Yes. I really wish people would stop doing the daily death figures. It's pretty meaningless
Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!
- Thread starter bullybeef
- Start date
- Status
I work in a care home, not at the moment though, and I know that any death in a care home is reported to CQC straight away as it's a legal obligation. So CQC knows how many have died per day and it's their obligation to tell PHE. Similarly, hospitals know on the day when people in hospitals have died. All daily information should have been recorded and then reported. Declaring xxx deaths today, when the vast majority didn't happen yesterday is misleading.
Last edited:
Averaged around 420 deaths per day since the start.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
There are numbers of days now after revision at the peak where we hit 1000 deaths a day, it's been mentioned this was done not to scare us too much...
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
Have we? I get so confused mate. If the average is falling, thats all I can compute!
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
As said from the outset on Vallance and Whitty: quacks and witchdoctors.
www.newstatesman.com
The silence of the chief scientists is worrying and deeply political
The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, did not speak out when asked about the Dominic Cummings affair, compromising urgent public health messaging. This makes their positions untenable.
BY PHILIP BALL
In the astonishing UK government update on the pandemic on the evening of Thursday 28 May, we watched the relationship between government and science collapse before our eyes. Much of the media coverage has focused on Boris Johnson’s muzzling of his chief medical officer (CMO) Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser (CSA) Patrick Vallance, as he intervened to prevent them from answering questions about the public health repercussions of Dominic Cummings breaking the lockdown rules. But that much was business as usual: we should by now be used to this increasingly isolated prime minister shutting down inconvenient debate.
Far more troubling to those who care about the role of scientific advice during the coronavirus crisis was the servile response from those two scientists. The comments I have received from other scientists confirm my fear that this dismal performance has not merely destroyed faith in Whitty and Vallance and threatened the government's ability to manage this excruciatingly tricky stage of the pandemic. It has probably damaged the public image of science itself.
Two days before the press conference, I wrote in Prospect that the two chief scientists must speak up on the Cummings affair. Of course, no one can expect them pronounce on whether is it right he remains in his post (unless they resign first). But they needed to clarify whether, as the government had implied, Cummings had made a valid interpretation of the rules that the rest of us were too dim to see for ourselves.
Civil servants cannot convene a press conference without the permission of ministers. So the crunch time would come when Vallance and Whitty were next permitted to stand before the press at these daily briefings. That gave them plenty of time to prepare a careful but honest and clear answer.
As it happened, the Durham police relieved them of the need to say if trips like Cummings’ were within the rules: they were not. (Don’t be misled by that “might” in the police statement, which is standard legalese to acknowledge that, while the police have decided there was a breach, it’s up the courts to decide criminal liability.) But there is more for the scientists to do than that. At stake is public compliance with the restrictions still in place and the track-and-trace measures now being rolled out. Thursday was the moment for them to say whether it was likely that damage had been done here, and to reinforce what is still expected of individuals.
For those of you who did not watch the conference, I am loath to suggest you do, so abysmally does it reflect on the sense of broader public duty recognised by scientists like these. Suffice to say that the journalists Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Peston and Sam Coates played a blinder. They posed exactly the right questions directly to the scientists – and when Johnson intervened to prevent the CMO and CSA from answering a “political” question, reiterated why this is in fact an urgent matter for public health.
When Coates asked if the scientists were comfortable being sidelined in this way (“a nod or shake of the head will suffice”), it became impossible for them to evade the issue any longer. Whitty’s response was “I can assure you that the desire not to get pulled into politics is far stronger on the part of Sir Patrick and me than it is in the Prime Minister.” Vallance backed him up: “I’m a civil servant – I don’t want to get involved in politics at all."
This can’t be ascribed simply to astonishing naivety. As Peston pointed out, some of the very scientists advising Sage have expressed concerns that anecdotal reports of Cummings’ behaviour compromising observation of the rules may translate into larger and more persistent problems. Psychologist Robert West, on the behavioural sciences team feeding into Sage, tweeted: “The PM is 100 per cent wrong to say that journalist questions about the impact on public trust of his refusal to sack Cummings are about politics not science. They are behavioural science questions and should be answered by scientists. Early evidence is that it has been damaging.”
