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Here you go Stolly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
Get yourself a nice rare T Bone, a couple of bottles of Timmy Taylors and strap yourself in :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cABqG-BO9k8
see if we can recalibrate you - you seem to be malfunctioning :p
I don't eat steak unfortunately Witton (pescatarian :rolleyes:) and am temporarily off beer too, even Timmy Taylors, trying forlornly to regain my hill running fitness. I tried that youtube video and even agreed with the first few points that they made - not letting people play tennis and golf is definitely daft and personally I'd also like gyms open too - but then they went off on one and it all went pear shaped from there...Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
Maybe halibut then. A nice meaty fish :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
Have a good weekend. Looks like being a soggy one.
Why unfortunately? Scallops, lobster, oysters...why eat animal corpses? And I understand fine white burgundy is virtually calorie free.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
I’m obviously still drinking wine Graham :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham Breeze
Up here in Teesdale, Barnard Castle council have had the foresight to invite Dom to be the 'celeb' to turn the Christmas Lights on this year, given that he's done so much to promote the town's profile internationally. We've not heard back from him yet - I guess he'll see! I suppose he might be a bit worried about.... (ahem), making a 'spectacle' of himself. Mind you, he has plenty of 'contacts' so the future looks rosy for him, or is that a smudge?
I promise to stop now :rolleyes:
Schadenfreude ill becomes you!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
:)
Apparently, he's already been appointed as a Speccy Adviser to Barnard Castle Town Council.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
True, but sometimes sooooo nutritiousQuote:
Originally Posted by Graham Breeze
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d8/f9/2b/d...unny-stuff.jpg
:D
There are apparently 53 cases at Sedbergh School - I am not sure of the pupil/teacher breakdown - it has 550 odd pupils - and the plan is, if they are boarders, to send them home. How to spread a bug!
From the BBC: Having tested nearly 100,000 people, Liverpool mass-testing finds 700 cases with no symptoms. So, allowing for false negatives, about 1% of the population.
My son's best friend's older brother is a boarder at Sedbergh and he's not odd Mike!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike T
He's a good lad and as well as his rugby also does a bit of running.
I'll have to check whether he his home so that I can isolate my son from his younger brother.
I'd love to see your maths.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike T
https://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co...d-19-outbreak/Quote:
Originally Posted by Llani Boy
"53 pupils have so far tested positive for Covid-19 after an outbreak at a school."
and
"At the time of writing, a total of 53 pupils have been confirmed as having Covid-19"
see the subtle difference, the drift?
"The vast majority were asymptomatic" which suggests a few have some cold/flu symptoms which would be par in a school at this time of year.
False negatives are about 30%. So "true" cases about 910 - for simplicity let's call it 1,000. The 100,000 figure has already been rounded up - from what I am not sure. 1,000/100,000 = 1/100 = 1%. The assumption is that the 700 are a representative sample of the people in Liverpool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
All I think Mike T is saying is that approximately 1% of the population of Liverpool had covid without realising it. Obviously Liverpool has been hard hit so 1% isn’t a sensible figure necessarily for the whole country but, if it were, that would be getting on for 660,000 people still able to pass on covid without realising it
It’s just another reason to add to the list as to why the disease manages to spread so easily
Add in the symptomatic cases - at or above 1% in the NW, NE, Yorkshire and the Midlands.
And that 10% rate at Sedbergh school is quite a worry.
False negatives 30%? Where do you get that from?
Anyway, you need context.
The 100,000 tests seem to be split.
Attachment 8865
New LFT Test (claimed to be 99.7% accurate) shows 80% fewer cases than standard PCR test (as used in Sedbergh and rest of UK)
So maybe this will help our decision makers get their act together, although I doubt it. They are too invested in the current track of lockdown until vaccine.
I just googled false negative results and the 30% estimate is now looking out of date with something around 8% thought to be more likely now. On the flip side, false positive results are estimated to apply to something like 0.8% of tests.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
So the system, by those figures, identifies 10 times as many as falsely negative than it identifies as falsely positive.
