I still care about cases as a certain percentage of people are getting sick and a percentage of those getting sick are dying and as cases numbers grow so could the other two (thankfully it's unlikely to not be at the same rate as earlier in the pandemic).
The result is a loss of life (luckily I have yet to have anyone close to me due to covid related complications) and a continued strain on the NHS which is already under severe pressure.
From The Guardian article linked above;
So far, Ukas has received more than 500 applications from private firms to perform tests and/or swab handling. About 400 have passed stage two, 255 have had a final stage-three assessment, and 191 have received full Ukas accreditation. An additional 54 public labs, including Lighthouse laboratories, are also accredited.
Obviously those are today's figures and things would have been different a year ago but it would seem there could have been hundreds of other companies who would have been in the frame for this contract. While many of those probably had little experience of PCR testing at the time, that wouldn't have put them at a disadvantage against the company who did get the contract given their lack of experience.
The people concerned may not be sick, but they are infectious. That's why people care.
Who cares about cases if the people testing positive aren't sick? This announcing of daily cases doesn't happen with any other virus.
Jenny Harries on Friday: The lab is "accredited to all appropriate standards."
UK government spokesperson on Monday: "The lab was fully accredited by the UK independent accreditation body [UKAS] before being appointed."
UKAS: Neither Immensa nor Dante are or have ever been accredited.
Oh dear, the awful Guardian stirring it up again.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/18/uk-lab-immensa-false-negative-covid-tests-not-fully-accredited
there is nothing unusual about a new company being registered for a new venture, that's just the Guardian etc praying on people's lack of knowledge. Dante were obviously known to the Catapult Medicines Discovery people, who were tasked with coordinating the Lighthouse Labs and Dante just set up a separate company with which to do it. Dante have since reopened another Lighthouse Lab in Charnwood that was originally set up by Perkin Elmer Genomics, but closed several months ago.
There are serious questions to be asked about these 43,000 tests. A **** up like that should not have been able to happen, but there is also a lot of noise from the Grauniad and Twitter as usual.
The company's suitability for the contract was questioned shortly after the award, not just now that they have fcked up. The shadow health secretary, said: “Serious questions have to be asked about how this private firm – who didn’t exist before May 2020 – was awarded a lucrative £120m contract to run this lab". They are being investigated for a possible breach of consumer law and some of the carry on at the lab is pretty shocking.
Is there anything you aren't willing to overlook?
That thread is absolutely shocking. Good God.
yes, quite clearly the contract should have been given to one of the hundreds of other labs out there that do PCR testing, like err............
Seems a lab in the UK has wrongly given out 43,000 PCR negative results, there also seems to be question marks over the company's suitability for the contract they were awarded;
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1448933287796281365
That's why one looks at the 7-day average to get a proper assessment.
That said, there have not been less than 20,000 cases per day in the UK since June, and the 7-day average is now over 40,000.
Sounds a bit brutal, but at least probably 20K / day for the last 4 months who would not take the jab yet have been effectively jabbed without even taking it. Quite a lot when you think about it.
Yes, they have been very noisy numbers each day for months. Was a couple of 19k in the middle of September.
There is potentially a rise in cases trending, but still very noisy numbers and the number of tests being done is higher than during the summer since schools, colleges and universities have gone back.
Curious to know why you expect case numbers to drop down to 20k? Have they even been that low at any stage over the past few months?
The growth is mainly amongst secondary school kids in England
Prevalence was highest once again in secondary school pupils, prompting Prof Christina Pagel, the director of UCL’s clinical operational research unit, to reiterate criticism of preparations for the return of children to schools. An estimated 8.1% of all secondary pupils were infected, up from 6.93% the previous week.
Scottish schools went back earlier and case numbers are now falling
The case numbers, and deaths/ hospitalisations, have remained stable just with a lot of noise in the numbers for months now. The case numbers jump around by 5 or 10 thousand from one day to the next. If the case numbers remain up well over 40k for a while then maybe there is an issue, I'd expect it will be back down to 20k in a couple of days, then up to 30k and keep around that for a while longer yet.
