....very lucky to have chaps like that, if it wasn't for chaps like that -we wouldn't have chaps like that....time was when we only got chaps like that in winter or rain, from wearing short trousers (unheard of these days)....
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bong ching -
Newsletter from the New York Times focuses on the rise in domestic violence in the UK. Story is probably subscription only but the newsletter says:
"Domestic abuse shot up in Britain during the coronavirus lockdown, and the British government did not heed early warnings of the danger.
At least 26 women and girls died in suspected domestic homicides between late March and the end of May. The oldest of them was 82 years old. The youngest, killed alongside her mother and 4-year-old sister, was 2.
The government did not prioritize the issue and is still struggling to respond more than four months later, according to interviews with more than 50 officials, academic experts, front-line support workers and abuse survivors.
By contrast, New Zealand included domestic-abuse preparations in its lockdown planning from the start, and Germany pledged open-ended funding of shelters and other crucial services."Comment
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Collateral. Too much trouble: takes up too much time, effort and money sorting.Originally posted by Count Boso View PostComment
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....Don't you know S_A , ; : - this all supposed to be done by the Big Society....Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
bong chingComment
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Oh yes - thanks for the reminder - I'd forgotten about the Big Society.Originally posted by eighthobstruction View Post....Don't you know S_A , ; : - this all supposed to be done by the Big Society....
Come to think of it, that's me out there, dead-heading the council's roses.Comment
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137. The total's not exactly plummeting is it ?
Right thing at the right time ...stay alert.Comment
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No, but it's not going up so that's all hunkydory - moving in the right direction as they would have it in the control(they wish) centre... Meanwhile in the real world, as you say stay alert, increasingly difficult though it is as so many seem to think it's as good as all over.Originally posted by zola View PostComment
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Can anyone explain what's going on today with the government coronavirus site? https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/#cat...area=e06000052
It carries this seemingly innocuous message :
"The methodology for reporting positive cases changed on 2 July 2020 to remove duplicates within and across pillars 1 and 2, to ensure that a person who tests positive is only counted once. Due to this change, and a revision of historical data in pillar 1, the cumulative total for positive cases is 30,302 lower than if you added the daily figure to yesterday’s total.
"Numbers of lab-confirmed positive cases throughout this website now include those identified by testing in all settings (pillars 1 and 2)."
This would suggest that there will be a surprising reduction in the figures it records. Yet today's figures for individual local authorities have absolutely rocketed! Where early in the week, daily increases for the authorities I follow were always well below 1% and often 0%, today they range from minimum 34% increase (Kent) to a maximum of 124% (Wiltshire). Portsmouth had been stuck on 325 cases for more than a week yet today has gone to 493, +52%.
I'm sure it's some strange change in methodology rather than a national spike to end all spikes, but does anyone know what's going on?I keep hitting the Escape key, but I'm still here!Comment
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This is all part of the government's decision, following a torrent of complaints, to release all testing data by region/local authority rather than only the testing data from NHS/PHE labsOriginally posted by LeMartinPecheur View Post
The local authority figures (on the Covid-19 Dashboard) used to only include tests processed by NHS England/PHE labs, the majority of which, I guess, were hospital tests. They did not include tests processed by other labs, e.g. tests from drive through centre tests, posted kits, etc.
Since yesterday all tests are included in the local authority figures, which is why they have suddenly jumped up.
There is a download of "Download the latest cases data as CSV or JSON" available on the Dashboard which contains the revised historic figures but
(a) the dates given in the file are specimen dates (which is good) whereas the day to day increases in the cumulative figures on the dashboard panel are, obviously, by date reported
(b) both the NHS/PHE testing data and the other testing data (i.e. pillar 1 and pillar 2) are lumped together and shown as a single figure, which is disappointing.
As far as the 30,302 is concerned, one of the problems with the the non-NHS/PHE labs and private company testing (drive through centres, mailed kits) is that they were set up without thinking through how the data from them could be integrated with that from the NHS/PHE and how the test data could be added to patient's records. It must be a nightmare for those trying to sort it all out - so I'm not surprised by the adjustment.
Just the usual government shambles.Last edited by johnb; 03-07-20, 18:23.Comment
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Not just 'disappointing' - maybe closer to deception?Comment
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I don't know whether the situation has improved but I read a little while back that lack of adequate identifying information from the carpark type testing (labels not completed fully /correctly/legibly) meant that many samples couldn't be linked to patients' records even if someone tried to. I don't remember if mention was made of whether any use was made at all of those results - anonymous by default data.Comment
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That might well be correct.Originally posted by oddoneout View Post
The whole thing was badly thought through and rushed, with a heavy reliance on private companies. Up to the end of May the information recorded by the drive through centres was the name, date of birth and postcode, with the somewhat optimistic idea that the information could be linked up to the NHS records at a later stage. This has caused a major difficulty and it was reported that there were up to 350,000 records unmatched at the end of May. (All quite predictable.)
