430 Responses to Midweek Thread 1 April 2020

  1. StewGreen says:

    BBC-local-radio writing about themselves in the NUJ mgazine
    … I haven’t had chance to read it.

       5 likes

  2. Doobster78 says:

    When this Covid 19 is all done and dusted, i am looking forward to the BBC and Government still maintaining a daily conference to let us know updated deaths in the UK .

    Every day at 5pm they could let us know the death toll in the previous 24hrs for ..

    Road accidents
    Flu
    Cancer
    Drowning
    Industrial accidents
    Choking
    Heart Attack
    Parkinson’s
    Food poisoning
    Etc Etc

    Then, they can show everyone, how the media over-hyped all this and show everyone how the likes of Kuntzberg and Beff Rigby were fear mongering, adding to panic for no real reason.

       50 likes

    • Up2snuff says:

      Doobster, you don’t really die from Parkinson’s Disease or any of the dementia, except in very exceptional circumstances. That would be where a large portion of the brain running an essential organ (or organs) shuts down or is badly affected by the dementia as in ‘madness’. Usually, it is a secondary cause – infection – that sees the sufferer die.

      I can remember when the BBC routinely announced the death toll from RTA’s every Bank Holiday and over the Christmas season. They stopped doing that, on the whole, some years ago.

         11 likes

      • Scronker says:

        Yes Up2. They stopped doing that when it came to light that the number of deaths were no different than any ordinary weekend.

           0 likes

  3. StewGreen says:

    @TalkRadio now, Mike Graham is ripping into the 3 little monkeys* and their gotcha questions at the daily press conference.

    * Kuenessberg, Peston and Rigby

       36 likes

  4. Doobster78 says:

    Like others, i have gone right off Piers these last few weeks.

       22 likes

  5. StewGreen says:

    The idea that the German’s have a magic bullet with testing.
    Paul Cosford, just be on JHB claiming his team have been in charge of patient testing and that they have NEVER HAD a shortage of tests
    .. that they have always been able to test the patients they wanted to.
    And that testing staff and the general public is a different thing
    I think he means that an infection test is that useful test to use on staff cos even if they test negative today , they might test positive tomorrow .. and that the development of the proper antibody test is what they need.

       14 likes

  6. Up2snuff says:

    TOADY Watch #3 – Thank you but did I miss something?

    Did not listen to much of the programme this morning but caught the 7.30 a.m. News Bulletin plus the main 8 a.m. News.

    I have just checked the Johns Hopkins Uni figures (not easy to do at night because our planet will just not stand still, it keeps rotating – the fidget!) and two notables stand out.

    In the last couple of days, China has been re-included on the chart, whether by the BBC or by the Uni, I do not know for certain. As the article text mentioned China’s exclusion, I suspect it was done by the BBC but MR-D applies. (For the benefit of our Fed, that is Mandy Rice-Davies: ‘he would say that wouldn’t he’.)

    However, BBC News is totally under BBC control. What is really interesting is the number of new cases in the USA. The BBC have been really very keen, anxious to the point of frantic-ness, over the last few days to highlight how bad the number of Covid-19 infections is becoming in the USA and that they are ‘far worse than China’. Not that we can rely on the numbers from China anyway.* What is significant is that there was a small increase in cases in the US. It may, of course, be a blip.

    I do not recall hearing about this on your main News broadcast, BBC.

    I wonder why?

    * There is a peculiarity occurring in China: the Covid thing does not appear to have spread outside Hubei Province at all. That is most peculiar. Anyone know otherwise or can add info about that?

       28 likes

    • Pretzel says:

      They also seem to be reporting “record numbers of deaths” in countries such as Italy that now seem to be past the peak of new cases, which is convenient for their fearmongering agenda because deaths will lag new cases by 10-14 days.

         9 likes

  7. pugnazious says:

    Curiousity that the Today programme has enormous praise for the brutal and repressive Communist regime in China and its centralised control but here the BBC attacks the PHE for having the gall to try and control testing by ensuring that labs conform to standards and that tests are genuinely effective and that any results really do show what they are said to show…..the BBC also claims that the testing centres are empty because people couldn’t find them…despite massive publicity, modern technology, undoubted information from the NHS to its staff and the fact that one is in an IKEA store…is the BBC saying they can find their way to IKEA to buy a wardrobe but not to get a test for a deadly disease? [It is odd that despite the media hype of an emergency so many hospitals and test centres across the world are being shown to be empty….why? Some areas will be inundated but others have few to no patients…New York has small emergency units…hence they get easily overcrowded….flu in 2018‘The influx of flu patients can strain New York City hospitals because emergency departments in urban areas tend to be smaller than others across the state, said Dr. Peter Shearer, the medical director of the emergency department at Mount Sinai Hospital.’]

    The BBC is plugging its favourite climate change promoter Paul Nurse who now says we need a Dunkirk spirit and we must mobilise all the small labs up and down the country.

    That’s just a news ‘scandal’ waiting to happen isn’t it as labs use different methods, tests and reporting standards and mistakes will occur. We know full well if the government had adopted that strategy straight way the knives would have been out for them….how reckless and dangerous to use labs that haven’t been fully checked and accredited!!!
    Every death will be examined in mournful detail demanding to know how such a thing could be allowed to happen and weeping relatives will be wheeled in to say the lab should never have been allowed to operate. The BBC will be suitably shocked and outraged on their behalf.

    Dr John Lee [John Lee is a recently retired professor of pathology and a former NHS consultant pathologist] in the Spectator….https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-to-understand-and-report-figures-for-covid-19-deaths-

    ‘Developing accurate, reliable, validated tests is difficult and takes time. At the moment, we have to take it on trust that the tests in use are measuring what we think they are.’

