COVID19

[Cf]

So now vulnerable people being told to get out and about.

This is mad isn't it? Have the government just decided fuck it and double down on ending lockdown and see how it goes?

It’ll be a tough gig for whoever has to explain the scientific rationale behind this today. Most likely option will be to send out a scientist who doesn’t have a specific public health brief I guess.

Hope they don't all drop dead when they walk outside in the atmosphere within a couple of meters of someone - really is chicken licken stuff this.

It would be interesting to know how much additional immunity is conferred by reading The Telegraph 😊. 

The governments own guidance still says this action won’t be safe until Alert Level 1, we’re still at 4. It looks as though they can’t bring themselves to admit how badly this is going (relative to the rest of Europe bar Sweden) so they’re just gonna say we’re now at Level 1, they don’t appear to have anything other than a faint hope that they get lucky 🤞.

Haha, definitely helps so far, I'm notionally vulnerable but I've probably been out something like 5 days out of 7 since lockdown. This isn't about recklessness - it's understanding the science and that being 'out', per se, is not at all threatening to anyone. It is some kind of hysteria that makes people want to lock people inside or indeed, for the locked in to want to stay locked in rather than move about safely

Good morning

It’s possibly something that’s been misunderstood throughout (in terms of the lockdown), the obligation on most of us is not to avoid catching it (I’d quite like to catch it, before the pubs/restaurants/Lords/spectators at racing/football are allowed, provided that having it gave me immunity*) but to avoid spreading it. Coronavirus is just not a good spot for the ‘I’m alright jack’ mentality, which has always been a defining boundary in the political divide.

* On balance of what we know, it’s likely that you are immune after you’ve had it.

Apologies to the people who don’t think it’s a political issue, we disagree.

Completely agree with what our primary obligation is. Pretty confident the hardest people to make this message stick with are sub 25 year olds - virtually no risk to them personally, mostly left wing supporting  and will be trying to spread it to kill off older Tories imo

On a slightly more serious note, aren’t we worried about the lack of social distancing (especially from younger people) ?

I know Kush may say the Government will want to pass the buck if there is a second wave but there really does seem to be a disregard for it.

Looking at scenes from parks, beaches, beauty spots etc, it looks a serious issue to me.

It’s a collective responsibility isn’t it? So let’s all (especially the young, who might for various reasons be higher volume spreaders) be responsible for our own actions. Collective responsibility still needs coherent and unambiguous leadership though, so basically anything other than use “common sense” would have been a better message. I think there’s a powerful argument that some of the messaging has been deliberately ambiguous, you don’t have to be a genius imo, to work out what ‘Stay Alert’ means but it’s still failing some important tests for what constitutes good comms at a critical time in a national crisis.

It would be fascinating to know how old everyone who regularly contributes to the thread is. I think we generally know from stuff we’ve picked up over the years but I wonder I  there’d be any surprises.

Whilst you may be right about some of the communication, I think the social distancing 2 metre rules is clear and well known by all.

People just ignore it and the level of blantant disregard has increased massively.

Try walking down a main road and see how many people move to distance. My observation of group gatherings in parks etc is its widely ignored. On Friday I witnessed 2 games of football and a group playing cricket. Distancing genuinely wasn’t a consideration for any of them.

I genuinely don’t get it.

The government don't care about the rules and continue to ease lockdown measures regardless. So everything is fine isn't it? If we were doing something wrong they'd be locking us down more wound't they?

[kukushkin88]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

[kukushkin88]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

[kukushkin88]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

[Cf]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

Nah mate. It was 110. Matt Hancock said so. Kindly did the graphs to save the scientist the effort of going through them too.

[kukushkin88]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

Nah mate. It was 110. Matt Hancock said so. Kindly did the graphs to save the scientist the effort of going through them too.

They were both uncomfortable today, right from the start. It was such a shambles, on contact tracing, joint bio-security centre and the massive underreporting of deaths. Not to mention the fact they haven’t said how many people are being tested a day (even the lying version would be better than nothing) for 9 days.

https://twitter.com/_jamesmeek/status/1267492421325201409?s=21

[Pokerpops]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

I’m not happy with the way the revised number was slipped out like a dodgy celeb in dark glasses and a baseball cap. But there weren’t 556 deaths in the day. You can’t run with the post-truth accusations if you are anything other than 100% accurate and truthful yourself.

FWIW I am getting tired of the manipulation of figures and reporting.

[kukushkin88]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

I’m not happy with the way the revised number was slipped out like a dodgy celeb in dark glasses and a baseball cap. But there weren’t 556 deaths in the day. You can’t run with the post-truth accusations if you are anything other than 100% accurate and truthful yourself.

FWIW I am getting tired of the manipulation of figures and reporting.

Good morning

The daily reported deaths have never been deaths from the previous 24 hours. They established the convention for how they report, they broke that convention and they need to explain why.

[jakally]

FWIW I am getting tired of the manipulation of figures and reporting.

If any of it is deliberate it is stupidity.
So much focus on every detail nothing significant has a chance of getting through.

[superwomble]

I've just read that this Joint Biosecurity Centre that is the body tasked with assessing the Covid19 alert level, that the government are supposedly following the advice of for easing the lockdown restrictions seemingly too early, doesn't actually exist.

This can't be right?!

If it is, WTAF? If it isn't, what the hell was Hancock on about?

[Jon MW]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

I’m not happy with the way the revised number was slipped out like a dodgy celeb in dark glasses and a baseball cap. But there weren’t 556 deaths in the day. You can’t run with the post-truth accusations if you are anything other than 100% accurate and truthful yourself.