If Whitty and Vallance do not recognise this, they should not be in those jobs. If they know it is true but will not admit it for the sake of political expediency, they are violating the Civil Service Code and the Nolan principles to which those in public office are supposed to adhere of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
Imagine that, rather than Cummings, some celebrity had been spotted on an “eyesight-checking” spree to Barnard Castle – or worse, driving his partner with suspected Covid-19 symptoms across the country – and who was now protesting he had done nothing wrong. We would be rightly appalled if, asked to comment on the public confusion the story was causing, the chief scientists had said “not our department”. No, surely they would have responded that the judgement of the police had made it very clear that these are not things we should be doing. Not only would that have helped to bolster public compliance with health measures, but it would have told everyone who has made tremendous sacrifices in keeping to the restrictions that they did the right thing and hadn’t been played for fools. It would have sent a clear message, both morally and pragmatically.
Yes, Johnson would have not liked it if they had done this on 28 May. That is not supposed to matter to the CMO and CSA. Their failure was made all the more apparent in the press conference on Saturday 31 May, in which the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam did not duck the inevitable Cummings question, but said, “In my opinion [the rules] are for the benefit of all. In my opinion they apply to all.”
In other words, far from being “apolitical”, the silence of the CMO and CSA was itself deeply political. This is the truth that history has shown science again and again, but which some scientists still resolutely refuse to recognise: remaining silent when you need to speak up is not to remain neutral or aloof from politics. Sometimes it becomes complicity.
The editor of The Lancet Richard Horton has warned that the presence of supposedly independent scientists behind Johnson, Hancock and others as they bend facts and juggle with numbers, evade important questions and now defend the indefensible, risks propping up an incompetent and mendacious government with ersatz authority. But we can now see it is worse than that. The CMO and CSA will not stand up for the many scientists and health workers now concerned that Johnson’s blind support for Cummings, come what may, could wreck efforts to encourage responsible behaviour and so put lives at risk. Even as supposedly “impartial scientists”, they will not dare upset their leaders when it matters most. This will feed public suspicions that science makes itself an indiscriminate servant of whoever is in power. Again, history shows us where that has sometimes ended up.
How can we have any confidence that the latest, scientifically controversial easing of lockdown measures (it's fine to drive across country to see parents!) isn't an attempt to appease the public and blur the memory of what was expected when Cummings transgressed, rather than a carefully considered step? After all, it was obviously to protect Cummings that Hancock made an ad hoc offer retrospectively to “look at” lockdown fines issued against breaches made for childcare reasons.
This demonstration that the CMO and CSA will remain silent on urgent matters of public-health messaging that inconvenience the government renders their positions untenable. They should go – even if that would make them yet another part of the collateral damage caused by Cummings.
The silence of the chief scientists is worrying and deeply political
The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, did not speak out when asked about the Dominic Cummings affair, compromising urgent public health messaging. This makes their positions untenable.
www.newstatesman.com
The silence of the chief scientists is worrying and deeply political
The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, did not speak out when asked about the Dominic Cummings affair, compromising urgent public health messaging. This makes their positions untenable.
BY PHILIP BALL
In the astonishing UK government update on the pandemic on the evening of Thursday 28 May, we watched the relationship between government and science collapse before our eyes. Much of the media coverage has focused on Boris Johnson’s muzzling of his chief medical officer (CMO) Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser (CSA) Patrick Vallance, as he intervened to prevent them from answering questions about the public health repercussions of Dominic Cummings breaking the lockdown rules. But that much was business as usual: we should by now be used to this increasingly isolated prime minister shutting down inconvenient debate.
Far more troubling to those who care about the role of scientific advice during the coronavirus crisis was the servile response from those two scientists. The comments I have received from other scientists confirm my fear that this dismal performance has not merely destroyed faith in Whitty and Vallance and threatened the government's ability to manage this excruciatingly tricky stage of the pandemic. It has probably damaged the public image of science itself.
Two days before the press conference, I wrote in Prospect that the two chief scientists must speak up on the Cummings affair. Of course, no one can expect them pronounce on whether is it right he remains in his post (unless they resign first). But they needed to clarify whether, as the government had implied, Cummings had made a valid interpretation of the rules that the rest of us were too dim to see for ourselves.
Civil servants cannot convene a press conference without the permission of ministers. So the crunch time would come when Vallance and Whitty were next permitted to stand before the press at these daily briefings. That gave them plenty of time to prepare a careful but honest and clear answer.
As it happened, the Durham police relieved them of the need to say if trips like Cummings’ were within the rules: they were not. (Don’t be misled by that “might” in the police statement, which is standard legalese to acknowledge that, while the police have decided there was a breach, it’s up the courts to decide criminal liability.) But there is more for the scientists to do than that. At stake is public compliance with the restrictions still in place and the track-and-trace measures now being rolled out. Thursday was the moment for them to say whether it was likely that damage had been done here, and to reinforce what is still expected of individuals.