    The BBC seems to have crafted an editorial narrative, the same one used by Norman Smith and Nick Robinson today….that the anti-body tests that show if someone has had the virus and is probably now immune and can go back to work is ‘totally useless’ or ‘of no use whatsoever’.

    Except of course it is of huge use…..why would the BBC think getting people back to work, including doctors and nurses and other health staff, as well as getting industry back producing, is a worthless thing?

    ‘Mr Hopson pointed to the results of a limited rollout of testing over the weekend to NHS staff, which allowed 85 per cent of those who were self-isolating to return to work.’

    Why would showing the spread of the disease and thus how contagious and how dangerous it really is [death rates will go down if the spread is shown to be far wider than is at present guessed at] be a bad and worthless thing? Could it be because it is the government target and thus can’t be allowed to succeed? The BBC trying to spread confusion and chaos and undermine the government effort out of pure spite towards a Tory government? The BBC not really caring about deaths just playing politics? Surely not. Surely the BBC isn’t doing Labour a favour. Surely not.

    You can see the BBC attitude when they had on a Prof. Sarah Fortune [Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health] who said we really need to develop herd immunity….a vaccine would be good but that can take from a year to 18 months…do we want a lockdown for that timespan?
    The BBC response….isn’t that more about getting people back to work?…..so the BBC doesn’t think a massive economic crisis is a problem…just shut the economy for 18 months…no problem.

    Er….they know but have no questions about the lockdown’s justification…

    Kuenssberg….

    ‘The sudden and vast increase in those signing up is powerful evidence that the coronavirus crisis is an economic emergency for a very significant portion of the public, losing work and losing income in ways they could never have anticipated a few short weeks ago. ‘

    900,000 signing on already and 20% of small businesses failing with a possible 4 million more unemployed…and that’s just the start.

    Never mind, as long as the frogs and butterflies and newts are happy.

       33 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      Pug – perhaps the muppet who can’t find Ikea does not do engleeeshh…….the vetting of NHS staff has always avoided being racist . … but like it’s refusal to charge overseas health tourists for exploiting it in ‘better ‘ times ….

         24 likes

  8. Deborah says:

    10am news, Radio 4. They played a short clip from the grown up son of an Asian doctor who has died in the U.K. of the virus. I think they said the 4th doctor to die.

    I always wonder how these things work. Does the son think, ‘oh, my Dad has just died, I must contact the BBC’? Or does the BBC trawl through the tweets and then contact the relatives? However as someone who cannot believe that the first thing a relative does after a family death, is put it up on Facebook or Twitter, I am perhaps behind the times.

       39 likes

    • pugnazious says:

      The same BBC that when the crew of an RAF plane died in a crash in Afghanistan on operations immediately went to the grieving widows and asked ‘Are you angry at the government?’

      Coffins are just soapboxes for BBC journalists to be used to spout their own toxic agendas…in that case anti-the war against Islamic terrorists.

         40 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Tragic. And I don’t just mean the calibre of media staff.

      Just like near every backpacker who pressed on with their gap year dream despite all the warnings seems to have a satellite link straight to W1A to book a flight on the country tab.

      All the medical fatalities here seem to be ‘Asian’.

      Whether this is a statistical match to civilian fatalities is unlikely, but of the younger ones few seem to have names I could easily pronounce.

      A bit like most BBC ‘reporters’ on bylines or airwaves.

      There may be a correlation to what is ‘news’, how it gets prioritised, etc.

         18 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      How old was this doctor ?
      He wasn’t a normal doctor, but rather a 68 year old RETIRED doctor who had to come back to volunteer.
      I hope they only let him work in the office
      If he was working direct with patients that would break H & S
      cos surely aged people are a vulnerable category.

         14 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        Note that Al Jazeera use a different image and form of the name : Dr Alfa Sa’adu in their tweet

        EUleszQVAAANlIa.jpg:small

           12 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        BTW when the Tory Press Office changed their Twitter name to “Fact Check” for one hour as a kind of joke
        .. people like Piers screamed like crazy.

           12 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Also, Stew, did those Doctors come originally from countries where the smoking rate for males is close to 50% and did they continue the habit when in the UK? Also, were they practising Muslims (non-drinkers) or alcohol abstaining through choice?

        Many people, I have been led to believe, die from undiagnosed cancers. Stroke is also a major killer along with heart disease.

        As you (and I) have pointed out, you cannot rely on a statement of “This is a Covid-19 death.” without sight of the person’s medical history, death certificate and – preferably, but difficult at present due to pressure on Lab space – an autopsy.

           17 likes

        • StewGreen says:

          @Up2Snuff ‘Resistance varies by blood group’

          Here’s a scenario what if racial-genes do make a difference
          and that ON AVERAGE East Asians and blond Europeans like many Germans are very resistant
          and that dark haired Italians and people with middle-eastern genes are much less resistant.
          Do you think Big Brother would tell us ?

             14 likes

          • Up2snuff says:

            Stew, male : female do, so there can be racial differences I guess. For the male : female thing you have to get down to chromasonal level plus, perhaps, a bit of natural conditioning built in by a wise Creator God, if you believe, and pure accident or by evolution, if you don’t.

               4 likes

  9. BRISSLES says:

    Well, aside from all the statistics that are beginning to fog my brain, there is a silver lining ……. no reality shows, particularly the mindless Britains Got noTalent, which means no magazine photo shoots of Ambitious Holden and her ilk draped in little more than a handkerchief.

       22 likes

    • Dystopian says:

      Oh come on, Brissles. I need cheering up. That image is the only good thing about the show that I would look forward to!

