Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[brogdale]

Making sure that anything that goes wrong is associated with PHE (the soon to be scrapped scapegoat) & not Serco or other contractors.

exactly; that and thinking that a response that they'd known about this in July (probably another lie) was some sort of explanation or justification for their fucking shambles.

 

[Sue]

Listening to the discussion on the radio right now. Some MP asked why they weren't using 'specialist database technology'. Why are politicians always so utterly rubbish when talking about anything even vaguely technical? Specialist database technology, I'll have you know. Specialist. Technology.

 

[brogdale]

Listening to the discussion on the radio right now. Some MP asked why they weren't using 'specialist database technology'. Why are politicians always so utterly rubbish when talking about anything even vaguely technical? Specialist database technology, I'll have you know. Specialist. Technology.

 

[SlideshowBob]

Listening to the discussion on the radio right now. Some MP asked why they weren't using 'specialist database technology'. Why are politicians always so utterly rubbish when talking about anything even vaguely technical? Specialist database technology, I'll have you know. Specialist. Technology.

Because most of them quite genuinely know feck all about technology. Not that I'd like to see the UK Government transformed into a Silicon Valley-style technocracy - but some people in key government posts who come from, say, an IT background would probably actually be quite useful.

 

[Sue]

Because most of them quite genuinely know feck all about technology. Not that I'd like to see the UK Government transformed into a Silicon Valley-style technocracy - but some people in key government posts who come from, say, an IT background would probably actually be quite useful.

And then you end up with fuckwits like Dominic Cummings talking bollocks about technology and getting away with it...

 

[SlideshowBob]

And then you end up with fuckwits like Dominic Cummings talking bollocks about technology and getting away with it...

Cummings is one of those types who has some mild passing knowledge on a whole variety of subjects and then uses that as a remit to peddle himself as having expertise in those areas.

 

[souljacker]

Because most of them quite genuinely know feck all about technology. Not that I'd like to see the UK Government transformed into a Silicon Valley-style technocracy - but some people in key government posts who come from, say, an IT background would probably actually be quite useful.

Getting people with an IT background wouldn't necessarily help though. Because you'd get some CEO from Computacentre or a project manager from BT who, I'm sure, have worked in the IT field but wouldn't have a scooby about the actual ins and outs of it all. They probably see Dido Harding as "from the IT field" because she worked in comms but I bet she couldn't tell you what layer 3 of the OSI model does.

 

[MrSki]

I cannot believe how much of a cunt Hancock is. He has stopped answering reasonable questions & just insulting the questioner. Surely the speaker must be made to make sure Ministers at least try to answer the question. Fucking cheek of it.

 

[miss direct]

It doesn't say that. Just that rules about mask wearing are frequently ignored.

I know, but it talks about the streets of London. Is it the law in NY to wear a mask outside?

 

[elbows]

So there were 12,594 positive tests reported in the UK today.

When they told us about the data cockup on Saturday, the figure that was released late on that day turns out to now be the sort of daily figure we should be expecting every day. Sundays much higher figure was far more heavily distorted by the cockup correction data.

I had to switch to using data for England only when making my colour-coded graph today, because lack of full UK data over weekend would make it unfair to use the UK one for reasons I wont bore on about right now.

Since they say the cockup-related data had all been published by yesterday, todays spread (in red) of where the reported cases belong in terms of test specimen date should now be back to reflecting the typical reporting lag in this system that is always there.

So yeah, England on its own started topping 10,000 cases per day picked up by testing by the end of September. Later this week we will have a better idea what very early October looked like. Because even without the cockups, the delays between specimen being taken and us seeing the results published as this data is not very impressive.


Here is a little UK one without the colour-coding so that people can see how many more cases that adds to the daily picture, given we are used to talking about the UK number and my graphs were previously for the UK not just England.



I will probably switch to posting these graphs in the nerdy thread after today, since the cockup aspect of this data story isnt new any more and my colour-coding is mostly now showing an ongoing phenomenon.