A quote from The Guardian:
"Wales and Northern Ireland insisted on changes to the system in their areas in order to make it effective and ensure every result was linked quickly to each person’s patient records. But England and Scotland were left with a booking system which, nearly two months after the programme launched, has left health agencies still trying to retrospectively match each result with individual patient records. This means that while individuals receive their results, their doctors are not automatically notified."
... and it also meant that there were major problems integrating the testing stats with those from PHE and NHS labs.
The Guardian article is: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...th-nhs-records
By the way, the government is still pushing all new Covid-19 contracts out to the private sector in preference to the NHS or PHE. But then, the government seems to be pathologically incompetent. (Though sacked from government, the spirit of Chris Grayling lives on.)Comment
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In the last More or Less programme mention was made again of the prolonged absence of the number of people tested in the government information.
Actually the number of people tested is published for the so called pillar 1 tests (those carried out by the NHS/PHE labs) where the number of people tested is roughly 50% of the number of tests.
This makes sense. Someone might have more than one test when, say, they go into hospital due to the 30% of false negatives. Then they are likely to have further tests before being discharged. However many positive tests over time there are on one individual it would still be counted as 1 person tested and 1 confirmed case (if any of the tests are positive) in the PHE/NHS methodology.
The problem with the pillar 2 tests and the number of people being tested is that, say a person might be tested in a drive through centre (or by using a posted kit) and that might turn out to be positive. The person might well eventually go into hospital where there will be further tests. But unless the records for the third party drive through/kit testing tests can be linked with the NHS records it is impossible to get an accurate count of the number of people and the number of confirmed cases. For example, if the data isn't linked, an initial drive through positive test and then subsequent hospital tests on the same person will be counted as 2 confirmed cases and 2 people tested instead of 1.
It all comes down to the rushed and ill thought through setting up of the third party testing systems.Comment
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Here I find myself almost defending the government and the people trying to get things done. It'll perhaps be easy, with hindsight, to spot the many things which haven't been done correctly.Originally posted by johnb View Post
I'm guessing that one of the fundamental problems is that the UK was to a considerable extent unprepared for this disease. Some of the issues will be generic, while others will be specific to Covid-19. Test and trace may have been a tool used before in the UK, and there were hints of that in some recent briefings, in which mention was made of diseases and outbreaks of which I and I suspect the majority of the British public were completely unaware. So it seems that it is just one tool in the armoury for combatting disease outbreaks, but it has never had to be used on such a large scale in the UK. This can be done by people and contact tracing, but the speed of this disease was such that technological solutions have been sought.
Here there are several aspects. One is the testing, and management of the data, and another is developing a contact tracing strategy which works. My feeling is that the UK hasn't been very good at dealing with these, but it hasn't been very bad either.
Rather than alarm the public, announcements were made suggesting that everything was manageable, and under control, and even now there are comments that we did so well that we saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Covid-19 has presented big problems, and it has been contained, but really not been brought under control. There has been a lot of misinformation. Some aspects could have been thought out before this (or any) disease hit the UK, and there is some evidence that the UK had got as far as noticing the possibility of a disease causing problems, but has signally failed to prepare for such an eventuality. However, even there it is possible that there were just too many possibly strands to consider in advance of encountering this kind of problem.
What I suspect will happen now will be the usual British thing of muddling on for a while - possibly a very long while - and then eventually making some statements about "lessons learnt".
Then some while later there will be a repeat and most of the "lessons learnt" will have been forgotten, or disregarded.Comment
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I was offered a Covid 19 test (I'm classed as an "essential worker") last week, so I took the option. I took the kit home on Saturday afternoon, did the test (uncomfortable, but bearable) and posted the completed test back. It would have reached the testing centre on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning at 10 am I had a text, an automated 'phone message and an email, all stating my result was negative. The system DOES work, but the swabbing of one's throat is not pleasant...and you're supposed to use special postboxes when returning the sample kit, which I didn't understand, so I posted it in the box at the end of our street, and they still received it on time!Major Denis Bloodnok, Indian Army (RTD) Coward and Bar, currently residing in Barnet, Hertfordshire!Comment
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