Let's ramp up the fear.....

[TheOstrich]

Life gets more like living in a Monty Python sketch by the day.

As the weather forecasts are quite often nowhere near accurate anyway, it sounds like the best plan to remain sane is to keep the TV permanently switched off.

[cromwell]

Seriously, that is what is being proposed. The weather forecast will not only give us weather updates, as well as pollen counts and UV numbers, it will also give us figures for coronavirus cases and deaths - locally and nationally.

Imagine the lovely Carol: "A low from the west will bring both high winds and rain to parts.......... meanwhile coronavirus cases are set to rise here and here, but elsewhere deaths will be stable for this time of year. Enjoy your weekend."

Christ almighty.

[Suff]

Always look on the bright side of Life.....

[cromwell]

Imperial College London strike again.
Today's Telegraph reports that ICL are claiming that 100,000 people a day are catching covid and that "current measures do not go far enough".
Given as ICL still employ Professor "half a million deaths" Ferguson perhaps anyone connected with them can be ignored, and perhaps fresh advice sought by the government.

[Workingman]

Prof. Neil Ferguson has done a lot of damage to the whole of ICL's reputation. How and why he is still employed by ICL and used by government is a mystery.

He even damages the REACT-1 study by the Faculty of Medicine, where the numbers come from, when he has nothing to do with it. REACT is about as near to real-world figures as we can get without testing every single person in the country. It randomly selects 120,000 to 150,000 people from all areas and demographics in the UK every month - it is a blind sample and their condition re Covid-19 is unknown until tested. It has long been accepted as best practice.

It has been running for six months and in that time its figures, when compared to those taking tests in hospitals, care homes, front line staff, test & trace and the public who suspect that they might be infected, have been roughly x4. Today's figure fits the previous patterns and was pretty much as expected.

It's just a shame that they came out on the day all the other bad figures and news of lockdowns from Europe and beyond became known. And don't forget the amount of "journalism" going on in the way the study is presented.

[Suff]

For anyone who was vaguely interested in chasing stats, it was clear that the first time round we had at least 100k per day or more at the peak. We just didn't test for them.

Given that the second wave seems to be more widespread, it could easily be 200k.

But, in the end, what does that matter? If the under 40's all get it and the over 50's avoid them like the plague, we'll be in a far better place.

Unfortunately that doesn't sell news.