Coronavirus

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

Oh no, not the Lancet... what does the Beano say?

The Beano says a cow pie is a better bet than herd immunity. It was either The Beano or The Dandy.

[Rico1304]

3 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

Oh no, not the Lancet... what does the Beano say?

I think there’s a character that pretends his 20

yr old degree means he’s an expert in ANYTHING science related.  Deluded Dog or something like that. 

[Dougie Do'ins]

 

3 minutes ago, Fluter in Dakota said:

Not sure there was much more Piers could have done. It was interesting to note that Susan took over the interview at some point, almost like Piers was told to let her take over.

There was one bit where he fired off about six questions in sentence and Hanckock didn't answer a single one of them. Reid did ask a couple of questions but like all the ones Morgan asked him, he didn't give a valid answer to any of them. It was all typical politician sidestepping and bullshit. 

[Strontium]

8 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

I think there’s a character that pretends his 20

yr old degree means he’s an expert in ANYTHING science related.  Deluded Dog or something like that. 

 

I graduated 21 years ago. And never claimed to be an expert in anything.

 

HCoV-OC43 killed a million people in the winter of 1889-90. Now it gives people the sniffles. Maybe you can explain why. I'll wait.

[Rico1304]

10 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

I graduated 21 years ago. And never claimed to be an expert in anything.

 

HCoV-OC43 killed a million people in the winter of 1889-90. Now it gives people the sniffles. Maybe you can explain why. I'll wait.

So I was a year out? Blows me right out of the water doesn’t it. Silly me.  
 

I can’t, haven’t got a clue about epidemiology.  Leave that stuff to the experts. Daft really. 
 

Edit: it was a fucking third class degree too! 
(still better than mine of course). Ha ha ha ha ha 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

I graduated 21 years ago. And never claimed to be an expert in anything.

 

HCoV-OC43 killed a million people in the winter of 1889-90. Now it gives people the sniffles. Maybe you can explain why. I'll wait.

Check your facts.

 

The 1889–1890 flu pandemic, also known as the "Asiatic flu" or "Russian flu", was a pandemic that killed about 1 million people worldwide,^[1][2] out of a population of about 1.5 billion. It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century.^[3]

The most reported effects of the pandemic took place from October 1889 to December 1890, with recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, winter 1893/1894, and early 1895.

 

It is not known for certain what agent was responsible for the pandemic. Since the 1950s it has been conjectured to be Influenza A virus subtype H2N2.^[4][5][6] A 1999 seroarcheological study found the strain to be Influenza A virus subtype H3N8.^[7] A 2005 genomic virological study says that "it is tempting to speculate" that the virus might not have been an influenza virus, but human coronavirus OC43.^[5] Danish researchers reached a similar conclusion in 2020, in a study which had not been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal as of November 2020. They described the symptoms as very like those of Covid-19.^[8]

[Barrington Womble]

57 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Yeah I agree, but it's a strange thing for anyone to say "I told you so" about. Of all the things said about Covid this year, saying "we might not get a vaccine" wasn't a particularly controversial punt.

We haven't got it yet either. And if we do get it, I wouldn't bank on this shower of cunts running our country to get it to us any time soon. 

21 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

 

There was one bit where he fired off about six questions in sentence and Hanckock didn't answer a single one of them. Reid did ask a couple of questions but like all the ones Morgan asked him, he didn't give a valid answer to any of them. It was all typical politician sidestepping and bullshit. 

I agree Mick, it was shite. And the whole reason they stopped going on is Morgan wasn't letting them off the hook. It was almost like Hancock knew he needed to look silly and Morgan was happy to gloat and say "i won". Which shows what it was always about for Morgan, it was about him and him alone and absolutely fuck all to do with holding the government to account. 

[Red Phoenix]

I just read this from Sept 24th :

 

Quote

Sir Patrick Vallance, who leads the Government's expert advisory panel on vaccines, reportedly holds shares worth £600,000 in pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

According to reports in The Telegraph, Sir Patrick holds a deferred bonus of 43,111 shares in the British multinational outfit from his time as president of the company.

The Health Secretary said “any suggestion” the scientific adviser was “doing anything other than his level best to try and tackle this virus” was “wrong”.

When asked on LBC radio when he discovered the news of Sir Patrick’s personal shareholding, Mr Hancock said: “Well, I didn’t know about it until I read it in the newspapers.”

 

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/patrick-vallance-vaccine-shares-denies-conflict-interest-a4555141.html

 

Well done Headcock, you stupid Tory twat.