The cases don't look good but you can look at it two ways really
40K cases from a million tests.
Now if they did 100K tests / day like Germany does for example, it would be far far lower. So you could argue that lots of positive cases being caught rather than them just running around the country spreading it to others.
So UK 65mln population 1mln tests and 40K cases or
Germany 84 mln population 100K tests and 10K cases
Personally i would rather have 40K people isolating / day than 80K people running around possibly passing it to others.
Cases rising again https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-covid-cases-latest-b1938526.html
Sure they'll probably go up in the polls again. Brexit innit.
If all this had happened before 2016 I can't imagine a scenario were Johnson wouldn't have been forced to resign by the end of April 2020. Their strategy for dealing with the pandemic in the first few weeks was beyond dreadful. His own reckless behaviour nearly cost him his life.
A lot of the learnings have already been addressed and those that haven’t, will be. Rather than a response to a theoretical flu pandemic, managed individually by different bodies, the new UK Health Security Agency will have overall control to plan a future response to a number of different threats.
there has been some interesting debates on this already on British TV with input from professors, nursing home managers and the chair of the committee who wrote the report.
rather than point fingers, it is being some in a manner that accepts there were mistakes, what can be learnt from these mistakes and what can be done to prevent them happening again.
@godzilla1989 wrote
Did people really think a 76 year old vaccinated person has the same chance as death as 26 year old unvaccinated when exposed to Covid? I'd question your intelligence if you thought that.
Who ever said that a 76 year old vaccinated person has the same chance as death [sic] as 26 year old unvaccinated when exposed to Covid?
Why are you attributing this to @bob mcbob and then smearing his intelligence?
Will be curious to see what sort of reaction there is. It would be nice to think that some key learnings can be taken from it as opposed to it been shot down by those involved.
Trsgic but not really surprising...
Was always the truth and many refused to accept it
It will be clear this winter, that's for sure
Age keeps you from dying, not a vaccine ( vaccine helps for sure but it doesn't turn an old vaccinated person into a young unvaccinated person )
Scotland seems to have the highest case incidence in the world at the moment (780 per 100K) but the death rate is still quite low (0.8 per 100K - double Irelands number) . Although now it looks like it has peaked for every age group except the under 16s (they are not eligible for vaccination).
In the past week, 80% of the legible population is fully vaccinated. Of the new Covid cases last week, 40% of these were unvaccinated.
In terms of hospitalisations, 34% were unvaccinated - as it is mainly young people who are unvaccinated this is a big number.
With deaths 23% were unvaccinated - once again as it is mainly younger people this looks high.
For fully vaccinated, there are still a number of deaths (70% of all deaths) but as the elderly are fully vaccinated - it is age rather than vaccine likely to be the cause.
There are many rhinoviruses. They mostly cause the common cold, but they can cause very severe infections, particularly in the very young, the very old and the immunocompromised. Severe cases can develop complications, including bacterial infections and pneumonia.
Paediatrician Thomas Christie Williams warned “a toxic triad of RSV, rhinovirus and SARS-CoV-2 (Covid) is starting to stretch the Scottish hospital I work in to its limits”.
However isn't rhinovirus one of the common cold viruses? Are there deadly forms of it going about?
It looks like on opening up it's not just Covid you need to worry about. The Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh is under stress
Feel similar re avoiding long covid as had post viral disease that debilitated me for months a few years back . Am being forced back into office in a few weeks though so, even though in personal life am being really cautious, I might as throw my hat to the wind as the office will probably be as risky as going to a nightclub
How will knowing those probabilities help you?
Be vaccinated, don't do anything obviously silly that's likely to get you infected. Knowing that probability of long covid is higher or lower shouldn't change your behaviour.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w5.vanillicon.com/v2/5d62a35d50b8dba45150b8451b6cb1b3.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w2.vanillicon.com/v2/284f2526e18ff7e4c08066f9ed850ed0.svg)