 

[existentialist]

Getting people with an IT background wouldn't necessarily help though. Because you'd get some CEO from Computacentre or a project manager from BT who, I'm sure, have worked in the IT field but wouldn't have a scooby about the actual ins and outs of it all. They probably see Dido Harding as "from the IT field" because she worked in comms but I bet she couldn't tell you what layer 3 of the OSI model does.

YEah, and the problem for this shower of clowns is that rank is all that matters. They genuinely believe that a CEO will be more useful by virtue of their status, as opposed to some lowly grunt who's written scripts to upload files, and has a rough idea of the kind of shit that goes down when you do that stuff.

 

[MrSki]

I know, but it talks about the streets of London. Is it the law in NY to wear a mask outside?

Yeah you see the reasonable people who obviously wear masks indoors but take them off outside. I am one of those. Sorry I am not up to date on the current laws of New York. I did hear that they are shutting public schools from Wednesday though.

 

[purenarcotic]

Curtains for the Gunnersaurus

Arsenal mascot Gunnersaurus becomes latest victim of Covid cuts

The man behind Arsenal mascot Gunnersaurus has been let go by the club as part of their coronavirus cost-cutting process, according to The Athletic.

www.standard.co.uk

I don’t know why, but that’s made me profoundly sad. He can’t be on a lot of money, it makes kids happy. What a shit thing to do.

 

[StoneRoad]

Interesting that some of today's cases actually have a specimen date 10 (yes ten !) days previous ...

I'm now wondering how much of that "dip" 24th to 28th September will actually get filled in in the next few days as the rest of the back log clears ...
(There's 750+ students in Newcastle upon Tyne tested +ve in that period, but not all of them seem to be on the cases map, unless more of them are "at home" as opposed to being all in Halls.)

Still think they should not have had higher education students back before there's a vaccine in general use ...
tbh, nor should the full entertainment / hospitality industry be operating.
One or the other, not both.

 

[planetgeli]

Curtains for the Gunnersaurus

Arsenal mascot Gunnersaurus becomes latest victim of Covid cuts

The man behind Arsenal mascot Gunnersaurus has been let go by the club as part of their coronavirus cost-cutting process, according to The Athletic.

www.standard.co.uk

Mezut Ozil earns £18.2 million p.a

 

[editor]

I don’t know why, but that’s made me profoundly sad. He can’t be on a lot of money, it makes kids happy. What a shit thing to do.

Premiership clubs are all about money first, fans a long distant second. As are just about all of their stinking rich, superstar players.

 

[elbows]

Interesting that some of today's cases actually have a specimen date 10 (yes ten !) days previous ...

I'm now wondering how much of that "dip" 24th to 28th September will actually get filled in in the next few days as the rest of the back log clears ...
(There's 750+ students in Newcastle upon Tyne tested +ve in that period, but not all of them seem to be on the cases map, unless more of them are "at home" as opposed to being all in Halls.)

There have tended to be weekend-related dips most weeks in the 'by specimen date' data, so I suppose I'm not expecting the gap to be entirely filled by more reported data, but its hard to tell given the large increases over the broader period either side.

 

[PD58]

No, that's tinfoil hat bollocks.

It wasn't serious- even this government is not that stupid...edit... actually clever enough

 

[The39thStep]

Premiership clubs are all about money first, fans a long distant second. As are just about all of their stinking rich, superstar players.

I’d generally agree but this is somewhat of a sweeping statement. Arsenal players agreed a pay cut to assist the club I very much doubt that they did that expecting the club to start sacking non playing staff . Others like Chelsea haven’t made any redundancies and have financed community initiatives during the pandemic .

 

[editor]

I’d generally agree but this is somewhat of a sweeping statement. Arsenal players agreed a pay cut to assist the club I very much doubt that they did that expecting the club to start sacking non playing staff . Others like Chelsea haven’t made any redundancies and have financed community initiatives during the pandemic .

Even taking their selfless 'pay cut' into account they're still on absolute shitloads of money and I don't see too many lining up to dish it out to those less well off than themselves. Like the club mascot, for example. With very few exceptions, most of them are selfish cunts, happy to employ shitty agents to squeeze as much money as possible out of clubs and, in turn, the fans.

 

[two sheds]

You'd think the negative publicity this will gain would shame them into taking him back on again

or there again perhaps not.