[Dougie Do'ins]

NHS Covid-19 app suffers 'blue screen' glitch

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54958785

[Red Phoenix]

A BMJ editorial here if it's not been linked already :

 

Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science

 

 

[TheHowieLama]

Oof - tight ship.

 

Philadelphia officials on Monday ordered a ban on “indoor gatherings of any size in any location, public or private,” except among individuals who live together.
 

[Red Phoenix]

Quote

Primer’s ultimate goal is to use their AI to entirely automate the shaping of public perceptions and become the arbiter of “truth,” as defined by the state. Primer’s founder, Sean Gourley, who previously created AI programs for the military to track “insurgency” in post-invasion Iraq, asserted in an April blog post that “computational warfare and disinformation campaigns will, in 2020, become a more serious threat than physical war, and we will have to rethink the weapons we deploy to fight them.”

In that same post, Gourley argued for the creation of a “Manhattan Project for truth” that would create a publicly available Wikipedia-style database built off of “knowledge bases [that] already exist inside many countries’ intelligence agencies for national security purposes.” Gourley then wrote that “this effort would be ultimately about building and enhancing our collective intelligence and establishing a baseline for what’s true or not” as established by intelligence agencies. He concludes his blog post by stating that “in 2020, we will begin to weaponize truth.”

Notably, on November 9, the same day that GCHQ announced its plans to target “anti-vaccine propaganda,” the US website NextGov reported that Primer’s Pentagon-funded effort had turned its attention specifically to “Covid-19 related disinformation.” According to Primer’s director of science, John Bohannon, “Primer will be integrating bot detection, synthetic text detection and unstructured textual claims analysis capabilities into our existing artificial intelligence platform currently in use with DOD. . . . This will create the first unified mission-ready platform to effectively counter Covid-19-related disinformation in near-real time.”

 

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/11/reports/us-uk-intel-agencies-declare-cyber-war-on-independent-media/

 

Welcome to the technocracy.

[Moctezuma]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WicsWfTm1ZI&t=8s

[Spy Bee]

Has anyone watched the BBC documentary series Hospital yet? I started watching it last night. It's hard viewing. People with cancers that have spread due to cancelled operations, people with embolisms that are waiting ages for surgery, people having heart attacks because they've been too scared to go to the doctors.

 

I recommend everyone watch it if they really want to understand the human cost of the way this pandemic has been handled. 

 

On another subject, it's nice to see the BMJ being openly critical of government corruption now. I also believe the BBC will today be covering an exposé from The Good Law Project. I look forward to seeing what that is.

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

Operation ‘daft cunts making up shit as they go along and burdening a population with bills to pay for generations for something which hasn’t been thought through and allows them to siphon off cash to their friends’ is surprisingly not all it’s cracked up to be.

 

My favourite part is that Japan looked at the same idea and thought that’s just fucking stupid and went about their business, our rabble thought, without consultation, that this is the way forward because it sounds cool.

 

Unbelievable. 
 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/operation-moonshot-like-building-channel-tunnel-without-civil-engineers-covid-testing

[mattyq]

Covid is adding just over 12% to the average mortality rate in the UK this year

That's pretty fucking bad... really fucking bad

Slightly less than the excess mortality rate of WW2 but only by a whisker

 

 

[Mudface]

18 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Operation ‘daft cunts making up shit as they go along and burdening a population with bills to pay for generations for something which hasn’t been thought through and allows them to siphon off cash to their friends’ is surprisingly not all it’s cracked up to be.

 

My favourite part is that Japan looked at the same idea and thought that’s just fucking stupid and went about their business, our rabble thought, without consultation, that this is the way forward because it sounds cool.

 

Unbelievable. 
 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/operation-moonshot-like-building-channel-tunnel-without-civil-engineers-covid-testing

Hang on, they're actually proceeding with this bollocks? I thought it was just yet another Johnson 'game changer' that he trotted out to kick actually doing something meaningful further down the road.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Mudface said:

Hang on, they're actually proceeding with this bollocks? I thought it was just yet another Johnson 'game changer' that he trotted out to kick actually doing something meaningful further down the road.

Would be interesting to know who owns the California based company...