For those of you who did not watch the conference, I am loath to suggest you do, so abysmally does it reflect on the sense of broader public duty recognised by scientists like these. Suffice to say that the journalists Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Peston and Sam Coates played a blinder. They posed exactly the right questions directly to the scientists – and when Johnson intervened to prevent the CMO and CSA from answering a “political” question, reiterated why this is in fact an urgent matter for public health.
When Coates asked if the scientists were comfortable being sidelined in this way (“a nod or shake of the head will suffice”), it became impossible for them to evade the issue any longer. Whitty’s response was “I can assure you that the desire not to get pulled into politics is far stronger on the part of Sir Patrick and me than it is in the Prime Minister.” Vallance backed him up: “I’m a civil servant – I don’t want to get involved in politics at all."
This can’t be ascribed simply to astonishing naivety. As Peston pointed out, some of the very scientists advising Sage have expressed concerns that anecdotal reports of Cummings’ behaviour compromising observation of the rules may translate into larger and more persistent problems. Psychologist Robert West, on the behavioural sciences team feeding into Sage, tweeted: “The PM is 100 per cent wrong to say that journalist questions about the impact on public trust of his refusal to sack Cummings are about politics not science. They are behavioural science questions and should be answered by scientists. Early evidence is that it has been damaging.”
If Whitty and Vallance do not recognise this, they should not be in those jobs. If they know it is true but will not admit it for the sake of political expediency, they are violating the Civil Service Code and the Nolan principles to which those in public office are supposed to adhere of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
Imagine that, rather than Cummings, some celebrity had been spotted on an “eyesight-checking” spree to Barnard Castle – or worse, driving his partner with suspected Covid-19 symptoms across the country – and who was now protesting he had done nothing wrong. We would be rightly appalled if, asked to comment on the public confusion the story was causing, the chief scientists had said “not our department”. No, surely they would have responded that the judgement of the police had made it very clear that these are not things we should be doing. Not only would that have helped to bolster public compliance with health measures, but it would have told everyone who has made tremendous sacrifices in keeping to the restrictions that they did the right thing and hadn’t been played for fools. It would have sent a clear message, both morally and pragmatically.
Yes, Johnson would have not liked it if they had done this on 28 May. That is not supposed to matter to the CMO and CSA. Their failure was made all the more apparent in the press conference on Saturday 31 May, in which the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam did not duck the inevitable Cummings question, but said, “In my opinion [the rules] are for the benefit of all. In my opinion they apply to all.”
In other words, far from being “apolitical”, the silence of the CMO and CSA was itself deeply political. This is the truth that history has shown science again and again, but which some scientists still resolutely refuse to recognise: remaining silent when you need to speak up is not to remain neutral or aloof from politics. Sometimes it becomes complicity.
The editor of The Lancet Richard Horton has warned that the presence of supposedly independent scientists behind Johnson, Hancock and others as they bend facts and juggle with numbers, evade important questions and now defend the indefensible, risks propping up an incompetent and mendacious government with ersatz authority. But we can now see it is worse than that. The CMO and CSA will not stand up for the many scientists and health workers now concerned that Johnson’s blind support for Cummings, come what may, could wreck efforts to encourage responsible behaviour and so put lives at risk. Even as supposedly “impartial scientists”, they will not dare upset their leaders when it matters most. This will feed public suspicions that science makes itself an indiscriminate servant of whoever is in power. Again, history shows us where that has sometimes ended up.
How can we have any confidence that the latest, scientifically controversial easing of lockdown measures (it's fine to drive across country to see parents!) isn't an attempt to appease the public and blur the memory of what was expected when Cummings transgressed, rather than a carefully considered step? After all, it was obviously to protect Cummings that Hancock made an ad hoc offer retrospectively to “look at” lockdown fines issued against breaches made for childcare reasons.
This demonstration that the CMO and CSA will remain silent on urgent matters of public-health messaging that inconvenience the government renders their positions untenable. They should go – even if that would make them yet another part of the collateral damage caused by Cummings.