So, as we've said before in the current situation, false positives aren't as much of an issue as false negatives.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
However, if we get to a situation of very low infection rates, but very high levels of screening, false positives become (relatively) more important.
NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!Quote:
Originally Posted by noel
Take the Liverpool LFT which has showed 0.61% incidence. Just assume this is accurate and reflects the level of infection in the community.
With Stolly's googled figures you go out and test 10,000 people with the PCR test.
You should find 61 cases.
But you will get 56 that will be positive ie the 61 less 8% false negatives.
Then you will get another 80 dues to the 0.8% rate of False Positives on 9939 at 0.8%.
So instead of 61, you get 136. More than double.
If you look at the actual PCR figures, assuming LFT is accurate, the PCR test is running at more like 2.5% False Positive in the Liverpool area.
Maybe higher if the False Negative rate is more towards Mike's figure.
Of course that could be because the 0.8% refers to "in lab" but there are further errors creep in due to operator errors.
Those who are asymptomatic are having the "lateral flow" test. I have had a look around to try and find its false negative rate, and the commonest figure seemed to be 30%.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
There is this, from the BMJ: " A preliminary evaluation from Porton Down and Oxford University9 throws little light on its performance in asymptomatic people or in the field. It suggests the test misses between one in two and one in four cases."
The theory that the PCR test is attended only by symptomatic folk is just wrong. It's certainly wrong in Blackburn as I know people who have booked on without symptoms over a period of 3 months.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike T
I've asked some why they've done it. Just to know seems to be the main reason, although I suspect one or two of them fancied a couple of weeks off work.
One bloke at my wife's work had a test because his daughter had a runny nose.
Consider this Mike - you talk of the False Negative rate, with the False Positive rate of 0.8% you can go out and test 100,000 people.
You will get 800 positive tests.
Do you know what the top rate is at the moment?
It's Kingston upon Hull. The rate is 754 per 100,000.
A Covid free area could top the National Chart.
We can never escape this until they wake up from their trance.
You seem to be looking at this purely from the point of numbers. Having to self-isolate for two weeks is a minor inconvenience when compared with contracting a disease that kills 1% of people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
It's not solely about how large the numbers are, it's about how large the numbers are multiplied by the effect of those numbers.
To put it another way:
In situations/areas with high covid levels, mass screening leads to:
False negatives (relatively common) multiplied by a substantial number of people dying = very serious
False positives (more common than false negatives) multiplied by a substantial number needing to self isolate = significant hassle, but not as much of an issue as the impact of false negatives
Whereas:
In situations/areas with very low covid levels:
false negatives (less common, because fewer people have it) = less serious than above
false positives same as above and [relatively] more of a problem when viewed against very low numbers of false negatives.
Do you see what I mean? The conclusion I would draw is that mass testing is a good idea in areas of high covid infection.
I understand that the infection mortality rate is around 0.05% among healthy people under 70.
I'm looking at it from what I perceive to be common sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by noel
But looking at your points.
It doesn't kill 1%.
The highest covid levels based on the current Government stats are in Kingston upon Hull as set out earlier. But it's a house built on sand.
How do we know?
Even in that area, they put it as 754 per 100,000 per week.
0.7% incidence according to the Govt figures based on PCR tests.
That is your area with high covid level. Less than 1% per week. It is a lot, but the dangers of mass screening with the PCR test are clear.
Hull might be clear. How will we know?
With the PCR test there is really no way of knowing with any degree of certainty which areas are high, moderate, low, or free of it.
I know you like a good argument WP, but I'm unsure what your overall point is. Are you against testing? against mass testing? or just pointing out that we need better tests? If the latter - I think we all agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
I was wondering that too?Quote:
Originally Posted by noel
My rough rule of thumb though is that Witton is typically for things I’m strongly against and against things I’m strongly for :)
We can discuss the false results/types of tests until the cows come home - this is the result - from yesterday - that really matters:Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
- Cases: 1,410,732 (+20,051)
- Deaths: 52,745 (+598)
That so little fuss is being made of these daily deaths is extraordinary.
