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1 hour ago, nevermind, neoliberalism has had it said:

sorry to say that I have been edited out of the non footie section of the Pink Un. Only am able to send this via an old history page. Take care.

 

Keep at it. You speak from the heart!

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Well this explains a lot for those of you who like me had been concerned about the rate of fall of data on the Zoe App!  Just had an email from Zoe below.Now revised downwards and much more in line with what I would have expected. 
image.thumb.png.01b73b9436d1b9c8de7d7f93cabee4f6.png


image.thumb.png.04f9b02fc85571b2ceb3e9da4fc685fe.pngimage.thumb.png.73eb9ec3fc7d7ac7ef3b0108eac50b2b.png

Edited by Van wink
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National

8489 - 545

continuing the sharp falls, deaths were 799 a week ago

Local still looking good

image.png.4615e3d12dd9397660df2914927e0591.png

image.thumb.png.a6bf82669f99989c06ff56039ff61482.png

Still supply issues? but 2nd dose now rising again.

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No jabs at Reydon from Sat till Thursday, they have started on over 50’s so have they had to stop and let the others catch up ?

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21 hours ago, kick it off said:

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but Covid soup on March the 8th will mean that none of the subsequent steps will come to pass. I watched it rip through school communities from September, it will do exactly the same again because of this incompetent and frankly dangerous "big bang" school reopening. 

The government have had a ****ing year to make schools safe. They've failed and basically said "cross your fingers and hope". Kids with no underlying symptoms are dying. Schools are not safe in any way, shape or form.

USA has just put $250 billion into putting HEPA filters and ventilation units into schools. We have the odd squirt of sanitiser and **** all else.

I am all for opening the schools, but safely, with mitigation put in place - not like this, this is lunacy.

The government has so much blood on it's hands already.

My partner will be 33 weeks pregnant on March the 8th. She can't get vaccinated due to pregnancy, if she catches it then there are risks of significant harm to her and/or baby, and of premature birth. I won't be vaccinated until after the birth. Yet I'm expected to go to a tiny classroom, with **** all ventilation, no PPE and facing  up to 150 different households per day, and over 500 per week? WTF am I supposed to do? Risk my unborn baby being significantly harmed because Boris is an incompetent ****?

I can imagine it is a scary situation to go into, KIO. By way of comfort, I would ask you to consider the situation for groups of people uch as supermarket checkout workers. We have managed to keep essential stores open all the way through this pandemic and supermarket workers have to come into close contact with thousands of customers on a weekly basis all the time with very basic protection Most supermarkets have erected screens at checkout points and staff are usually masked up, and I imagine they are trained to wash their hands on a regular basis, and as a result we have all been able to continue shopping with little service disruption. Hopefully, everyone involved in schools can spend the time between now and March 8th working on making schools as safe as possible.

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3 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

I can imagine it is a scary situation to go into, KIO. By way of comfort, I would ask you to consider the situation for groups of people uch as supermarket checkout workers. We have managed to keep essential stores open all the way through this pandemic and supermarket workers have to come into close contact with thousands of customers on a weekly basis all the time with very basic protection Most supermarkets have erected screens at checkout points and staff are usually masked up, and I imagine they are trained to wash their hands on a regular basis, and as a result we have all been able to continue shopping with little service disruption. Hopefully, everyone involved in schools can spend the time between now and March 8th working on making schools as safe as possible.

Absolutely get that re: supermarket workers, but they are allowed screens, and only engaging with people for a minute or two at a time, not for an hour (more for double lessons), and they are in much bigger spaces than tiny classrooms, people in supermarkets are largely distancing which is literally impossible in schools. I absolutely think they should be prioritised for vaccinations though. Put my classes in a space the size of supermarkets and no problem, happily teach in that. I physically cannot move the front row of desks further than 1m from me in my classroom. No screen, no ventilation, 30 kids for an hour plus, no ability for anyone to get any kind of distance.

School reopening for teachers is essentially the same as telling someone to ride a packed bus for 6 hours with zero protection. 150 passengers on/off the bus during the journey, but all of them mixing with 900 other people before getting on it, and the bus never being anything less than rammed full. Would anyone here do that at this point in time? What about do it 5 days a week? With my family situ too? I'm going to have to do some serious thinking on what exactly il do if the unions don't step up.