Last edited:
jaycee
Player Valuation: £60m
I agree with a lot of what D says,the government handling of the initial outbreak was really poor,the leadership throughout has been invisible,the constant mixed messages being delivered,this new push to make it seem things are almost back to normal reeks of pure monetary driven,but at the same time if certain groups of people think its a green light to party on the beach then that is their own stupidity,I wouldnt class myself as being in a vunerable group,no underlying health issues,not in a job that would expose me to infection,but I have stuck to my routine of shopping for food once a fortnight,when I think the shops will be relatively quiet,my exercise is walking through the cemertary and park when I know it will be quiet and if I have to cross the road to avoid close contact i will,just because the country is run by idiots doesnt mean you have to act like one
Catfish Blues
Player Valuation: £15m
It is indeed rushed, but I'm not against the change in principle. It would have made a lot more sense to announce that most people shielding would, all other things being equal, be able to go outside in two weeks, with the communicated restrictions.
That would have given everyone chance to digest the information, comment on it and the people shielding could then make an informed decision as to whether or not they wanted to accept the risk of venturing out. The issue I have with it at the moment is that it's being described as "safe", but safe is interpreted by most in a binary way, when really, especially for those who live alone, there's an increased risk ( all be it fairly small ) of going outside. But there's also a health risk involved in staying indoors, so it's not black and white.
It's a largely meaningless average of the total deaths divided by the 90 days between now and the first death in March. Like the daily figure, it doesn't really offer much of use.
jaycee
Player Valuation: £60m
Take a look at the queues for Ikea,people lining up from 5 am,I for the life of me cant work out whats so urgent that you would do thatYet sensible posters who live abroad are reporting the exact same mass flocking to beaches, parks, riverbanks etc in the countries that they live in
Why can`t you accept that a minority of people have just decided to do what they want and would`ve done so anyway regardless of what the government said or didn`t say ???
There`s a barbers by me that`s never shut, there`s pub I know of that`s never shut, there`s mobile hairdressers who`ve never stopped working, there`s people I know who`ve never stopped visiting their parents and friends, I could go on and on.
You can`t blame the government for people who`ve chosen to just do what they want, regardless of the consequences to others.
They`re selfish and irresponsible and that`s solely on them.
Despite the constant news coverage, the banner headlines and the knowledge that the virus is still killing people, some people have made the conscious decision to say " F " it, I don`t care.
It really is as simple as that.
....a national shortage of FFP3 face masks in NHS. Could be a major problem going forward.
As said from the outset on Vallance and Whitty: quacks and witchdoctors.
The silence of the chief scientists is worrying and deeply political
The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, did not speak out when asked about the Dominic Cummings affair, compromising urgent public health messaging. This makes their positions untenable.
The silence of the chief scientists is worrying and deeply political
The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, did not speak out when asked about the Dominic Cummings affair, compromising urgent public health messaging. This makes their positions untenable.
BY PHILIP BALL
In the astonishing UK government update on the pandemic on the evening of Thursday 28 May, we watched the relationship between government and science collapse before our eyes. Much of the media coverage has focused on Boris Johnson’s muzzling of his chief medical officer (CMO) Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser (CSA) Patrick Vallance, as he intervened to prevent them from answering questions about the public health repercussions of Dominic Cummings breaking the lockdown rules. But that much was business as usual: we should by now be used to this increasingly isolated prime minister shutting down inconvenient debate.
Far more troubling to those who care about the role of scientific advice during the coronavirus crisis was the servile response from those two scientists. The comments I have received from other scientists confirm my fear that this dismal performance has not merely destroyed faith in Whitty and Vallance and threatened the government's ability to manage this excruciatingly tricky stage of the pandemic. It has probably damaged the public image of science itself.
Two days before the press conference, I wrote in Prospect that the two chief scientists must speak up on the Cummings affair. Of course, no one can expect them pronounce on whether is it right he remains in his post (unless they resign first). But they needed to clarify whether, as the government had implied, Cummings had made a valid interpretation of the rules that the rest of us were too dim to see for ourselves.
Civil servants cannot convene a press conference without the permission of ministers. So the crunch time would come when Vallance and Whitty were next permitted to stand before the press at these daily briefings. That gave them plenty of time to prepare a careful but honest and clear answer.
As it happened, the Durham police relieved them of the need to say if trips like Cummings’ were within the rules: they were not. (Don’t be misled by that “might” in the police statement, which is standard legalese to acknowledge that, while the police have decided there was a breach, it’s up the courts to decide criminal liability.) But there is more for the scientists to do than that. At stake is public compliance with the restrictions still in place and the track-and-trace measures now being rolled out. Thursday was the moment for them to say whether it was likely that damage had been done here, and to reinforce what is still expected of individuals.
