Coronavirus

[Barrington Womble]

Just tried to call about my test, they said while it could take up to 72 hours, to call if I haven't heard after 48 hours. No fucking luck speaking to anyone on that. And during the process they announced there are no home testing kits left. 

 

Honestly, this government couldn't be worse. 

[Sugar Ape]

11 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

Just tried to call about my test, they said while it could take up to 72 hours, to call if I haven't heard after 48 hours. No fucking luck speaking to anyone on that. And during the process they announced there are no home testing kits left. 

 

Honestly, this government couldn't be worse. 

Be fair Barry, they’ve old had six months to prepare for this. And do you realise how hard it is to set up a ‘world beating’ track and trace system whilst also siphoning off huge amounts of money to your private sector mates for a service they’ll never provide? 

[Mudface]

A good little summary of how the government's spin and mendacity has got it into this mess- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/sep/15/uk-coronavirus-live-covid-19-second-wave-testing-capacity-government-brexit-politics-boris-johnson?page=with:block-5f60ebb58f0891dfedfa9f22#block-5f60ebb58f0891dfedfa9f22

 

Here is a good question from below the line.

phesketh0

15 September 2020 1:51pm

Andrew,

I wonder if you could help me understand something.

The current number of tests per day is below capacity, and in fact that has always been the case. If system is operating within its capacity, why can people not get tests? And why does Matt Hancock claim the system is seeing excessive demand?

As i understand it, either demand isn't the issue, or the figures for capacity aren't correct.

It is true that the number of people being tested on any given day has always been lower than the figure given for capacity on that day. Partly that’s just a function of the maths; the system cannot carry out more tests than it is capable of carrying out. But at times the gap between the two numbers has been huge and, if people are unable to access tests, any notional surplus capacity is actually bogus. If the capacity cannot be used to provide tests where they are needed, it might as well not be there.

The government has been a victim of its own spin. In early May Boris Johnson announced that, by the end of the month, the government would get testing up to 200,000 a day. Subsequently No 10 said this promise related to testing capacity, not tests actually carried out, and around this time the government started producing daily testing capacity figures that included antigen tests (that show whether you have got coronavirus) and antibody tests (that show whether you have had it). This was misleading; antibody tests are useful, but they don’t help the teacher with a cough who needs to know whether it is safe to go back to work. At the end of May the government claimed it had met its 200,000 per day target - even though only 127,722 antigen tests had been carried on the relevant day. To justify its claim, the government counted extra antigen testing capacity, plus the availability of 40,000 antibody tests.

The previous month Matt Hancock set a target of getting testing up to 100,000 a day by the end of April. He failed to achieve that in any proper sense, but he claimed to have reached his goal by including in the count a large batch of home testing kits that had been sent out just before the deadline but not yet processed. Subsequent figures showed that almost half home testing kits were never returned, or were sent back void.

In both cases spin trumped honesty. Ministers got a short presentational win. But they ended up undermining trust in the system because the positive headlines were based on a misuse of statistics.

More recently the government has started to make its testing capacity figures more honest. It has not abandoned the total testing capacity figure (which rescued Johnson at the end of May). But it has started publishing a testing capacity figure for pillars 1 and 2 (ie, just for antigen tests, and excluding antibody tests) and capacity by this measure is only just ahead of tests carried out, which is what you would expect from a system working flat out.

 

 

[Section_31]

Hmm, shenanigans. Are they trying to put people off getting tested?

 

Close

Health secretary Matt Hancock was questioned by MPs on Tuesday over the state of the government's testing system

Twickenham MP says residents could only get local Covid-19 test if they searched with Aberdeen postcode

 

Lib Dem asks if constituents should ‘game the system’ to get tests they need

Conrad Duncan@theconradduncan

3 hours ago

 

People in Twickenham have found they can access coronavirus tests in their local area despite being told none were available by pretending their postcode is in Aberdeen, an MP has said.

[Rico1304]

Piccadilly station is dead every morning, hardly any commuters about.  But on the way back it’s rammed with people coming into the city to go out - mainly teenagers I’d say but they’ve resisted my attempts to carbon date them. 

[Megadrive Man]

The good news is that it will only take weeks to sort out.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54163683

[mattyq]

17 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Piccadilly station is dead every morning, hardly any commuters about.  But on the way back it’s rammed with people coming into the city to go out - mainly teenagers I’d say but they’ve resisted my attempts to carbon date them. 

Footfall is down 49% in Manc and spend 64%

One of the winners, so far, is Birkenhead which is up by 24%

Liverpool's spend is at 84% of pre covid

 

https://www.centreforcities.org/data/high-streets-recovery-tracker/

 

[Mudface]

44 minutes ago, MegadriveMan said:

The good news is that it will only take weeks to sort out.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54163683

Just like PPE.

[Colonel Bumcunt]

4 hours ago, mattyq said:

Footfall is down 49% in Manc and spend 64%

One of the winners, so far, is Birkenhead which is up by 24%

Liverpool's spend is at 84% of pre covid

 

https://www.centreforcities.org/data/high-streets-recovery-tracker/

 

A lot of local shops will be doing very well. 

There is no incentive for big business to pay for studies to capture it. 