I'm not worried about me catching it. Im 33 and healthy. If my partner wasn't heavily pregnant, it wouldn't be much of an issue. As it stands- Put proper ventilation and hpa filters in then fine, no issue with going back. Stagger openings like Wales, Scotland and NI so we can measure impact cautiously then fine. But the big bang approach is asking me to play Russian roulette with an unborn child. There is an acceptable level of risk threshold. This exceeds it by a million miles.

I hope that the unions ballot for strike action or advise section 44 letters again. I didnt put a s44 in last time, in January but I absolutely will this time. The public will hate it, but we're already public enemy number 1 anyway and constantly getting a kicking in the press so I don't really give a toss tbh, I need to protect my family. 

Edited by kick it off

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3 hours ago, CANARYKING said:

No jabs at Reydon from Sat till Thursday, they have started on over 50’s so have they had to stop and let the others catch up ?

Nice to see some areas starting on the over 50s..at least if they have a supply of the jabs...although im in the over 65 age group and still have'nt been able to get a slot as yet for my 1st jab..a testament to different procedures and speed in  different areas i suppose.

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1 hour ago, Essjayess said:

Nice to see some areas starting on the over 50s..at least if they have a supply of the jabs...although im in the over 65 age group and still have'nt been able to get a slot as yet for my 1st jab..a testament to different procedures and speed in  different areas i suppose.

I think we were told that AZ production was a bit down as further gearing up was taking place to increase manufacturing output further down the line.May explain why supplies are reduced, maybe WBB will know.

Edited by Van wink

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16 hours ago, Van wink said:

Well this explains a lot for those of you who like me had been concerned about the rate of fall of data on the Zoe App!  Just had an email from Zoe below.Now revised downwards and much more in line with what I would have expected. 
 

 

Good to hear they think it’s now going the right way too.

Exactly why though we shouldn’t be using arbitrary figures to determine what happens next, and why number of new infections or prevalence/total number infected isn’t the right thing to be using as the “target”. 

Can you imagine if we said “we need fewer than [       ] new daily infections”, stayed in lockdown, only for methodologies to change a month later to suggest we could have been out four weeks earlier? Or, worse, if we’d come out only for methodologies to change and revise up a month too late?

Really useful for the big picture and getting an idea of trends, and more importantly really useful for helping to ensure we keep those trends going in the right direction, but unless we test everyone everyday, it’s not accurate enough to be used for specific targets (nor is any other form of modelling we see on this either).

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I understand everyone is concerned, but in reality we need to move forward as the damage being done is massive in other areas, education, other health to mention a few things.

I am really confused to why at 50 with no health issues and not overweight I’ve been asked to get my jab yet teachers who are being asked to go back haven’t been prioritised ahead of me!

The reality is it’s not a perfect way out, but at least we are heading in the right direction, the information coming back regarding the effect of the vaccine protection and effect on transmission is very good and variants will come regardless of which way we try to come out of the pandemic. We just have to accept and live with Covid and it’s future mutations which no doubt will be acted on far quicker with our knowledge learned over the past year.

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15 hours ago, kick it off said:

Absolutely get that re: supermarket workers, but they are allowed screens, and only engaging with people for a minute or two at a time, not for an hour (more for double lessons), and they are in much bigger spaces than tiny classrooms, people in supermarkets are largely distancing which is literally impossible in schools. I absolutely think they should be prioritised for vaccinations though. Put my classes in a space the size of supermarkets and no problem, happily teach in that. I physically cannot move the front row of desks further than 1m from me in my classroom. No screen, no ventilation, 30 kids for an hour plus, no ability for anyone to get any kind of distance.

School reopening for teachers is essentially the same as telling someone to ride a packed bus for 6 hours with zero protection. 150 passengers on/off the bus during the journey, but all of them mixing with 900 other people before getting on it, and the bus never being anything less than rammed full. Would anyone here do that at this point in time? What about do it 5 days a week? With my family situ too? I'm going to have to do some serious thinking on what exactly il do if the unions don't step up.

