Large numbers of people will be refused coronavirus tests even if they have symptoms under Government plans to ration testing if the crisis deepens,
You’ve had 6 months to get testing sorted out. It’s possible to do basic tests – basic note – for £1 a piece with reagent dosed paper hankies.
No, it wouldn’t be any better if Jezza had been in charge. But seriously, why do we give, or have taken from us, 35% of everything to a structure that can’t even manage this?
World class civil service, eh?
There is some slight evidence that having this lurgy does not immunise you against it, in which case I struggle to see the purpose of testing.
I know of one young family, very young children, told to quarantine themselves almost two weeks ago after one of them felt poorly, and to await test results before venturing out. In the meantime, they’ve all felt a bit off, but have recovered.
Of the test results, zilch.
On the bright side, HS2 dodgy contract production is up over 300 per cent.
Given that the test is useless at distinguishing between active infections and fragments of RNA hanging around long after the common cold, ditch it and hand out hydroxychloroquine 200mg bd x 5 and Zn++ to travellers and the feverish. Much cheaper. Much more effective. Then give Ecks authority to ensure the technocrats are never able to bring society to a halt again.
Streetlife in Stockholm
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bamZrEfwx0A
“On the bright side, HS2 dodgy contract production is up over 300 per cent.”
For an on the ground assessment of HS2 ‘progress’ visit this thread on the farming forum I frequent:
https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/let%E2%80%99s-play-hs2-dicking-about-with-diggers.326316/
Some interesting stuff on the testing here:
https://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/coronavirus-why-some-nations-with-extensive-testing-have-fewer-cases/
Any more sciencey types care to comment on the allegations? That basically the UK’s tests are fucked because we’re over-cooking them (as I understand the idea) and either contaminating the test to a false positive or finding miniscule amounts of RNA that are irrelevant to whether a person is infectious or not?
@Jim: ’ She looks blankly at me, obviously unaware there is a whole other parallel universe to hers where stuff gets done.’
That’s a cracking thread!
@Jim… Further to the “pointer” you quoted… I’ve had a mooch round some of the published work on PCR testing starting from the scatter plots that are found near the end of the “churchmouse” blog you quote and then looking at other work on “accuracy of diagnosis of infection/infectivity v Ct (cycles)” it looks like we may indeed be severely overcooking the tests in order to get the highest numbers.
The UK appears to use a threshold of Ct=40, whereas the original scatter-plots strongly suggest that anything much over 30 should be treated with extreme caution, and, for example, the tables/graphs in the “Eurosurveillance” “Duration of infection” study tends to suggest that there’s a near-zero correlation between a “positive” result and the patient being infectious once you get to 40 cycles. That’s one of the suggested reasons for different countries having such different “infection rates”, they use different (usually much smaller) Ct limits. This may also account for the notion that recovering from infection doesn’t imply immunity as it’s very possible that a later test will find the remnants of the initial infection and the zealously declared as a “positive”.
One throwaway comment in another study reckoned that at 40 cycles you could sometimes get a positive result from distilled water. The medical profession is highly sceptical of homeopathy on the basis that something diluted 40 times is statistically-certain to contain none of the original reagent, yet seems quite happy to accept that the inverse, ie something concentrated 40 times is “gospel”.
Still.. have to keep the sheeple cowed and terrified.
I’ve gone pretty much full-on libertarian over Covid. I always thought that at least in a crisis, the bureaucracy and incompetence would get wiped out and more of a JFDI atttude would temporarily enter government. If they can’t become fast and nimble then, it means anything critical is being done badly. Scrap all of it. Free education, benefits etc. Let charities run it all.
Baron Jackfield
I think its worse than that. I don’t think its concentrated 40 times but increased to the power of 40, so one small fragment is amplified into millions/billions of fragments?
. . . and restore gun rights. They aren’t going to defend you, either.
Not only are we overcooking the Ct we’re also panicking and imposing further lockdown measures way before that Covid standard: Germany. We panic at 20 cases per 100k pop, Germany only considers acting if it gets to 50 cases per 100k.
“Churchmouse Campanologist”
What a strange place to get a good update (Thanks, Jim). I was commenting to Mrs BiND last night that you really have to go searching to get decent updates on Covid because the MSM and government are fixated on cases.
‘Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that Pennsylvania’s coronavirus lockdowns were unconstitutional. While the state’s actions may have been “undertaken with the good intention of addressing a public health emergency,” Judge William Stickman IV ruled, “even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered. The liberties protected by the Constitution are not fair-weather freedoms — in place when times are good but able to be cast aside in times of trouble.”’
I have been saying this for many months. You can quarantine the sick, but you have no authority to quarantine the healthy.
BUT, there is plenty of guilt for the public. The majority has no reluctance to ditch the Constitution.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed(and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H. L. Mencken
It is shocking how easily the people let go of their rights.