         10 likes

    • JamesArthur says:

      Brissles

      That may be true but what we have now is wall to wall poor quality videos up somebody’s nose with them being
      1. a celebrity who can’t stand not being seen/heard
      2. a medic saying nothing of use and/or being terrified
      3. a subgroup of humanity desperate to show off a useless talent
      4. anyone in the media with no talent but suffering from point 1

      I really can’t stand more than 2 minutes of any news / breakfast programme at the moment

         15 likes

      • BRISSLES says:

        Silly me, I should have realised that blokes just love a hanky !!!!

        And James, you’re so right, every sleb has to ‘do their bit’ and show off on YouTube. Wow ! even Carol Vorderman has forgone her £2 fee to teach the kids maths.

        Glad to say all this passes me by.

           9 likes

  10. Dystopian says:

    With people facing hardship in these unprecedented times, wouldn’t it be nice if the BBC took a reduced salary to fund a license fee payment holiday. After all, they are always banging on about poverty and hardship.
    BBC, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is.

    The first thing to do would be to cancel the increase in the cost of the fee.

       32 likes

  11. Jeff says:

    Okay now, don’t forget, 8 o’clock this evening I expect to see all of you outside in a completely voluntary and spontaneous display of applause for the NHS.
    I’m sending drones over just to make sure, so if you’re not…
    And tomorrow morning at 9 am we’ll have a nationwide clap for the binmen.
    And at half 11 we’ll all be out applauding the postie.
    Next week it will be for the tube workers, who haven’t gone sick…that’s about fifteen of them…
    And coming shortly those brave souls who are (wo)manning the tills at our supermarkets.

    Any resemblance to North Korea is purely coincidental…

       43 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      The newsreader on TalkRadio was just promoting it.
      .. this type of zombyism spreads through the media-people very easily

      Last nights local radio quiz was actually sneering and nasty
      but the zombies all loved it cos the victim was OrangeMan
      .. and he’d made a mistake when explaining that Seoul is a special place cos it is so packed-in.

         18 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        FFS The beeboid presenter just blocked me on Twitter
        had I insulted him ?
        No after hearing him and thought he sounded quite bullying
        I tweeted and said
        “When I listened I thought @AndyComfort sounded quite bullying”
        as you do when you want some one not to sound bullying

        Then I spot I cannot see the debate
        So I had to look it up from another account
        “I’m sorry you find me a bully on the radio.
        To resolve this I suggest you block me
        and I shall do the same. Blocked.

        The paradox is if you kick someone out of the room
        just cos they disagree with you
        .. that IS bullying.

        Seems to me if you agree with BBC bubbleworld that’s OK
        but if you dare to publicly politely disagree with them
        they will cut you off from debate, but still expect you to pay their wages.

           32 likes

        • Guest Who says:

          Too many bbc snowflakes hide behind #viewsmyown yet tweet as the BbC.

          Then block the second they are called out, no matter how factually and politely.

          They deserve what’s coming.

          Bunch of lady bits.

             21 likes

        • Eddy Booth says:

          Less Twitter the better.
          This place gets spamed with tweets

             4 likes

          • StewGreen says:

            @Eddy, Considering, on a number of occasions
            I have heard misinformation on the the BBC ,
            then tweeted the presenter and got the misinformation corrected on air before the end of the show.
            * I am not going to agree with you.*

            Whereas people who write long complaint letters routinely get nowhere.

               6 likes

  12. StewGreen says:

    ‘Oh the SNP are playing politics by naming the Glasgow hospital Louisa Jordan after a Scottish nurse’
    … Well it’s none of England’s business what Scotland names its hospitals, but I guess people will call it the Glasgow Covid hospital.
    And resources shouldn’t be wasted on names.

    As a rule I think it is bad to name anything after a person, cos it brings in politics.

       22 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      To recognised a whole group of people we owe
      they could have called it Scottish Nursing Pioneers hospital

      ..bit long, so abbreviate it

         10 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      The Krankie Ego Massage Centre?

         9 likes

  13. JimS says:

    Jeremy Vine goes from bad to worse, ‘Should we all be wearing masks outside? Some experts say… What does Sarah Jarvis think?’

    For crying out loud she is a part-time GP, a medical technician, they only know what they have been told.

    Offswitchski!

       35 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      She’s always been a good critical thinker .and anti-mask

      The guy before warned “A mask is a VIRUS-COLLECTOR strapped to the front of your face
      .. you then spend more time exposed cos you think you have protection
      … you then touch your face to take it off ..so there is a risk of putting virus int your nose”

      Jarvis said that she does change her mind when evidence changes
      and “wearing a mask may help you from spreading it to others
      ..and signals to people to keep their distance
      blah, blah”

      Vine then does his 2+2 =6 thinking
      “We’ll consider whether mask wearing should be COMPULSORY”

         20 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        Then Vine had a caller who is now making HOMEMADE masks to send out
        ‘Oh I put a piece of plastic in the middle use ballet elastic, and I use steam iron to sterilise it before I send one out’

        FFS a mask is a piece of SAFETY equipment
        that is why manufacturers have to be certified
        and why there is a limited supply.
        You can’t go around manufacturing homemade safety equipment.

        Nither Vine nor Jarvis pointed this out.

        Now Radio Lincolnshire is plugging the same or another woman “16,000 homemade masks”

           15 likes

    • JamesArthur says:

      JimS
      if I could show hands clapping I would 🙂

         5 likes

  14. JimS says:

    The Great British Public are showing their entreprenarial skills by applying for universal credit in the hundreds of thousands.

    Just had a ‘Yodel’ delivery and am told that there was a couple of days when they stopped getting customers to sign for delivery. As a result they have had 250,000 claims for non-delivery.

    We are all in it together, some more than most.

       28 likes

    • Eddy Booth says:

      Good, they can find out for themselves how little a safety net UC really is, and suffer the red tape ineptitude, and bullying themselves first hand.
      Then in the future they won’t be riding such a high horse.