I'm not worried about me catching it. Im 33 and healthy. If my partner wasn't heavily pregnant, it wouldn't be much of an issue. As it stands- Put proper ventilation and hpa filters in then fine, no issue with going back. Stagger openings like Wales, Scotland and NI so we can measure impact cautiously then fine. But the big bang approach is asking me to play Russian roulette with an unborn child. There is an acceptable level of risk threshold. This exceeds it by a million miles.

I hope that the unions ballot for strike action or advise section 44 letters again. I didnt put a s44 in last time, in January but I absolutely will this time. The public will hate it, but we're already public enemy number 1 anyway and constantly getting a kicking in the press so I don't really give a toss tbh, I need to protect my family. 

Hope you get prioritised. It may not be of much comfort but this pandemic has shown the important role teachers play in society, which goes beyond the classroom. 

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2 hours ago, Aggy said:

Good to hear they think it’s now going the right way too.

Exactly why though we shouldn’t be using arbitrary figures to determine what happens next, and why number of new infections or prevalence/total number infected isn’t the right thing to be using as the “target”. 

Can you imagine if we said “we need fewer than [       ] new daily infections”, stayed in lockdown, only for methodologies to change a month later to suggest we could have been out four weeks earlier? Or, worse, if we’d come out only for methodologies to change and revise up a month too late?

Really useful for the big picture and getting an idea of trends, and more importantly really useful for helping to ensure we keep those trends going in the right direction, but unless we test everyone everyday, it’s not accurate enough to be used for specific targets (nor is any other form of modelling we see on this either).

Your argument is misplaced Aggy.

The government will not directly use 'Zoe' or even the media friendly/abused 'Daily Confirmed Case' data to inform its judgement - both are in many ways self selecting samples although Zoe indeed is trying to reflect the true underlying numbers with its methodologies

What they will use is the gold standard ONS random sampling data. That can tell what the true prevalence is and trends.

As an example lets see how this this works - when the schools go back there will be a lot of a new mass testing which will likely uncover many more existing but now 'confirmed'  Covid cases than has been the case. The confirmed case numbers will likely instantly rise BUT the ONS random sampling will remain the same unchanged. Of course if the virus spreads via the schools then the ONS data will also reflect this.

Edited by Yellow Fever

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18 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Your argument is misplaced Aggy.

The government will not directly use 'Zoe' or even the media friendly/abused 'Daily Confirmed Case' data to inform its judgement - both are in many ways self selecting samples although Zoe indeed is trying to reflect the true underlying numbers with its methodologies

What they will use is the gold standard ONS random sampling data. That can tell what the true prevalence is and trends.

As an example lets see how this this works - when the schools go back there will be a lot of a new mass testing which will likely uncover many more existing but now 'confirmed'  Covid cases than has been the case. The confirmed case numbers will likely instantly rise BUT the ONS random sampling will remain the same unchanged. Of course if the virus spreads via the schools then the ONS data will also reflect this.

Agree, the reason I have put a lot of faith in Zoe is of course because it has over 4 million, albeit self selected, contributors but mainly because whatever methodology they use they have nearly always been very close to ONS random data, so a good up to date barometer, hence my rather repetitive but heartfelt concerns expressed about their figures showing a recent upturn. I am pleased they have rectified the loss of accuracy which I think related to them not having sufficient  regard to to the success of the vaccine in their model.

Edited by Van wink
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18 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Agree, the reason I have put a lot of faith in Zoe is of course because it has over 4 million, albeit self selected, contributors but mainly because whatever methodology they use they have nearly always been very close to ONS random data, so a good up to date barometer, hence my rather repetitive but heartfelt concerns expressed about their figures showing a recent upturn. I am pleased they have rectified the loss of accuracy which I think related to them not having sufficient  regard to to the success of the vaccine in their model.

It's the early warning Canary in the Coalmine but obviously as they try to equate their numbers to the true (ONS) ones their models may need to change to reflect the particular Zoe reporting demographic & social mix - and what may be distorting them (i.e. the recent vaccines largely in the elderly at present).

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1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

Your argument is misplaced Aggy.

The government will not directly use 'Zoe' or even the media friendly/abused 'Daily Confirmed Case' data to inform its judgement - both are in many ways self selecting samples although Zoe indeed is trying to reflect the true underlying numbers with its methodologies

What they will use is the gold standard ONS random sampling data. That can tell what the true prevalence is and trends.