FWIW I am getting tired of the manipulation of figures and reporting.

Good morning

The daily reported deaths have never been deaths from the previous 24 hours. They established the convention for how they report, they broke that convention and they need to explain why.

I'm a bit confused - he reported the deaths from the previous 24 hours, as they know them on the day.

The 'extra' deaths were the ones that were retrospectively added to a previous weeks total.

Wouldn't they have to change the convention to report those? Because this isn't the first time that they've revised past figures, I don't read all the footnotes all the time but I this is at least the third time previous weeks figures have been revised.

And it's an extra 400ish deaths covering a whole week - so about 60 a day. Why do you think it matters so much?

From a national point of view it doesn't matter if we had 110 or 70 or 200 deaths; what matters is if the trend is up or down or flat.

As I've suggested before, there are dozens of tables, dozens of charts and each one of them could be explained in the daily press conference and every footnote for every chart could be explained - but is that really a constructive use of time? Particularly as this data is all publically available for the journalists to analyse at their leisure anyway.

[kukushkin88]

I've just read that this Joint Biosecurity Centre that is the body tasked with assessing the Covid19 alert level, that the government are supposedly following the advice of for easing the lockdown restrictions seemingly too early, doesn't actually exist.

This can't be right?!

If it is, WTAF? If it isn't, what the hell was Hancock on about?

He said himself last night that it doesn’t exist, yet. “Still formally needs to come in to existence” (verbatim)

https://inews.co.uk/news/coronavirus-latest-biosecurity-centre-covid-19-threat-level-not-open-matt-hancock-2871359

[kukushkin88]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

I’m not happy with the way the revised number was slipped out like a dodgy celeb in dark glasses and a baseball cap. But there weren’t 556 deaths in the day. You can’t run with the post-truth accusations if you are anything other than 100% accurate and truthful yourself.

FWIW I am getting tired of the manipulation of figures and reporting.

Good morning

The daily reported deaths have never been deaths from the previous 24 hours. They established the convention for how they report, they broke that convention and they need to explain why.

I'm a bit confused - he reported the deaths from the previous 24 hours, as they know them on the day.

The 'extra' deaths were the ones that were retrospectively added to a previous weeks total.

Wouldn't they have to change the convention to report those? Because this isn't the first time that they've revised past figures, I don't read all the footnotes all the time but I this is at least the third time previous weeks figures have been revised.

And it's an extra 400ish deaths covering a whole week - so about 60 a day. Why do you think it matters so much?

From a national point of view it doesn't matter if we had 110 or 70 or 200 deaths; what matters is if the trend is up or down or flat.

As I've suggested before, there are dozens of tables, dozens of charts and each one of them could be explained in the daily press conference and every footnote for every chart could be explained - but is that really a constructive use of time? Particularly as this data is all publically available for the journalists to analyse at their leisure anyway.

They have always added historic revisions in to the daily deaths, we have known this for weeks, (I’m a bit surprised if you didn’t know this) this time they didn’t. They could argue that 445 additional deaths yesterday would have been of no interest to anyone and so weren’t worth mentioning, it would be a bold argument to put forward.

[Jon MW]

How did they think they’d get this one through? A big number on the day we moved from Alert level 4 to Alert Level 3, with a bit of 1.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1267498210609844224?s=21

If you were going to change the convention for how daily deaths are announced (grossly understated as they are). What would be the motivation for not mentioning that you were doing it?

556 for the U.K, on a day that Spain has had zero.

I’m not happy with the way the revised number was slipped out like a dodgy celeb in dark glasses and a baseball cap. But there weren’t 556 deaths in the day. You can’t run with the post-truth accusations if you are anything other than 100% accurate and truthful yourself.

FWIW I am getting tired of the manipulation of figures and reporting.

Good morning

The daily reported deaths have never been deaths from the previous 24 hours. They established the convention for how they report, they broke that convention and they need to explain why.

I'm a bit confused - he reported the deaths from the previous 24 hours, as they know them on the day.

The 'extra' deaths were the ones that were retrospectively added to a previous weeks total.

Wouldn't they have to change the convention to report those? Because this isn't the first time that they've revised past figures, I don't read all the footnotes all the time but I this is at least the third time previous weeks figures have been revised.

And it's an extra 400ish deaths covering a whole week - so about 60 a day. Why do you think it matters so much?

From a national point of view it doesn't matter if we had 110 or 70 or 200 deaths; what matters is if the trend is up or down or flat.

As I've suggested before, there are dozens of tables, dozens of charts and each one of them could be explained in the daily press conference and every footnote for every chart could be explained - but is that really a constructive use of time? Particularly as this data is all publically available for the journalists to analyse at their leisure anyway.

They have always added historic revisions in to the daily deaths, we have known this for weeks, (I’m a bit surprised if you didn’t know this) this time they didn’t. They could argue that 445 additional deaths yesterday would have been of no interest to anyone and so weren’t worth mentioning, it would be a bold argument to put forward.

The deaths weren't yesterday.

Weren't they a week's worth of deaths?

Do you mean add it to the bar chart/7 day rolling average? Or the actual figure he said? Because adding it to the figure he said would be wrong - as it was a week's worth not the days figures; I don't think they've added a weeks worth of extra deaths onto a daily figure before (have they?)

[Cf]

It's the fact that they're trying to sell us "look! all the figures are going down! so easing the lockdown is ok!" whilst footnoting these 400 extra deaths.

I thought it telling the government went through the slides and the figures rather than getting the scientist to do it. Suggests to me there's a conflict there in the scientists would not have span it the way the government want.

Note also the R level was not presented. Nor was the threat level.