         7 likes

  15. StewGreen says:

    FREE libertarian PDF books for people to download
    via anti-lefty news source The Continental Telegraph founded by Tim Worstall

    https://www.continentaltelegraph.com/digital-care-package-over-100-of-free-goodies/

       3 likes

  16. Fedup2 says:

    Perhaps a story the biased BBC won’t carry ? The Reich Top Court has ruled that three EU mini states broke the law by not taking in enough of Merkels Muslims – Poland Hungary Czech Republic – another dispute to add to that of the southern mini states Italy and Spain on the Chinese virus and Greece trying to stop another Muslim invasion ….
    Plenty there to undermine the EU …..

       31 likes

  17. Doobster78 says:

    Norman like all at the BBC and general gutter MSM and bubble dwellers , still banging on about testing. Yet still i get the sense that the general British public don’t really think its that much of a big deal.

    Polls show a clear liking for Boris’s handling of this and show a increased lead in the polls.

    Not like the BBC to be so out of touch with the country is it. They really do live in a completely different world.

    Generally whats really important to the BBC, means its of no interest at all to the 99% of “normal” Brits

       25 likes

    • JamesArthur says:

      Norman Smith is missing something
      – quite a few brain cells apparently

         15 likes

  18. KafirHarbi says:

    Dropped in in passing on BBC lunchtime TV news: 25% of doctors and 20% of nurses are off work with Coronavirus-like symptoms.

    Current estimates suggest that c. 10% of the population is likely to have been affected by coronavirus (although it looks at present unlikely that the UK has reached this level), but only half experienced symptoms. This suggests that the sanctified doctors are exempting themselves from work at 5X the rate of people likely experiencing the virus. How odd.

       28 likes

    • Eddy Booth says:

      A strong correlation between the powerful union membership jobs and thier members absence rates.
      New York cops , London underground workers etc

         16 likes

  19. pugnazious says:

    OK….So when will BBC journalists start properly interrogating Khan about his cutting 45% of trains?

       39 likes

    • Eddy Booth says:

      That’s using the zoom lens trick, ie it flattens the depth of vision so it looks like everyone is shoulder to shoulder. They usually use it on beaches in the summer to suggest there isn’t an inch of space free.

         11 likes

  20. Guest Who says:

    Shots fired.

    Dark looks at the alumni Easter drinks.

       35 likes

  21. s.trubble says:

    I read on Breitbart the multi faceted failing state organ has come up with a ruse…to replace their unique licence tax by dropping it and instead attach it to the Council Tax bill or utility/broadband bill…or some kind of internet tax……………..typical bBC …come up with options that would be totally unjustified to preserve the obnoxious and unfair status quo.

    Now I reside(for now) in Glasgow……….our Council Tax bill is going up by 4.5%……..no service is improving……….and I have it on good order that 50% of this “poll Tax” goes to pay for unfunded pensions for local authority staff…..and the bBC can FU** rigfht off if they think they can attach Lineker’s Gravy train to the council bil!

       23 likes

    • Up2snuff says:

      I think there might some considerable pressure for a UK-wide Referendum on the subject ….

      …… resisted, of course.

         13 likes

  22. Guest Who says:

    When in hole, hire JCB.

    #CCBGB

       22 likes

  23. Guest Who says:

    Emily retweeted this.

    Guess she liked the hyperbole? Boom!

       18 likes

  24. pugnazious says:

    Emma Barnett gets worser and worser…which I thought must be an impossibility.

    She had a long stream of callers saying how they’re desperate for some PPE…and one who sounded like a coal miner [to stereotype] but said his GP wife, Dr son and pharmacist daughter were all in mortal danger due to shortage of PPE…..wouldn’t give his name though.

    It’s easy, lazy ‘journalism’, to get the self-selecting moaners on but why not actually do some work and find out how much PPE there is, how much the government has, what it is doing with it and where it is going? Would that be too much to ask, would that be too much like good news? Barnett always looks for the ‘scandal’.

    Obviously a ‘journalist’ like Barnett can’t be expected to do that when she’s so busy fielding anonymous phone calls in her efforts to save the NHS.

    She did manage to take a breather from the breathless condemnation of the government to er, breathlessly condemn the government but this time in synchronised vilification with Labour’s Jess Phillips as they talked about how domestic abuse has suddenly risen…for some completely unknown reason.

    They both were insistent that we mustn’t blame the coronavirus for this….no the culprit is the abuser…well, yeah…but if you force the victim to live in close quarters with her abuser for 24 hours a day for weeks on end when one has quite possibly just lost their job…..

    And we know the Labour mantra…..it’s the social and economic conditions that drive crime and make people desperate….thus we must solve those social and economic problems……er…like the lockdown that has destroyed their lives you mean? In otherwords it was the coronavirus wot dun it.

    Yet another disaster that the BBC wants to brush under the carpet as it continues to ignore the economic disaster that is being imposed upon us while seemingly lobbying for even more lockdown….one reason that maybe [apart from climate change and brexit] the BBC sees a big opportunity as it comes under Tory scrutiny. It has big plans to capture your attention with lots of programming over the summer[obviously expecting the lockdown to continue then]…do they think you are a captive audience and will be so grateful for the BBC that you will all fall back in love with it and rush to defend it from Tory attacks?

       24 likes

  25. StewGreen says:

    News claim : Eddy Large has died from Covid19 that he picked up in hospital whilst being treated for long term heart problems.

       15 likes

  26. pugnazious says:

    So…unfortunately…

    Eddie Large: Comedian dies aged 78 with coronavirus

    The BBC tells us…

    ‘His family confirmed the news “with great sadness” on Facebook, saying he had been suffering with heart failure and contracted the virus in hospital.’