As an example lets see how this this works - when the schools go back there will be a lot of a new mass testing which will likely uncover many more existing but now 'confirmed'  Covid cases than has been the case. The confirmed case numbers will likely instantly rise BUT the ONS random sampling will remain the same unchanged. Of course if the virus spreads via the schools then the ONS data will also reflect this.

Even the random sampling doesn’t tell you the exact number. If you widen the pool of random samples, the outcome might be different. Good for showing rough numbers and trends, but not for saying “we definitely have 999 cases today whereas we had 1,001 yesterday, let’s open up”.

Comes down yet again to the point that unless you test everyone everyday, we don’t know exactly how many positive tests there are. Which is why the government, presumably advised by SAGE, have stuck to concrete targets (deaths and hospitalisations) and not arbitrary figures based on numbers we are guessing.

 

Edit: PS, does the ONS random sampling take into account care homes, hospitals, other public accommodation?

Edited by Aggy

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43 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Even the random sampling doesn’t tell you the exact number. If you widen the pool of random samples, the outcome might be different. Good for showing rough numbers and trends, but not for saying “we definitely have 999 cases today whereas we had 1,001 yesterday, let’s open up”.

Comes down yet again to the point that unless you test everyone everyday, we don’t know exactly how many positive tests there are. Which is why the government, presumably advised by SAGE, have stuck to concrete targets (deaths and hospitalisations) and not arbitrary figures based on numbers we are guessing.

 

Edit: PS, does the ONS random sampling take into account care homes, hospitals, other public accommodation?

Aggy - you are clutching at straws. 

I've no intention of teaching basic GCSE or O level in my day sampling theory. The world runs on statistics such as these invented over 100 years ago by Guinness! 

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10 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Aggy - you are clutching at straws. 

I've no intention of teaching basic GCSE or O level in my day sampling theory. The world runs on statistics such as these invented over 100 years ago by Guinness! 

Ah, so patronising nonsense about gcse level stats rather than answering the question. If it helps, here’s an extract from the ons infection survey methodology section. They don’t sample care homes. And their apparently random sampling “prioritises” areas with high levels of infection.

Link below just in case you want to double check whether my reading capabilities are at gcse level English standard.



 

“Only private households are included in the sample. People living in care homes, other communal establishments and hospitals are not included. Only private households in England are included in the pilot study.”

In line with our plans to increase our overall sample size, we prioritised areas under government local restriction because of an outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19).”

“We also boosted our sample in London, inviting 50,000 extra households to increase the household involvement rates in this area.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/methodologies/covid19infectionsurveypilotmethodsandfurtherinformation
 

And if you’re worried this methodology is out of date (it isn’t), here’s a link to their bulletin in January 2021, which states

 

“In this bulletin, we refer to the number of current COVID-19 infections within the community population; community in this instance refers to private residential households and it excludes those in hospitals, care homes and/or other institutional settings.”

 

 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/22january2021

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1 hour ago, Aggy said:

Ah, so patronising nonsense about gcse level stats rather than answering the question. If it helps, here’s an extract from the ons infection survey methodology section. They don’t sample care homes. And their apparently random sampling “prioritises” areas with high levels of infection.

Link below just in case you want to double check whether my reading capabilities are at gcse level English standard.



 

“Only private households are included in the sample. People living in care homes, other communal establishments and hospitals are not included. Only private households in England are included in the pilot study.”

In line with our plans to increase our overall sample size, we prioritised areas under government local restriction because of an outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19).”

“We also boosted our sample in London, inviting 50,000 extra households to increase the household involvement rates in this area.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/methodologies/covid19infectionsurveypilotmethodsandfurtherinformation
 

And if you’re worried this methodology is out of date (it isn’t), here’s a link to their bulletin in January 2021, which states

 

“In this bulletin, we refer to the number of current COVID-19 infections within the community population; community in this instance refers to private residential households and it excludes those in hospitals, care homes and/or other institutional settings.”

 

 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/22january2021

 

You're a hoot !

What the ONS survey measures is community transmission i.e. you and me and not institutions is I thought well known. It didn't need explanations.

However, what your original post clearly claimed (and not the by-line) was that random samples were all but meaningless as we couldn't know the exact number unless we tested everybody and only the exact number was useful.