@Jimmers… According to “Promega” (one of the manufacturers of the test) each cycle doubles the concentration of the target strand, to be expected I suppose as it works like a DNA replication.. Consequently, 40 cycles increases the number of target strands by 2^40, which is, as we physicists say, “a fucking big number!”. 🙂
Who has done well in The Emergency: the supermarkets, their drivers, shelf stackers, till operators, and so on; the posties; the people who keep water, gas, electricity, and sewage flowing; our milky, greengrocer, and butcher; our chemist and the charitable bods who’ve collected our medicines for us; various friends and neighbours; and all the people and businesses on whom they in turn depend.
Who has done badly: the schoolteachers; the GPs; the hospitals; Public Health England; our elected MPs and the Government and Loyal Opposition they form; our Rolls Royce Civil Service; the police; …
Dunno about you, but I see a pattern there. To be fair, the Army has been an exception to the pattern. I can begin to see why people accepted Cromwell’s rule.
Baron Jackfield,
We programmers call it “tera” which is quite appropriate, really.
@dearieme, good lists.
One thing: In the ” done badly” column you missed out “The news media”. Dear God, they’ve been actively malevolent.
You might add a big chunk of the British people in the ‘done badly’ column.
Honestly, when I see the number of people around me adhering to the face nappy nonsense, I despair. Even more than I did previously.
“You might add a big chunk of the British people in the ‘done badly’ column.”
Quite. CV-19 has shown up a significant % of the British Public to be a bad combination of gullible fools, big girls blouses, and wannabe Stasi.
Lud/Jim
So far, 2020 in a nutshell. A light must flicker surely at some point.
dearieme,
“Who has done well in The Emergency: the supermarkets, their drivers, shelf stackers, till operators, and so on; the posties; the people who keep water, gas, electricity, and sewage flowing; our milky, greengrocer, and butcher; our chemist and the charitable bods who’ve collected our medicines for us; various friends and neighbours; and all the people and businesses on whom they in turn depend.”
Lot of little platoon activity on Facebook linking up people with things. Getting used laptops to kids because the government couldn’t manage it. Local business near me did 60+. No fee.
“Who has done badly: the schoolteachers; the GPs; the hospitals; Public Health England; our elected MPs and the Government and Loyal Opposition they form; our Rolls Royce Civil Service; the police; …”
Add: the National Trust, the Church of England…
Where’s Testing Tzar Dido Harding, not seen since June? Briefly emerged from bunker on Thur to say “Not my fault”, then ran away
Testing a waste as no cure and HCQ treatment banned, nothing one can do except worry/panic
It’s like “Have a Dementia test” then you can live in fear if positive
Superb, Julia exposes health minister’s lack of knowledge
Julia Hartley-Brewer challenges health minister Edward Argar over coronavirus curfews
“Dangerous disease”?? The current death and hospitalisation rates refute that statement. Why are we now basing lockdowns on tests rather than deaths?
I am staggered that this government are deliberately ignoring the amount of facts against them on this subject. Why is nobody asking about the death rate/infections? It’s practically zero
@Jim September 17, 2020 at 8:45 am
False positives may be All the positive tests
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/09/16/latest-news-136/#sage-knows-all-about-the-false-positive-rate
Hi Guys n Gals,
Found these on another site. Good and informative and what Al Beeb won’t tell us
Dr Mike Yeadon: ‘Government are using a Covid-19 test with undeclared false positive rates.’
I’m seeing more sceptics/realists – is an msm change underway? Tim being too reticent here
Economist Tim Harford Says Threat of COVID-19 in England is As ‘Risky As Taking a Bath’ – Even in Bath & Twerton
Not on BBC though – BBC Fear Propaganda ramped up
Wait out
#DefundTheBBC
Nice to see Frankie Boyle being honest here
Frankie Boyle’s Totally impartial BBC2 late night chat show, don’t forget to tune in
Satirical? No, Frankie Boyle doesn’t do satire on BBC. Oh, did you mean “Satirical” :sarc ?
The BBC has stood by a comedian for ‘joking’ about “killing whitey” on the Frankie Boyle show, claiming it was ‘satirical content’
Racism is alive and well. It’s rampant in the black community, it was hate speech. Maybe she’s referring to the ongoing white genocide in South Africa?
What can we do?
A Common man speaks:
Anti lockdown protest Trafalgar Square 12pm Saturday 19th September
He’s 95% correct, the 5% wrong is “Don’t know, shouldn’t mention” eg Flu, borrow
The 1984 act is not the correct law that the government has used for this lockdown and subsequent abuses of civil rights. The correct act is one passed in 2004 that actually allows the government to do these things but it has checks and balances to prevent the powers from making the abuses never ending. The 84 act is only meant to be used under specific emergencies where the danger exceeds normal parameters and only for specific diseases. Thus, by using the 84 act, the government has acted illegally under it’s own laws
Why are we shutting down for a virus that is now weaker than the common cold??
The reason for the lock-down was to prevent deaths, and to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Deaths and hospitalizations are now down to nothing
#DefundTheBBC
10 -4 Nighty, night
It has recently come to light that the government of Nashville, TN, actively lied about Covid numbers. They shut bars and restaurants, vitally important to Nashville’s economy, even though actual infection rate data showed there was little risk.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/covid-19-emails-from-nashville-mayors-office-show-disturbing-revelation/ar-BB197w6e