    ‘With’ not ‘of’ ….big difference….but I’m sure his death will be added to the ‘coronavirus’ statistics.

    From The Spectator….
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-to-understand-and-report-figures-for-covid-19-deaths-

    How to understand – and report – figures for ‘Covid deaths’

    Every day, now, we are seeing figures for ‘Covid deaths’. These numbers are often expressed on graphs showing an exponential rise. But care must be taken when reading (and reporting) these figures. Given the extraordinary response to the emergence of this virus, it’s vital to have a clear-eyed view of its progress and what the figures mean. The world of disease reporting has its own dynamics, ones that are worth understanding. How accurate, or comparable, are these figures comparing Covid-19 deaths in various countries?

    We often see a ratio expressed: deaths, as a proportion of cases. The figure is taken as a sign of how lethal Covid-19 is, but the ratios vary wildly. In the US, 1.8 per cent (2,191 deaths in 124,686 confirmed cases), Italy 10.8 per cent, Spain 8.2 per cent, Germany 0.8 per cent, France 6.1 per cent, UK 6.0 per cent. A fifteen-fold difference in death rate for the same disease seems odd amongst such similar countries: all developed, all with good healthcare systems. All tackling the same disease.

    You might think it would be easy to calculate death rates. Death is a stark and easy-to-measure end point. In my working life (I’m a retired pathology professor) I usually come across studies that express it comparably and as a ratio: the number of deaths in a given period of time in an area, divided by that area’s population. For example, 10 deaths per 1,000 population per year. So just three numbers:

    The population who have contracted the disease
    The number dying of disease
    The relevant time period

    The trouble is that in the Covid-19 crisis each one of these numbers is unclear.
    1. Why the figures for Covid-19 infections are a vast underestimate


    Say there was a disease that always caused a large purple spot to appear in the middle of your forehead after two days – it would be easy to measure. Any doctor could diagnose this, and national figures would be reliable. Now, consider a disease that causes a variable raised temperature and cough over a period of 5 to 14 days, as well as variable respiratory symptoms ranging from hardly anything to severe respiratory compromise. There will be a range of symptoms and signs in patients affected by this disease; widely overlapping with similar effects caused by many other infectious diseases. Is it Covid-19, seasonal flu, a cold – or something else? It will be impossible to tell by clinical examination.

    The only way to identify people who definitely have the disease will be by using a lab test that is both specific for the disease (detects this disease only, and not similar diseases) and sensitive for the disease (picks up a large proportion of people with this disease, whether severe or mild). Developing accurate, reliable, validated tests is difficult and takes time. At the moment, we have to take it on trust that the tests in use are measuring what we think they are.

    So far in this pandemic, test kits have mainly been reserved for hospitalised patients with significant symptoms. Few tests have been carried out in patients with mild symptoms. This means that the number of positive tests will be far lower than the number of people who have had the disease. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, has been trying to stress this. He suggested that the real figure for the number of cases could be 10 to 20 times higher than the official figure. If he’s right, the headline death rate due to this virus (all derived from lab tests) will be 10 to 20 times lower than it appears to be from the published figures. The more the number of untested cases goes up, the lower the true death rate.
    2. Why Covid-19 deaths are a substantial over-estimate

    Next, what about the deaths? Many UK health spokespersons have been careful to repeatedly say that the numbers quoted in the UK indicate death with the virus, not death due to the virus – this matters. When giving evidence in parliament a few days ago, Prof. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said that he now expects fewer than 20,000 Covid-19 deaths in the UK but, importantly, two-thirds of these people would have died anyway. In other words, he suggests that the crude figure for ‘Covid deaths’ is three times higher than the number who have actually been killed by Covid-19. (Even the two-thirds figure is an estimate – it would not surprise me if the real proportion is higher.)

    This nuance is crucial ­– not just in understanding the disease, but for understanding the burden it might place on the health service in coming days. Unfortunately nuance tends to be lost in the numbers quoted from the database being used to track Covid-19: the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. It has compiled a huge database, with Covid-19 data from all over the world, updated daily – and its figures are used, world over, to track the virus. This data is not standardised and so probably not comparable, yet this important caveat is seldom expressed by the (many) graphs we see. It risks exaggerating the quality of data that we have.

    The distinction between dying ‘with’ Covid-19 and dying ‘due to’ Covid-19 is not just splitting hairs. Consider some examples: an 87-year-old woman with dementia in a nursing home; a 79-year-old man with metastatic bladder cancer; a 29-year-old man with leukaemia treated with chemotherapy; a 46-year-old woman with motor neurone disease for 2 years. All develop chest infections and die. All test positive for Covid-19. Yet all were vulnerable to death by chest infection from any infective cause (including the flu). Covid-19 might have been the final straw, but it has not caused their deaths. Consider two more cases: a 75-year-old man with mild heart failure and bronchitis; a 35-year-old woman who was previously fit and well with no known medical conditions. Both contract a chest infection and die, and both test positive for Covid-19. In the first case it is not entirely clear what weight to place on the pre-existing conditions versus the viral infection – to make this judgement would require an expert clinician to examine the case notes. The final case would reasonably be attributed to death caused by Covid-19, assuming it was true that there were no underlying conditions.