Simply that is complete utter nonsense. Even the vaccines efficacy and authorization number are based on similar sampling theory - trials !

I know prevalence doesn't suit your agenda but you are clutching at diminishing straws.

 

Edited by Yellow Fever

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32 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

 

You're a hoot !

What the ONS survey measures is community transmission i.e. you and me and not institutions is I thought well known. It didn't need explanations.

However, what your original post clearly claimed (and not the by-line) was that random samples were all but meaningless as we couldn't know the exact number unless we tested everybody and only the exact number was useful.

Simply that is complete utter nonsense. Even the vaccines efficacy and authorization number are based on similar sampling theory - trials !

I know prevalence doesn't suit your agenda but you are clutching at diminishing straws.

 

Classic YF. That’s not what my original post claimed at all is it. Did you bother to read it before announcing it was misguided?

Here’s what my original post to VW actually said about the Zoe app:

Really useful for the big picture and getting an idea of trends, and more importantly really useful for helping to ensure we keep those trends going in the right direction, but unless we test everyone everyday, it’s not accurate enough to be used for specific targets (nor is any other form of modelling we see on this either).”

I have also said elsewhere that community spread and infections is important for monitoring to ensure hospitals don’t become overwhelmed.

However, setting an arbitrary target such as ‘fewer than [.figure ] new daily infections’ or ‘fewer than [ figure] total infections’ if you want to use prevalence, requires you to be able to ascertain whether that target has been achieved. 

This works both ways. It isn’t anti lockdown or whatever deflecting rubbish you’re about to accuse me of next. 

If (for example) we said we should come out of lockdown if we have fewer than  1,000 new daily infections and use ONS random sampling to ascertain when we get to 1,000 new daily infections, you’re completely ignoring care homes (where there are huge numbers of the most highly vulnerable people).

So nothing about my “agenda”, whatever that means. You have been saying for ages we should have a specified amount of cases as a maximum limit before we come out of lockdown, but you are yet to show any way that can determine how many cases we actually have.

Instead you appear to be saying we should base the plan for coming out of lockdown on figures which literally completely ignore care homes. Which seems a strange way of approaching it to me.

 

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1 hour ago, Aggy said:

Ah, so patronising nonsense about gcse level stats rather than answering the question. If it helps, here’s an extract from the ons infection survey methodology section. They don’t sample care homes. And their apparently random sampling “prioritises” areas with high levels of infection.

Link below just in case you want to double check whether my reading capabilities are at gcse level English standard.



 

“Only private households are included in the sample. People living in care homes, other communal establishments and hospitals are not included. Only private households in England are included in the pilot study.”

In line with our plans to increase our overall sample size, we prioritised areas under government local restriction because of an outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19).”

“We also boosted our sample in London, inviting 50,000 extra households to increase the household involvement rates in this area.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/methodologies/covid19infectionsurveypilotmethodsandfurtherinformation
 

And if you’re worried this methodology is out of date (it isn’t), here’s a link to their bulletin in January 2021, which states

 

“In this bulletin, we refer to the number of current COVID-19 infections within the community population; community in this instance refers to private residential households and it excludes those in hospitals, care homes and/or other institutional settings.”

 

 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/22january2021

Its community infection thats being measured by the ons survey, a representative sample of the community population. The crucial thing with this survey is it picks up people in the population with covid who do not report evidence of symptoms. This data then sits alongside the test data figures from test and trace, the Zoe data which picks up over 4 million people, the REACT survey which looks at antibody tests for 160000 people randomly selected, PHE antibody surveillance.......you put all that in the pot and it gives you a pretty good picture of what is going on

 

Edited by Van wink

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8 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Its community infection thats being measured by the survey, a representative sample of the community population. The crucial thing with this survey is it picks up people in the population with covid who do not report evidence of symptoms. This data then sits alongside the test data figures from test and trace, the Zoe data which picks up over 4 million people, the REACT survey which looks at antibody tests for 160000 people randomly selected, PHE antibody surveillance.......you put all that in the pot and it gives you a pretty good picture of what is going on

 

Yes I know and don’t disagree. The point I made in my initial post to you, as just mentioned in the reply above, is that these things are great for trends and getting the big picture. 

But neither the Zoe app or the ONS figures give you enough accuracy to say “we should only come out of lockdown if we have fewer than 1,000 new daily cases”.

