter of criminality on free thought when articulated by speech, abandoning common sense. It is all there in the Scottish government’s hate crime and public order bill. From the towering height of the Enlightenment, the Scottish nation’s leaders have fallen to a low where intellectual rigour is not only an unknown concept, but can put those who practice it in the clink."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/beware-scotland-s-hate-crime-bill