    It should be noted that there is no international standard method for attributing or recording causes of death. Also, normally, most respiratory deaths never have a specific infective cause recorded, whereas at the moment one can expect all positive Covid-19 results associated with a death to be recorded. Again, this is not splitting hairs. Imagine a population where more and more of us have already had Covid-19, and where every ill and dying patient is tested for the virus. The deaths apparently due to Covid-19, the Covid trajectory, will approach the overall death rate. It would appear that all deaths were caused by Covid-19 – would this be true? No. The severity of the epidemic would be indicated by how many extra deaths (above normal) there were overall.
    3. Covid-19 and a time period

    Finally, what about the time period? In a fast-moving scenario such as the Covid-19 crisis, the daily figures present just a snapshot. If people take quite a long time to die of a disease, it will take a while to judge the real death rate and initial figures will be an underestimate. But if people die quite quickly of the disease, the figures will be nearer the true rate. It is probable that there is a slight lag – those dying today might have been seriously ill for some days. But as time goes by this will become less important as a steady state is reached.

    Let me finish with a couple of examples. Colleagues in Germany feel sure that their numbers are nearer the truth than most, because they had plenty of testing capacity ready when the pandemic struck. Currently the death rate is 0.8 per cent in Germany. If we assume that about one third of the recorded deaths are due to Covid-19 and that they have managed to test a third of all cases in the country who actually have the disease (a generous assumption), then the death rate for Covid-19 would be 0.08 per cent. That might go up slightly, as a result of death lag. If we assume at present that this effect might be 25 per cent (which seems generous), that would give an overall, and probably upper limit, of death rate of 0.1 per cent, which is similar to seasonal flu.

    Let’s look at the UK numbers. As of 9 a.m. on Saturday there were 1,019 deaths and 17,089 confirmed cases – a death rate of 6.0 per cent. If one third of the deaths are caused by Covid-19 and the number of cases is underestimated by a factor of say 15, the death rate would be 0.13 per cent and the number of deaths due to Covid-19 would be 340. This number should be placed in perspective with the number of deaths we would normally expect in the first 28 days of March – roughly 46,000.

    The number of recorded deaths will increase in the coming days, but so will the population affected by the disease – in all probability much faster than the increase in deaths. Because we are looking so closely at the presence of Covid-19 in those who die – as I look at in more detail in my article in the current issue of The Spectator – the fraction of those who die with Covid-19 (but not of it) in a population where the incidence is increasing, is likely to increase even more. So the measured increase in numbers of deaths is not necessarily a cause for alarm, unless it demonstrates excess deaths – 340 deaths out of 46,000 shows we are not near this at present. We have prepared for the worst, but it has not yet happened. The widespread testing of NHS staff recently announced may help provide a clearer indication of how far the disease has already spread within the population.

    The UK and other governments have no control over how their data is reported, but they can minimise the potential for misinterpretation by making absolutely clear what its figures are, and what they are not. After this episode is over, there is a clear need for an internationally coordinated update of how deaths are attributed and recorded, to enable us to better understand what is happening more clearly, when we need to.

       26 likes

  27. pugnazious says:

    All nonsense and good clean fun of course….

       15 likes

    • Oldspeaker says:

      Would have looked different while she was rehearsing in front of the bathroom mirror, opening night, not so good.

         2 likes

  28. pugnazious says:

    Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities.

    ‘“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.

    “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,” he says. ‘

       17 likes

  29. vlad says:

    The BBC use this randomly chosen pic to illustrate our heroic health workers on their home page.

    Pandemic or not, the agenda must go on.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52130230

    _111525362_blobbed-gettyimages-1208555.jpg

       32 likes

  30. Nodding Dog says:

    From the BBC news site
    Don’t send rainbow pictures to the Nightingale hospital the NHS says

    Better still stop bloody painting them and sticking them in your front windows! Have no idea what it’s all about is it an LGBTQZX thing to show support for all those cancelled lesbian weddings that the Beeb were reporting on last week?

       27 likes

    • Dystopian says:

      Apparently it is a symbol of hope. I’m just glad that it has been stolen back from the LGBTXYZ’s who had no right to steal it from Zippy and Bungle!

         1 likes

  31. Pretzel says:

    Let’s look on the bright side; if the lockdown continues, maybe people won’t be able to afford TV licences.

       12 likes

  32. pugnazious says:

    Interesting….but curiously not on Today this morning when instead they were praising China for its state sponsored oppression that has ‘stopped’ the coronavirus in its tracks….not…

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/01/chinese-county-coronavirus-lockdown-second-wave-159615

    ‘Chinese county goes into coronavirus lockdown amid fear of second wave

    Curfew-like measures came into effect on Tuesday in Jia county, near the city of Pingdingshan, with the area’s roughly 600,000 residents told to stay home, according to a notice on the country’s official microblog account.

    Special approval was required for all movement outside the home, it said.

    After months of restrictions to contain the spread of the coronavirus, China has reported a decline in domestic cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. On Wednesday, the National Health Commission reported 36 new infections — all but one imported cases.’

    Maybe lockdowns aren’t such a good idea as it only takes one person to have the virus and then start spreading it all over again…unless of course the population had been allowed to develop that much mocked herd immunity which would mean outbreaks would happen less often and be less severe….you just have to accept a higher level of initial victims rather than hide them by spreading them out over months….and in the meantime destroy your economy with that lockdown designed to achieve that deceptive smoothing of the curve….in the end the numbers may all be the same anyway…or in fact more if we keep having outbreaks with no immunity developed….

       5 likes

  33. taffman says:

    Has Al Beeb covered this news ?

    “Euro Hammered by Pound and Dollar, as Markets Demand Coronabonds …………….
    https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/eur/13054-euro-to-pound-and-dollar-exchange-rate-coronabonds

       8 likes

  34. Oldspeaker says:

    Is nothing else happening in the world right now? Or just nothing we should be looking at? There are some wild stories on the fringe out there ranging from the asteroids coming to mass arrests/internet shutdown and bio weapons, I haven’t posted links because that stuff although entertaining is rarely helpful. But something else must be happening in the world somewhere, Yemen maybe? How would we know because our trusted world respected state broadcaster has moved from 24/7 impeachment obsession to 24/7 that other thing obsession.