 

[MrSki]

Even taking their selfless 'pay cut' into account they're still on absolute shitloads of money and I don't see too many lining up to dish it out to those less well off than themselves. Like the club mascot, for example. With very few exceptions, most of them are selfish cunts, happy to employ shitty agents to squeeze as much money as possible out of clubs and, in turn, the fans.

As I said on the Arse thread if each first team player took it turns to pay his weekly wage they wouldn't even notice it. Shame on AFC.

 

[Cloo]

I've seen some broken down data for where there have been spreading events... I'd be interested to know what it's like for museums/galleries/historic attractions. Or maybe they're not having enough people through to really show a pattern?

 

[brogdale]

CWS had it right back in June:

 

[weepiper]

I speculate that we're going to get a new lockdown announcement of some sort in the Scottish Parliament tomorrow. This is a pretty big thing to be suddenly shifting back a day.

 

[2hats]

Yes, apparently. And it all fell over at 2^14

Sign the Petition

Increase the maximum number of columns in Excel to 32,768

www.change.org

 

[two sheds]

Excel: Why using Microsoft's tool caused Covid-19 results to be lost

The decision to use a spreadsheet format that dates back to the 1980s has proved to be unwise.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC saying it was the rows that were the problem?

The problem is that PHE's own developers picked an old file format to do this - known as XLS.
As a consequence, each template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data rather than the one million-plus rows that Excel is actually capable of.
And since each test result created several rows of data, in practice it meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases.
When that total was reached, further cases were simply left off.
For a bit of context, Excel's XLS file format dates back to 1987. It was superseded by XLSX in 2007. Had this been used, it would have handled 16 times the number of cases.
At the very least, that would have prevented the error from happening until testing levels were significantly higher than they are today,

also said it was PHE's fault not the privatized contractors.

 

[planetgeli]

I speculate that we're going to get a new lockdown announcement of some sort in the Scottish Parliament tomorrow. This is a pretty big thing to be suddenly shifting back a day.

Different country but we were given a formal lockdown (schools closure) strategy today at school.

That could be good forward planning by our shiny great new Head but it could also be the result of the formal meeting she had with top bods for 3 hours the other day...

 

[two sheds]

Sign the Petition

Increase the maximum number of columns in Excel to 32,768

www.change.org

Actually, to make it safe can we ask for it to be doubled every 7 days.

 

[two sheds]

Guardian saying it was the rows, too, also blaming on PHE

Covid: how Excel may have caused loss of 16,000 test results in England

Public Health England data error blamed on limitations of Microsoft spreadsheet

www.theguardian.com

But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long – or, in older versions which PHE may have still been using, a mere 65,536. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed. That means that, once the lab had performed more than a million tests, it was only a matter of time before its reports failed to be read by PHE.

Microsoft’s spreadsheet software is one of the world’s most popular business tools, but it is regularly implicated in errors which can be costly, or even dangerous, because of the ease with which it can be used in situations it was not designed for.
In 2013, an Excel error at JPMorgan masked the loss of almost $6bn (£4.6bn), after a cell mistakenly divided by the sum of two interest rates, rather than the average. The news led James Kwak, a professor of law at the University of Connecticut, to warn that Excel is “incredibly fragile”.

“There is no way to trace where your data comes from, there’s no audit trail (so you can overtype numbers and not know it), and there’s no easy way to test spreadsheets, for starters. The biggest problem is that anyone can create Excel spreadsheets – badly. Because it’s so easy to use, the creation of even important spreadsheets is not restricted to people who understand programming and do it in a methodical, well-documented way,” Kwak wrote.

Errors from the spreadsheet software have even changed the very foundations of human genetics. The names of 27 genes have been changed over the past year by the Human Gene Nomenclature Committee, after Microsoft’s program continually misformatted them. The genes SEPT1 and MARCH1, for instance, have been changed to SEPTIN1 and MARCHF1 after they were repeatedly turned into dates, while symbols that were common words have been altered so that grammar tools didn’t autocorrect them: WARS is now WARS1, for instance.

Just don't understand it - works really well for my accounts