[Spy Bee]

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4436

Mass testing for covid-19 in the UK

An unevaluated, underdesigned, and costly mess

 

Quick turnaround testing for covid-19 is to be made available to everybody, initially to those without symptoms, across England at a cost of £100bn (€110bn; $130bn).1 This follows a still uncompleted “pilot” in Liverpool, which started on 6 November at the invitation of Liverpool City Council in October, after incidence had peaked. The objective is “to demonstrate that massive asymptomatic testing can help identify far more cases and break the chain of transmission of coronavirus.”2

Participation in this pilot is voluntary. There is no call or recall. All participants receive two tests, the standard PCR test and the rapid turnaround (within 1 hour) lateral flow Innova test. Those with a positive result in either test are asked to self-isolate and are registered with the national track and trace programme, which initiates contact tracing. Key workers, health and social care staff, school staff, and children aged 11 and over are being targeted, but anyone can get tested, preferably at least twice within two weeks.

This is a screening programme, not opportunistic case finding: people are invited to have a test they would not otherwise have had, or asked for. If judged against the criteria drawn up by the UK’s National Screening Committee for appraisal of a programme’s viability, effectiveness, and appropriateness,3 it does not do well and has been already roundly criticised.4

Many asymptomatic people testing positive for covid-19 are probably relatively uninfectious.5 Evidence suggests at least a half may develop symptoms6 requiring self-isolation without the need for a test. Since few currently adhere to self-isolation,7 this is an obvious area for improvement before we embark on an expensive screening programme. Without a systematic approach to call and recall, those most at risk of being infected and transmitting may be least likely to present for screening.8

Potential harms

Despite claims by the city council that the Innova test is “very accurate with high sensitivity and specificity,”2 it has not been evaluated in these conditions. The test’s instructions for use state that it should not be used on asymptomatic people. A preliminary evaluation from Porton Down and Oxford University9 throws little light on its performance in asymptomatic people or in the field. It suggests the test misses between one in two and one in four cases. The false positive rate of 0.6% means that at the current prevalence in Liverpool, for every person found truly positive, at least one other may be wrongly required to self-isolate. As prevalence drops, this will become much worse.

The self-isolation and tracing of contacts triggered by a positive result can of course be seen as benefiting the individual and others, such as household members. But we know self-isolation has a regressive effect: income level influences adherence to self-isolation10 and the likelihood of household transmission.11 This underlines the importance of reducing the rate of false positive results and providing appropriate support—financial, psychological, and material—to people who must isolate.

Evidence that this pilot will reduce transmission is not yet established. This makes it even more critical that it is carefully planned; the different components, including testing centres, contact tracing, laboratories, and primary care contributions, are quality assured; its total resource requirements identified and costed; and the pilot evaluated for cost effectiveness.

Shaky ground

With incidence across Liverpool already falling, attributing and quantifying any additional effect from the programme may prove complex. Instead, similar programmes are being rolled out across the country to universities and local authorities even before this pilot is complete.

The queues of people seeking tests in Liverpool suggest the initial acceptability of this pilot is high, at least to some. Its ethical basis, however, looks shaky. The council claims, wrongly, that the test detects infectiousness and is accurate. In fact, if used alone it will lead to many incorrect results with potentially substantial consequences. The context for gaining consent has been tarnished by the enthusiasm of some local officials and politicians. In the case of schools, the programme has been culpably rushed: parents have had to respond unreasonably promptly to a request to opt out if they do not want their child screened.12

There is no protocol for this pilot in the public domain, let alone systems specification or ethical approval. The public has had no chance to contribute, as required by the UK standards for public involvement in research.13

Spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an unevaluated underdesigned national programme leading to a regressive, insufficiently supported intervention—in many cases for the wrong people—cannot be defended. The experience of the National Screening Committee and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) tells us that allowing testing programmes to drift into use without the right system in place leads to a mess, and the more resources invested the bigger the mess. This system should be designed with up to 10 clear objectives to deliver the aim of reducing the impact of covid—for example, to identify cases more quickly or to mitigate the effects of deprivation on risk of infection and poor outcomes. Progress in each objective (or lack of it) should be measured against explicit criteria. Screening programmes based on experience and on the literature relating to complex adaptive systems14 offer a model for rapid progress.

At a minimum, there should be an immediate pause, until the fundamental building blocks of this mass testing programme have been externally and independently scrutinised by the National Screening Committee and NIHR. In the meantime, nobody’s freedom or behaviour should be made contingent on having had a novel rapid test. It is premature to offer testing as the route to individuals’ release from restrictions. Instead we must heed the advice of the World Health Organization and the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), radically improve the woeful performance of the “find, test, trace, and isolate” system, and renew the focus on identifying symptomatic people, especially among those sections of society most at risk. The current approach will open Pandora’s box.