For those of you who did not watch the conference, I am loath to suggest you do, so abysmally does it reflect on the sense of broader public duty recognised by scientists like these. Suffice to say that the journalists Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Peston and Sam Coates played a blinder. They posed exactly the right questions directly to the scientists – and when Johnson intervened to prevent the CMO and CSA from answering a “political” question, reiterated why this is in fact an urgent matter for public health.
When Coates asked if the scientists were comfortable being sidelined in this way (“a nod or shake of the head will suffice”), it became impossible for them to evade the issue any longer. Whitty’s response was “I can assure you that the desire not to get pulled into politics is far stronger on the part of Sir Patrick and me than it is in the Prime Minister.” Vallance backed him up: “I’m a civil servant – I don’t want to get involved in politics at all."
This can’t be ascribed simply to astonishing naivety. As Peston pointed out, some of the very scientists advising Sage have expressed concerns that anecdotal reports of Cummings’ behaviour compromising observation of the rules may translate into larger and more persistent problems. Psychologist Robert West, on the behavioural sciences team feeding into Sage, tweeted: “The PM is 100 per cent wrong to say that journalist questions about the impact on public trust of his refusal to sack Cummings are about politics not science. They are behavioural science questions and should be answered by scientists. Early evidence is that it has been damaging.”
If Whitty and Vallance do not recognise this, they should not be in those jobs. If they know it is true but will not admit it for the sake of political expediency, they are violating the Civil Service Code and the Nolan principles to which those in public office are supposed to adhere of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
Imagine that, rather than Cummings, some celebrity had been spotted on an “eyesight-checking” spree to Barnard Castle – or worse, driving his partner with suspected Covid-19 symptoms across the country – and who was now protesting he had done nothing wrong. We would be rightly appalled if, asked to comment on the public confusion the story was causing, the chief scientists had said “not our department”. No, surely they would have responded that the judgement of the police had made it very clear that these are not things we should be doing. Not only would that have helped to bolster public compliance with health measures, but it would have told everyone who has made tremendous sacrifices in keeping to the restrictions that they did the right thing and hadn’t been played for fools. It would have sent a clear message, both morally and pragmatically.
Yes, Johnson would have not liked it if they had done this on 28 May. That is not supposed to matter to the CMO and CSA. Their failure was made all the more apparent in the press conference on Saturday 31 May, in which the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam did not duck the inevitable Cummings question, but said, “In my opinion [the rules] are for the benefit of all. In my opinion they apply to all.”
In other words, far from being “apolitical”, the silence of the CMO and CSA was itself deeply political. This is the truth that history has shown science again and again, but which some scientists still resolutely refuse to recognise: remaining silent when you need to speak up is not to remain neutral or aloof from politics. Sometimes it becomes complicity.
The editor of The Lancet Richard Horton has warned that the presence of supposedly independent scientists behind Johnson, Hancock and others as they bend facts and juggle with numbers, evade important questions and now defend the indefensible, risks propping up an incompetent and mendacious government with ersatz authority. But we can now see it is worse than that. The CMO and CSA will not stand up for the many scientists and health workers now concerned that Johnson’s blind support for Cummings, come what may, could wreck efforts to encourage responsible behaviour and so put lives at risk. Even as supposedly “impartial scientists”, they will not dare upset their leaders when it matters most. This will feed public suspicions that science makes itself an indiscriminate servant of whoever is in power. Again, history shows us where that has sometimes ended up.
How can we have any confidence that the latest, scientifically controversial easing of lockdown measures (it's fine to drive across country to see parents!) isn't an attempt to appease the public and blur the memory of what was expected when Cummings transgressed, rather than a carefully considered step? After all, it was obviously to protect Cummings that Hancock made an ad hoc offer retrospectively to “look at” lockdown fines issued against breaches made for childcare reasons.
This demonstration that the CMO and CSA will remain silent on urgent matters of public-health messaging that inconvenience the government renders their positions untenable. They should go – even if that would make them yet another part of the collateral damage caused by Cummings.
Philip Ball really is an excellent science writer.
Lelouch
(ง •̀ゝ•́)ง
Kinda scary how easily brushed aside this all went, Americans have quite simply just forgotten it exists due to George Floyd protests, All Brits are just parking up on beaches because wooo it's sunny, I know it has a low rate due to it being outside but you don't know who has it.
They’re allowed to do it within social distance guidelines.
Stuff like that will be happening all over Europe. I wouldn’t do it but I’m not going to cast judgement.
The government with the connivance of the 'experts' have played loose and free with the number of deaths and still do. They've mess with the figures from the start to hide and mask how bad the fatalities were, and still are.
- Status