       22 likes

    • G.W.F. says:

      Yes, lots of wild stories out there. But most of us are locked in our homes, with cops patrolling to make sure we only have limited access to outside and checking to see if we buy other than essential goods when allowed out to shop.
      So what do we do? We take the piss out of conspiracy theories.

         11 likes

      • Oldspeaker says:

        Not as easy to find these days, I could easily have 20 mins YouTube r&r watching funny bear falls of tree then straight onto man in Arkansas demonstrates how earth is flat using only two planks a piece of string and an old coke bottle. Where have they all gone? My concern now is that we are in one and the conspiracy nuts are laughing at us.

           2 likes

    • Eddy Booth says:

      Ufc 249 is on and off etc etc again
      Even in wartime they had an entertainment industry to keep up morale.

         1 likes

  35. StewGreen says:

    Gary Lineker , reckons footballers should still be paid
    ..cos then they might donate some money to charity
    Gary Lineker has donated 2 months of his million dollar BBC salary
    around £450K to the Red Cross

    Players ultimately work for the fans
    so their charity is keeping their club alive
    and that may well mean DELAYING taking their wages
    if the club is at risk of folding.

    I bet his accountant had advised him that donations are tax deductible so he can get £100k- £200K back.
    https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/02/gary-lineker-donates-bbc-salary-british-red-cross-amid-coronavirus-12499166/

    Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker says he will donate two months’ salary to the British Red Cross to help in their work in the fight against the coronavirus.

    The former England international, who currently works for both the BBC and BT Sport, recently served a period of isolation after his son George showed symptoms of the virus.

    “The British Red Cross are on the front line trying to help in all sorts of different ways with the coronavirus,” Lineker told World At One.

    “Hopefully lots of other people that are in a position of relative wealth can do something similar and I am sure many will.”
    BBCNews Live page

       8 likes

    • gb123 says:

      My wish would be Gary uses the ‘help’ of Dianne Abbot to transfer the money. One hundred billion trillion via a Nigerian prince.

         7 likes

    • BRISSLES says:

      All these slebs are making a big thing out of self isolating (or staying in as it used to be called), because honestly ? there are no parties/red carpets/award ceremonies to attend, so what else is there to do but ‘stay in’ !

         6 likes

  36. pugnazious says:

    If you were in any doubt that the BBC is enjoying a good disaster and will seek to exploit it to the full for its own ends…climate change and to stop brexit..

       17 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      Pug – with the current isolation the number of political memoirs being produced for the 2020 Christmas market fills one with dread ..

      For those who still watch the Biased BBC Question Time ritual – for some reason Matt Hancock is doing it tonight .

      I would have thought if the daily government briefings were doing their job it wouldn’t be necessary for the Health Sec to be wasting an hour being kicked about by a panel of lefties .

      But there again – I’m of the view that the daily briefs are a waste of effort .

         12 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      We’ve had that tweet before
      .. it’s dated March 26th

         1 likes

  37. StewGreen says:

    R4 Science prog
    “There have been suggestions that the government was 3 weeks late in implementing the lock down
    .. We asked the governments Chief Scientist to come on
    ..cos we know he’d be too busy to come on
    We didn’t bother to ask anyone lower down

       8 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      Presenter “There was an expert on Twitter and he was roundly taken down ..ha ha”
      #BBCsmugness
      Epidemiologist “Actually the start is like a viral marketing campaign, but his aim is to make it bigger and ours is to make it smaller”

         3 likes

  38. StewGreen says:

    On DesertIslandDiscs last week,
    did they have a righty actor ?

    Nope, famously lefty actor Brian Cox was the guest

       11 likes

  39. StewGreen says:

    This looks a bit bubbleworldy

       4 likes

  40. Foscari says:

    The BRITISH broadcasting corporation seems more interested
    in whats going on in the USA than the UK. As I wrote yesterday
    I expect it has something to do with schadenfreud. Or
    maybe the Maoist hierarchy at the BBC are taking their instructions from China.

       12 likes

  41. StewGreen says:

    Someone has started a @BBCScum Twitter account
    .. but it is full of anti-Israel and anti-righty tweets

       5 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      Stew – yes looking at it – whoever is running it is ‘ not quite right ‘ and it doesn’t have much – if anything – about the Biased Far Left BBC -.someone with time could do a psych profile on who it is pushing out strong anti Israel messages

      As I write this the BBC has cut away from the daily briefing to do the weather and 6pm news . I fear Matt Hancock has been doing a better job than the BBC wanted ….

      He’s even doing follow up questions which the likes of brillo advocated . I think he’ll give the muppets of QT today a run for their money .
      I know this sounds like a game but the BBC is reporting on this horror with its full propaganda techniques last fully tried out during brexit .

         9 likes

  42. StewGreen says:

    What can’t you do with something Radio4 describes as
    a whole series of the original Boosh radio series for you to *download* on BBCsounds” ?

    em,, you can’t DOWNLOAD them, cos they are just a listening stream
    … thus the file cannot be saved to your device.

       3 likes

    • JimS says:

      If it comes from a ‘big’ computer to a ‘small’ computer then technically the data is downloaded.

      I have many MP3 files that I have produced from ‘live’ radio streams, long before the BBC got into ‘podcasts’.

      You can bet your boots that any data that comes ‘down the wire’ to your PC can be copied and saved, given the right software tools.

         3 likes

  43. theisland says:

    Goodall setting the agenda on behalf of the bBC. Mateless nods.