You started it with the 30% False negative ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike T
So the cases were the lowest for 2 weeks.
As for the deaths, people die, 11,812 in England and Wales last week declared, week 46.
It's extraordinary that when it happened in 2015 and 2018 from flu, we didn't hear a dicky-bird.
https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/ur...ths-last-year/
Stolly - My rough rule of thumb is that you and Noel can be so close to being on the same page as me, and then you blow it by making an assertion that doesn't stack up with what you've said even in the same post.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
First paragraph - OK let's accept that. The conclusion in paragraph 2 is misleading.
Based on your 8% and 0.8% you would need 9% of people to be infected in the population before the False Negatives became statistically more significant than the False Positives.
That's more than 10x the declared rate of infection even in the hottest of UK hotspots.
Noel -
"So, as we've said before in the current situation, false positives aren't as much of an issue as false negatives.
However, if we get to a situation of very low infection rates, but very high levels of screening, false positives become (relatively) more important."
First paragraph - you see it's wrong. The rate of false positives might be much lower, but it is a far more significant number because of the low prevalence of covid in the community.
So to say FPs aren't as much of an issue is incorrect.
When you are talking about lower rates and higher rates, we haven't even come anywhere near the higher rates at which false positives become less significant than false negatives.
I'll say it again, because it doesn't seem to have registered.
Taking Stolly's rates, you can go and test in any town in the UK and False Positives will place it at the top of the charts. It will be the hottest of hotspots in the UK with 800 cases per 100,000 population.
So I'm against bad testing, which is what we have with the PCR test.
The results of the testing have driven UK Government policy and world policy for 6 months.
And the experts at SAGE and our Government act as if there is nothing to see here.
This is a timely chart from the ONS. Deaths this year vs the 5 year average. On that basis we are controlling the second wave better than the first, although deaths are now ticking up a bit
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EnBDUm0W...jpg&name=large
The excess deaths though still amount to the equivalent of three first days of the Somme
Mmmh. Is that what might be called the "nuclear argument"?:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
Yes it is illustrative - although in several of the 5 years used to produce the average the bars would be similarly higher than the average and possibly there was a year where - apart from the huge peaks in April /May - a similar chart for an individual "bad flu year" would show a similar one year pattern not vastly different to 2020?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellbeast
We have been through the excess winter deaths story - most are not due to flu.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
From Chris Giles, Economics Editor, FT:
"We should recognise that Covid-19 is linked to around 75,000 UK deaths since mid March, not the wholly fictious government number of 52,147.
@BBCNews
and others should stop using that figure. The fact it is written down daily on a government website doesn't make it true."
I agreeQuote:
Originally Posted by Mike T
spot on Graham.Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham Breeze
2018 was worse than 2020.
and also where the excess deaths are occurring needs to be considered.
They aren't happening in hospital.
They are happening at home.
Probably a good time to compare how the actual figures are doing against the four "scenarios" that were presented on 31st October as part of the justification for lockdown in England.Quote:
Originally Posted by Witton Park
Seven day average figures to 17th November:
University of Warwick = 541
University of Cambridge/PHE = 2,409
Imperial College London = 890
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine 701
See Data to accompany slides presented by Chief Scientific Advisor
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...1-october-2020
Actual for England by reporting date = 354
So actual figures much lower than the most optimistic scenario.
Graham there’s a huge whopping hole in that argument - they are the excess deaths taking into account all of the lockdowns and restrictions imposed since the end of March. You know March when the excess deaths hadn’t even taken off on the chart. You do realise that the figures would now be astronomical without all of the actions taken don’t you? And that our NHS would be trashed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham Breeze