Should have said I have shares in Reading so I shouldn’t watch QPR? on a serious note Woody I heard yesterday that Covid is 24th on the list of causes of deaths in the U.K. Other deaths ( non Covid)has risen by 8 times in private Homes.
He used to be president of GSK, I’m guessing, and it’s just a guess, that on his appointment as Chief Scientific Advisor, the civil service would have known that he would have a lot of GSK shares, a massive part of his remuneration, and that he would be holding them for some time, as usually these share grants are released over a three year period - it’s meant to be an incentive to stay, as you continue earning shares during as long as you stay, as long as you and the company perform. It looks a bit odd when you leave though. If I left my firm now I would have a bunch of shares that I wouldn’t be able to sell for two or three years, and I would also earn some more for the portion of the financial year that I have worked, and these wouldn’t be given to me until next April, then I wait three years for the ability to sell the last of these. It sound bizarre and complex but it’s standard practice in big companies. Sadly the value of my shares is a little shy of £600k. This looks bad but I doubt there is any insider trading going on, and if you don’t employ people in Vallance’s situation, you reduce the public sector talent pool significantly. Although as time goes on in Vallance’s case there has to be some doubt about the talent.....
That was my first of 2 free reads. Suggests that if 220,000 tests are done a day, with 3000 positives, but a 1% false positive rate, that isn’t 1% of the 3000, but 1% of the 220,000. So of 3000 positives, 2200 are false. This is what Julia Hartley-Brewer was getting at with Grant Shapps, but she concluded, based on her calculations and confirmed by eminent statisticians (her words), that 90% of tests were giving false positives.
That sound horrendous but.... ..... but my first question as a biomedical scientist is "how do they know they are false positives". The patients have not got symptoms (well we know that happens and it is not a "false positive")or the results are unreproducible (do it 3x and two results say negative, one says positive?), or the whole test fails From a seperate source I heard as many as 10% results in any assay came back as inconclusive and the many results from certain test centres came back as void (no sample detected due to the operator being inexperienced...this is true of home tests kits too). This is why we are doing so many tests. The running of the tests in ineffective as they are being run outside the usual biomedical guidelines
Well I for one will definitely not be downloading any app that has anything to do with Dido Harding and her private crew. I apologise in advance, as I'm sure people think this might help beat or at least battle the infection rate. Unfortunately, I have come around to the fact that we wont/cant beat it and I just have to continue the precautions I've been taking.
I am not sure how it is going to work either...as you have to clock uop 15 minutes with that positive person before it gives you a warning. I have only spent 15 minutes in the continuous company of family or very very close friends in the last 6 months. I would know if they had it. May be useful if you travel on trains a lot...
Just seen that Hancock ‘urged’ people to upgrade their phones if they weren’t able to download. Is there a government grant for this? Or will Matt just accept the grateful thanks of Apple, Samsung, Google etc? In return for, perhaps, a future non executive directorship or two.
What a cock he is. Genuine query - think I can guess at the answer.....how joined up do you think the English NHS Covid-19 app and the Scottish NHS Protect Scotland app are? As someone who travels frequently between both countries, would I have to have both apps installed, and are they going to be intelligent enough to communicate with each other? My guess is a big fat NO!
Well, you would be in the ‘poor naive fool’ category if you believed anything else. Apparently the app can tell you the infection rate in the postcode that you put in when registering, but not the rate where you actually are. So no travelling, stay home! Given the number of apps that I disable the location tracking function on, this seems quite a spectacular and basic miss.
It seems the official guidance for emergency frontline staff is to disable the app when we put on PPE and deal with a patient and to turn it back on again straight after we take off the PPE and have finished with the patient. Yeah right, that’s the first thing I think off when I’m on the way to an arrest is to disable the app...I could do that before I check to see if the patient has a DNAR and just after I’ve put on my apron, D Mask and gloves on the way to the job, while trying not to get tangled up on my seatbelt.
6,634 new cases, 40 deaths in last 24 hours. Apparently that's a 95% increase in cases from this time last week.