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

53 minutes ago, Mudface said:

Hang on, they're actually proceeding with this bollocks? I thought it was just yet another Johnson 'game changer' that he trotted out to kick actually doing something meaningful further down the road.

Yup, they’ve already ‘blasted’ through the best part of £40b!

 

For an incredibly flawed system, a criminal return on investment and 50% accuracy. 
 

Trebles all round! 

[Spy Bee]

[Spy Bee]

Footy agents missed a trick

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54974373

 

Go-between paid £21m in taxpayer funds for NHS PPE

A Spanish businessman who acted as a go-between to secure protective garments for NHS staff in the coronavirus pandemic, was paid $28m (£21m) in UK taxpayer cash.

The consultant had been in line for a further $20m of UK public funds, documents filed in a US court reveal.

The legal papers also reveal the American supplier of the PPE called the deals "lucrative".

The Department for Health was asked for comment but did not respond in time.

A legal dispute playing out in the courts in Miami has helped shine a light on the amount of money some companies have made supplying the NHS with equipment to protect staff from Covid infection.

• Safety chiefs pressed to make incorrect PPE report
• Safety concerns halt use of 50 million NHS masks

Earlier this year, as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading rapidly around the world, Florida-based jewellery designer Michael Saiger set up a business to supply PPE to governments.

He used his experience of working with factories in China to land what are described as "a number of lucrative contracts" supplying protective gloves and gowns to the NHS.

Mr Saiger signed up a Spanish businessman, Gabriel Gonzalez Andersson, to help with "procurement, logistics, due diligence, product sourcing and quality control" of the PPE equipment. In effect, Mr Andersson was expected to find a manufacturer for deals that had already been done.

Further $20m pledged

Mr Andersson was paid more than $28m (£21m) for his work on two NHS contracts. He was described in court documents as having done "very well under this arrangement".

 

In June, Mr Saiger signed three more agreements to supply the NHS with millions of gloves and surgical gowns.

When the UK government paid up, his go-between, Mr Andersson, would have been in line for a further $20m in consulting fees.

But the court documents allege that once the agreements had been signed, Mr Andersson stopped doing any work for Mr Saiger. It's not clear whether Mr Andersson received any of the money for this second batch of deals.

This led to PPE deliveries being delayed to NHS frontline workers, Mr Saiger claims, and the company "scrambling" to fulfil the contracts by other means.

So far the UK's Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has published contracts with Mr Saiger's company, Saiger LLC, totalling more than £200m. These were awarded without being opened to competition.

'Huge profits'

Alongside the legal dispute in Florida, the deals are set to face challenge in UK courts, by campaign group the Good Law Project. It accuses government ministers of not paying "sufficient regard" to tax-payers' money over a contract with the firm.

"We do not understand why, as late as June, government was still making direct awards of contracts sufficiently lucrative as to enable these sorts of profits to be made," Jolyon Maugham, the project's director told the BBC.

"The real criticism that is to be made here is of the huge profits that government allows to be generated."

This is not the first time concerns have been raised about PPE contracts the DHSC signed during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this year, the BBC revealed that 50 million face masks the government bought could not be used in the NHS because of safety concerns. And last week, it exposed concerns that the government had leaned on safety officials to certify PPE which had been wrongly classified.

The DHSC was contacted for comment but did not respond in time for publication.

The BBC asked Gabriel Gonzalez Andersson for comment but he has not so far responded.

Saiger LLC said: "At the height of the pandemic, and at a time when the NHS was in need of high-quality PPE that met the required safety standards, we delivered for Britain, on time and at value.

"We have few full-time staff so for large projects we bring in short-term contractors for additional expertise and capacity, allowing us to deliver what is needed.

"We are exceptionally proud to have played our part in providing frontline workers in the UK, including nurses, doctors and hospital staff, with the millions of pieces of PPE they need to stay safe and to save lives."

[Brownie]

Tories gonna Tory.

[mattyq]

FT have updated their pretty accurate estimates of Covid mortalities in the UK to 75k

This is exactly the same mortality rate as the the Second World War was for the UK

 

 

[Barrington Womble]

So little bits of interesting data from the Zoe app. While UK figures continue to remain flat, for the 1st time in months, the north west is no longer the national hotspot for infections. 

 

When drilling into the Liverpool data, the numbers have dropped to almost summer time rates. 

 

And this is anecdotal, but interesting none the less. My kids go to 2 different schools (one in seniors and one in juniors). There were classes and years being sent home each week in both schools for the entirety of this school year. Since they've gone back after half term, there's not been one lot of covid shutouts for the kids in either school.