[Oldmanmatt]

Good grief, move along, move along. It was a throwaway comment aimed at the Guardian which seems to hear Cummings' name and immediately begin to froth itself into an apoplectic ecstasy of outrage.

Yeah, weird isn’t it.

Some people seem to do something similar every time the Guardian gets a mention, too...

[danm]

Sorry Will, but I have nothing better to do than work myself into a frothing frenzy right now, plus at this rate I'll have to replace my "Make Orwell Fiction Again" t-shirt with a "Make William Gibson Fiction Again" one if Cummings gets his way.

Back to the point at hand, this government appear to find lying as easy as breathing (until some of them got covid-19 that is)...

[Wood FT]

Sorry Will, but I have nothing better to do than work myself into a frothing frenzy right now, plus at this rate I'll have to replace my "Make Orwell Fiction Again" t-shirt with a "Make William Gibson Fiction Again" one if Cummings gets his way.

Back to the point at hand, this government appear to find lying as easy as breathing (until some of them got covid-19 that is)...

I’d buy the former t-shirt if you were keen on making it?

[tomtom]

I think it’s quite telling on the UK media that the newspaper raising the issue of the secrecy and black box of SAGE is the New York Times (then followed by the Guardian).

It seems from the two members of Sage that spoke to the Guardian since this morning - that Cummings was actively involved in discussions in the meeting. Further it seems that govt advisors are rarely if ever at past meetings. Sounding more like a slam dunk as time passes.

The Guardian (independently funded don’t forget), channel4 news and to a lesser degree the FT and Mirror are the only media groups giving the government any scrutiny at the moment. Yes - the Guardian will jump on Cummings back - but at the moment that seems completely appropriate to me!!

[mrjonathanr]

Well latest report is that he was just an observer, which seems fine..

SAGE needs to be impartial. It also needs to be seen to be impartial. Cummings’ role is political, not scientific. His attendance is incompatible with both points.

[Nigel]

Well latest report is that he was just an observer, which seems fine..

SAGE needs to be impartial. It also needs to be seen to be impartial. Cummings’ role is political, not scientific. His attendance is incompatible with both points.

Well yes, I actually agree on that.

To clarify my earlier comments, in the hypothetical scenario that the SAGE attendees remained a secret still, and Cummings was not physically present or contributing but simply earwigging from behind lets say some one way glass so he didn't need to waste time getting a separate briefing, then OK (for me. Speed after all is of the essence and that would seem to cut out some middle men). Now that SAGE members are public, and we know he attended, I agree it seems wrong on your appearance of impartiality point, even if he didn't contribute. If he did contribute then we move to the next level of wrong. I was trying my hardest to be even-handed and charitable given the conflicting media reports! I suspect you can probably guess what my instinctive first reaction was...

[mrjonathanr]

Yes, totally Nigel. Although given you are talking about a person who is currently in contempt of parliament and who effectively waged war on the education system for 4 years, producing a fragmented system with inadequate oversight, massive transfer of public assets to private hands, increased opportunity for conflict of influence and corruption with no clear improvement in  standards, I'd respectfully have to suggest you are a more charitable man than me.

Be that as it may, scientific committees should be free to produce recommendations without inhibition; it's bad science to do otherwise.

[ali k]

...you are talking about a person who is currently in contempt of parliament and who effectively waged war on the education system for 4 years

Precisely this. Not only is it an extraordinary break from the normal protocol to have him there, but this man has form for manipulation, misinformation, bullying, and an apparent thirst for absolute control.

[TobyD]

The Guardian (independently funded don’t forget), channel4 news and to a lesser degree the FT and Mirror are the only media groups giving the government any scrutiny at the moment.

What about the Sunday Times investigation last weekend that was the major story for about 48 hours?

[Offwidth]

Some interesting city traffic data.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/apr/27/the-traffic-data-that-shows-the-road-into-and-out-of-covid-19-lockdown

On SAGE its not just Cummings... his 'pet ex-postdoc' is there too and this links to the ex-postdoc's brother's company government health data contract.

https://mobile.twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1254315149135151104

[stone]

Might (some rural) parts of the UK have such a low density of COVID19 cases that a South Korean style "test-trace-isolate" approach would work great? That might enable such a district to be a test ground to get such as system up and running whilst the rest of the country waits for infection rates to get down to feasible levels.

[webbo]

The government are now saying that front line health workers who have died from COVID-19 will get a payment of £60,000.
I might be wrong here but if you die at work or from injury or illness related to your work. You would get compensation anyway.
Am I misinformed.