       5 likes

  44. Sluff says:

    BBC at 5pm.
    Lots of ‘little ships’ i.e small laboratories such as at Francis Crick are apparently coming on stream to improve testing.
    But if the problem is reagent availability, how will this help? The labs can test but still need the testing kits.
    Does the government- politicians actually place reagent orders? Do civil servants? Or do NHS staff? All reasonable questions but from the BBC ‘investigative journalists’, silence.
    I think we know why.

    The BBC have a transparent policy of looking to blame the government for any failings and absolve the NHS of any responsibility. So awkward questions are asked with…ahem…great selectivity.

       10 likes

  45. Fedup2 says:

    Disappointing news if true – guido reports that Starmer -Corbyn is the new leader of the Labour Party and Rayner- Corbyn is the new Deputy …..
    Nice to have some proper hard core lefties instead of outgoing Comrade – who might even go off and isolate himself as suggested to the over 70s …..

       16 likes

    • theisland says:

      Self-serving internationalist Starmer fits the definition of a ‘political shark’* signalling his virtue whilst playing the long game and stuffing his team with compliant rejoiners posing as working class heroes. The successor to Blair/Brown and beloved of the establishment, the EU and George Osborne. Why Conservative MPs are fooled by him is a mystery. Probably the same reason they are so easily manipulated by their civil servants. Or perhaps it is because most of them are desirous of the same global order which promises unlimited personal ‘advantages’ if they manage to curry favour with the right backers.

      * https://www.projectsteps.com/2009/02/political-sharks-and-projects.html

         10 likes

  46. popeye says:

    Portsmouth NHS has 7,200 employees

    Portsmouth NHS has 1,200 beds

    Portsmouth NHS has cancelled all elective procedures (Ask two of my mates!)

    Portsmouth has 79 cases of Covid-19 (Portsmouth News, April 2nd)

    Average length of stay in hospital less than 1 week, emergency has lasted 2 weeks

    My maths:

    Each case of Covid-19 can occupy 15 beds with 90 employees looking after them

    Discuss

       25 likes

  47. Sluff says:

    A small laboratory in Cambridge have found a new way to do coronavirus testing with an answer in 90 minutes.
    Addenbrooke’s Hospital are now using it.
    I’m sure the National Testing Collective at Public Health England will find all kinds of reasons why this non-NHS independent innovation cannot possibly be used.

       15 likes

    • gb123 says:

      The problem I see with all the testing is what you do with the results. In the early stages the idea is to identify clusters, trace and isolate contacts and quarantine them. For this you need infrastructure and a process. Later on the idea is to investigate the spread and lethality and eliminate the threat as much as possible. I am not sure we have the process and infrastructure fully determined and are working on management by knee jerk.

      We also have problem of worshiping the NHS god rather than providing a health care solution. If you look a the examples used such as Germany and Singapore there is a close link between private and public health provision. In Singapore they are using the private hospitals to provide isolation. They move stable patients from the public facilities, with Covid-19 , to make the final recovery rather them leaving them in the public hospitals, freeing them to act as the front line. We don’t have that infrastructure which means the NHS is over stretched from the outset. Maybe after this is over, a proper disaster plan can be put in place using all facilities.
      Also, some information management planning would be helpful to stop the sensationalising from the media. They seem to want cause panic rather than help calm people.

         12 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Excellent post, gb.

           3 likes

      • Sluff says:

        Gb
        In your excellent post you write..
        ‘Maybe after this is over, a proper disaster plan can be put in place using all facilities’.

        Agree. But what’s the betting there will instead be an avalanche of Leftist/BBC/ Guardianista propaganda and the ‘answer’ will be to ‘call an end to austerity and fully fund the NHS’.
        Which of course would be the reverse of the independent thinking required,

           6 likes

  48. davylars says:

    Typical BBC solution to the ‘Coronavirus testing problems’
    Tonight on the news they report a new machine that can get results of tests in just 90 minutes.
    This machine costs just £20,000 (thousand)
    And can test a whopping 15-18 patients per day..
    Problem solved BBC style….
    Spend someone else’s money for very little in return…

       17 likes

    • cromwell says:

      What the BBC could do to show support is ask it’s highly paid employees who are under worked at the moment to give a proportion of their pay to contribute for a couple of these machines. They wouldn’t even miss the money. They are quick to criticise but not so quick to put their money where their mouth is. Still it cost nothing to virtue signal and tell everyone to clap. Greedy idiots.

         9 likes

  49. JamesArthur says:

    R4.. pushing the fast tracking of of refugee Medics to help with CV19

    I am sorry – how does throwing a small bunch of unqualified (UK) medics who might not speak English to the right level really help. They don’t understand the NHS systems and procedures – and would have to be trained…
    And just for interest – Eritrea, that was mentioned a lot, is suffering from a lack of medics….go figure…

    BBC R4 – FFS get off your bloody propaganda wagon for once..

       27 likes

  50. Fedup2 says:

    Daily Briefing
    Gotta to hand it to Matt Hancock – puts a much better story out about the fight to deal with the Chinese virus than some of the drips – sharma – Gove in explaining and sounding as though he ( HMG ) is getting on top of matters

    The enemy BBC will put the full negative spin on it of course

       14 likes

    • theisland says:

      However, he ‘loves’ the bBC.
      Hansard, 9 Jan 2018.

         4 likes

      • Fedup2 says:

        No ambitious politician is going to have a public pop at the BBC … which is much of the problem .

           7 likes

    • davylars says:

      Laura put into her box by demanding a test that isn’t needed yet as no one is at the required point of the disease yet.. “antibodies”

         12 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        Laura needs putting in something.

        Interestingly, Beff has stuck with the facts as known.

        Meanwhile Pesto has crashed, burned and self-salted the site.

        You can bet scores of ‘essential’ drones are surfing away seeking the next idiotic gotcha that nobody outside their pathetic bubble cares about.

           11 likes