In order to say that, you need to actually know when you get to 1,000 new daily cases. And we simply don’t know with that level of certainty.
 

That’s risky both ways - use the ONS sampling to assume we have below 1,000 new daily infections and you’re literally not taking care homes into account at all (as  the ONS stats don’t sample from care homes). So we’d come out of lockdown basically hoping blindly the care homes were alright. 
 

So we come full circle - bottom line is we need to keep hospitalisations low. Lots of things help us do that, and keeping tabs broadly on community spread, and checking trends are going in the right direction, are crucial. But they aren’t the goals per se because they’re not properly measureable, certainly not to the extent that you will only allow coming out of lockdown if we have under [unmeasurable arbitrary figure  ] infections. 

Edited by Aggy

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25 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Classic YF. That’s not what my original post claimed at all is it. Did you bother to read it before announcing it was misguided?

Here’s what my original post to VW actually said about the Zoe app:

Really useful for the big picture and getting an idea of trends, and more importantly really useful for helping to ensure we keep those trends going in the right direction, but unless we test everyone everyday, it’s not accurate enough to be used for specific targets (nor is any other form of modelling we see on this either).”

I have also said elsewhere that community spread and infections is important for monitoring to ensure hospitals don’t become overwhelmed.

However, setting an arbitrary target such as ‘fewer than [.figure ] new daily infections’ or ‘fewer than [ figure] total infections’ if you want to use prevalence, requires you to be able to ascertain whether that target has been achieved. 

This works both ways. It isn’t anti lockdown or whatever deflecting rubbish you’re about to accuse me of next. 

If (for example) we said we should come out of lockdown if we have fewer than  1,000 new daily infections and use ONS random sampling to ascertain when we get to 1,000 new daily infections, you’re completely ignoring care homes (where there are huge numbers of the most highly vulnerable people).

So nothing about my “agenda”, whatever that means. You have been saying for ages we should have a specified amount of cases as a maximum limit before we come out of lockdown, but you are yet to show any way that can determine how many cases we actually have.

Instead you appear to be saying we should base the plan for coming out of lockdown on figures which literally completely ignore care homes. Which seems a strange way of approaching it to me.

 

This is what you said in response to my post. No more and no less. Seems like you forgot while dismissing most of the 20th centuries  science and medical breakthroughs based on statistics. I will leave it there.

Even the random sampling doesn’t tell you the exact number. If you widen the pool of random samples, the outcome might be different. Good for showing rough numbers and trends, but not for saying “we definitely have 999 cases today whereas we had 1,001 yesterday, let’s open up”.

Comes down yet again to the point that unless you test everyone everyday, we don’t know exactly how many positive tests there are. Which is why the government, presumably advised by SAGE, have stuck to concrete targets (deaths and hospitalisations) and not arbitrary figures based on numbers we are guessing.

Edit: PS, does the ONS random sampling take into account care homes, hospitals, other public accommodation?

Edited by Yellow Fever

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1 minute ago, Yellow Fever said:

This what you said in response to my post. No more and no less. Seems like you forgot while dismissing most of the 20th centuries  science and medical breakthroughs based on statistics. I will leave it there.

Even the random sampling doesn’t tell you the exact number. If you widen the pool of random samples, the outcome might be different. Good for showing rough numbers and trends, but not for saying “we definitely have 999 cases today whereas we had 1,001 yesterday, let’s open up”.

Comes down yet again to the point that unless you test everyone everyday, we don’t know exactly how many positive tests there are. Which is why the government, presumably advised by SAGE, have stuck to concrete targets (deaths and hospitalisations) and not arbitrary figures based on numbers we are guessing.

Edit: PS, does the ONS random sampling take into account care homes, hospitals, other public accommodation?

So what in that says, as you suggested I said, “random samples are all but meaningless”? 😕 It literally says why and when they’re useful but also where they have their limitations for certain purposes. 

 

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4 hours ago, The Real Buh said:

Teachers: go back to work or find another job

every teacher I know is in work already (in the actual school) doing their job.

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11 minutes ago, Tetteys Jig said:

every teacher I know is in work already (in the actual school) doing their job.

It’s not a great lesson to teach kids, is it?

cowardice

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