[tomtom]

https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1255147479466565636?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1255147479466565636&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Flive%2F2020%2Fapr%2F28%2Fuk-coronavirus-live-news-minutes-silence-to-commemorate-key-workers-who-have-died



And from the UK....

[tomtom]

Christ its fucking grim...

[Nigel]

The government are now saying that front line health workers who have died from COVID-19 will get a payment of £60,000.
I might be wrong here but if you die at work or from injury or illness related to your work. You would get compensation anyway.
Am I misinformed.

https://www.hsj.co.uk/coronavirus/insurance-scheme-to-cover-nhs-staff-who-die-from-coronavirus/7027505.article

This is basically life insurance for all frontline healthcare workers, provided by the government.

NHS workers already get "death in service" payments to their dependents worth up to 2x pensionable income if they pay into an NHS pension. I'm not 100% but I think this £60K is in addition to that? Someone else more knowledgeable may know. The £60K also covers those NHS workers not in NHS pension scheme, and in extended settings e.g. outsourced care.

So as far as I can see it is not "compensation", which I think would require some blame to be accepted? I suspect there will still be legal claims against the government forthcoming from those who have lost loved ones. Unless there are strings attached to this £60K preventing this. I don't know the answer to that part.

[ali k]

I suspect there will still be legal claims against the government forthcoming from those who have lost loved ones. Unless there are strings attached to this £60K preventing this.

Robert Peston asked this question in the briefing yesterday and Hancock said there wouldn’t be.

[Oldmanmatt]

I suspect there will still be legal claims against the government forthcoming from those who have lost loved ones. Unless there are strings attached to this £60K preventing this.

Robert Peston asked this question in the briefing yesterday and Hancock said there wouldn’t be.

Good.

It will help fund the action then.

[petejh]

https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1255147479466565636?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1255147479466565636&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Flive%2F2020%2Fapr%2F28%2Fuk-coronavirus-live-news-minutes-silence-to-commemorate-key-workers-who-have-died



And from the UK....

Followed the thread this was posted on, it's deviation from the average not total numbers. Difficult to know the picture from just this graph, bad as it looks.

I asked in the other thread, what data are other countries reporting - is it hospital deaths, all deaths, some deaths? It would be good to know whether we're comparing UK apples to other country's apples to see how badly we compare.

[finbarrr]

the NYT has some good graphs on missing deaths/ excess mortality:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html?fbclid=IwAR3YeawMpNHYjZQlySx2oXUnVLPfU7HVaNsol-WU_HVsAcKh6513A1TH4po

[tomtom]

the NYT has some good graphs on missing deaths/ excess mortality:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html?fbclid=IwAR3YeawMpNHYjZQlySx2oXUnVLPfU7HVaNsol-WU_HVsAcKh6513A1TH4po

Yes - those data were from when our total was 10k (with an extra 6k not reported)... the proportion will be worse now as the curve of out of hospital deaths seems to be lagging the in hospital ones. I swing between despair and anger when I look at these charts...

[HaeMeS]

the NYT has some good graphs on missing deaths/ excess mortality:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html?fbclid=IwAR3YeawMpNHYjZQlySx2oXUnVLPfU7HVaNsol-WU_HVsAcKh6513A1TH4po

As has the Economist:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries

And an explanation of the datamining/interpreting involved:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries

[petejh]

Interesting. I'd seen these articles a while back but looks like they've been updated. UK wasn't *too* far down on the reporting compared with other Western countries even when it was only reporting hospital deaths. 71% of all deaths compared to 48% for Italy and Netherlands, 68% Spain, 86% France, 90% Sweden. Even 2 weeks ago there were publicly available figures from ONS on the deaths outside hospital. I really don't see the case for claims of mass under reporting, given the difficulties of collating data from other decentralised settings compared to the centralised NHS with its data collectors (mate's wife works doing this for the NHS). Now we've started (from tomorrow) reporting all settings daily you'd think that should account for most of the excess. Interested to see Germany, expect they'll be efficient as per everything they do!  Italy, Netherlands..yikes.

[stone]

South Korea and Singapore seem to have  Apps that work well for them for contact tracing. Why can't we just use those rather than re-inventing the wheel? I'm extremely ignorant about this sort of thing (I don't even have a mobile phone), so this is me asking for info.

[mrjonathanr]

Hi Stone. Quite a lot of discussion about this on the other thread, including concerns about privacy. Some good explanations from Remus about methods for making it work.

Guardian report Singapore app uptake of 20% amongst smartphone users. I wonder if privacy concerns put people off? See my last post.

https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php?topic=30554.425

[jwi]

The Singapore app is open source as well