[Gnasher]

 

[Bruce Spanner]

'AM: Certainly there was no feeling at the time that we were setting up some private sector behemoth to replace Public Health infrastructure in the UK and actually, as it became clear as when we went into late summer that that was the route the whole of lighthouse venture was going down, I think that made quite a few academics that were involved really re-assessed what they were doing and why they were involved. it was fairly clear that the writing was on the wall, that this was going to be a longer term replacement for Public Health England and infection disease diagnostics was going down the privatised route, that’s not why any of us got involved…'

 

From a BBC Radio 4, PM. Conversation between Evan Davies and Professor Alan McNally, director of Birmingham University - Microbiology and Infection Institute.

 

This follows what I said the other day about the three private labs being the reason for the delays.

 

'Nice' to see the next scandal starting to come to light.

[Anubis]

It’s a fucking joke. My brother and his family live in Bolton. My sister-in-law is self-isolating because she’s a teaching assistant and one of the kids in her class tested positive, shutting the class down. She shares a house with my brother who works for the ambulance service, and my two nieces who are in two different schools - primary and secondary. And they wonder why it’s spreading.

[Anubis]

 

 

[Creator Supreme]

My eldest daughter is in Year 10 at the Prescot School - whole year sent home a couple of hours ago due to several positive cases of COVID, can't return until 28 September.

 

My son is in year 11 but he can still go to school, but the little cunt won't go!

[Section_31]

Strange one, some form of herd immunity or just better at track and trace? 

 

 

Sweden records its fewest daily Covid-19 cases since March

9/16/2020

 

While many European countries are seeing new cases surge to levels not seen since the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sweden – whose light-touch approach has made it an international outlier – has one of the continent’s lowest infection rates.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the Scandinavian country’s 14-day cumulative total of new cases was 22.2 per 100,000 inhabitants on Tuesday, against 279 in Spain, 158.5 in France, 118 in the Czech Republic, 77 in Belgium and 59 in the UK, all of which imposed lockdowns this spring.

Twenty-two of the 31 European countries surveyed by the ECDC had higher infection rates. New cases, now reported in Sweden only from Tuesday to Friday, are running at roughly the rate seen in late-March, while data from the national health agency showed only 1.2% of its 120,000 tests last week came back positive.

Sweden also has fewer new daily infections than Norway and Denmark, its Nordic neighbours. Thirteen Covid-19 patients are in intensive care in Swedish hospitals, and its seven-day average of coronavirus-related deaths is zero.

“We don’t have the resurgence of the disease that many countries have,” Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist and architect of its no-lockdown strategy, told broadcaster France-24 in an interview, adding that the country was broadly happy with its overall strategy.

 

 

 

 

[Strontium]

Seem to remember a few of us being crucified on here not so long ago for championing the Swedish approach.

[TheHowieLama]

17 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

Seem to remember a few of us being crucified on here not so long ago for championing the Swedish approach.

Not long ago you were wrong - as you are now.

 

Sweden had 5 deaths reported today - they have a seven day infection average of 210 per day.

 

Norway is near half of that for both new cases and deaths.

Denmark has more cases on last 7 day average, but hasn't reported 5 deaths in a day since May.

 

 

[Bjornebye]

14 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

Seem to remember a few of us being crucified on here not so long ago for championing the Swedish approach.

I think there is a big difference in diet in Sweden, I'd expect they are a lot healthier therefore have better immune systems. Plus, you know, population, city/town density...

 

Either way don't think you can hide away when you get proven wrong then think you can dip your dick back in when something remotely agrees with something you once said. 

 

If we took the Swedish approach in the UK I would expect us to have quadruple the amount of deaths. 

[mattyq]

Re Sweden it's just a question of time before infections, hospitalisations and deaths go up again.

The virus doesn't care about magical thinking

[No2]

28 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

Seem to remember a few of us being crucified on here not so long ago for championing the Swedish approach.

You were wrong to be crucified but also wrong to be championing it. It was a ballsy/reckless move by Sweden with next to zero data to work with. It could very easily have been catastrophic from them.

[TheHowieLama]

1 minute ago, No2 said:

It could very easily have been catastrophic from them.

They are in the top 10 deaths per capita in the world - Norway is like 75th.

How much worse could it have gone?

[Strontium]

4 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

They are in the top 10 deaths per capita in the world - Norway is like 75th.

How much worse could it have gone?

 

Not that you can accurately compare death rates between countries, since everyone measures them differently. But it could have been as bad as the UK. 

[Strontium]

11 minutes ago, mattyq said:

Re Sweden it's just a question of time before infections, hospitalisations and deaths go up again.

The virus doesn't care about magical thinking

 

Remind me to bump this when it doesn't happen. 

[No2]

4 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

They are in the top 10 deaths per capita in the world - Norway is like 75th.

How much worse could it have gone?

Sweden has twice the population of Ireland, its had roughly 3 times as many cases and deaths. Right now it looks like a huge mistake was made with the way they approached this. But if we sit here in 4 months and the cases/deaths in Ireland get to half of Sweden's figures then Swedens approach will have been much more successful.

[TheHowieLama]

2 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

 

Not that you can accurately compare death rates between countries, since everyone measures them differently. But it could have been as bad as the UK. 

How do you figure that? No country around them is close to them, much less the UK.

1 minute ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

 

Remind me to bump this when it doesn't happen. 

Given your previous answer what will you be comparing them to when you do inevitably bump this?