I am glad the government started to test a sample of the population and to re test regularly to construct a time series of the incidence of the disease.
The latest figures for the period 25 May to 7 June show the figure down to just 11 people having a positive test out of the 19,933 people in the sample or 0.06%. These tests exclude hospitals and care homes to capture the position in households.
.
June 13, 2020
I notice the playgrounds, swings, sandpits, and so on are FULL of children this weekend.
The public seem to have given up on government advice.
Is there really any point keeping schools shut when the kids are mixing like this anyways?
The government needs to be either firmer in the rules, or forget it.
June 13, 2020
Clearly the teachers are listening to their unions “advice”… keep the paid holidays going.
June 14, 2020
Japan did not close down and have an excellent in preventing death the record 7 per million!
Sweden did not close down and has a comparative record. If Sweden took better action at its care homes it would also have an excellent record.
No evidence the lockmdown national,arrest policy achieved anything other than wrecking the economy and help shift society left.
June 13, 2020
It is really stupid to keep schools closed.
Teachers have had 3 months to work out how to educate our children safely when a/ they don’t catch the virus and b/ less than 1 in 1000 adults walking the streets have it, maybe 1 in 2000 by now.
I would be quite happy to teach in a school with some light cautionary measures for teachers. For the kids it’s irrelevant
This is a test for this Conservative government of the gullible and inexperienced. Even arch-leftie Blunkett says this is crazy. Get kids back, get the nation working and the police stopping crime instead of kow-towing to it.
June 14, 2020
+1
June 14, 2020
I’ve come across this about the 1918 flu in America –
In 1919, a San Francisco health officer shot 3 people when one refused to wear a mandatory face mask. In Arizona, police handed out $10 fines for those caught without the protective gear. Soon these drastic measures paid off. After implementing a multitude of strict closures and controls on public gatherings, St. Louis, S. Fran. Milwaukee, and Kansas city responded fastest and most effectively: Interventions there were credited with cutting transmission rates by 30 to 50%. NYC which reacted earliest to the crisis with mandatory quarantines and staggered business hours experienced the lowest death rate on the Eastern seaboard.
Death rates were around 50% lower in cities that implemented preventative measures early on versus those which did not. The most effective efforts had simultaneously closed schools, churches, theatres and banned public gatherings. Relaxing intervention too early could cause an otherwise stabilised city to relapse.
June 13, 2020
Schools are shut because of the teacher’s unions.
June 14, 2020
No, they are shut in an attempt to save scores of thousands of lives.
For around sixty thousand British people those efforts have been in vain, however.
This country is shamed once again, by responsible, properly-governed countries around the world, which have saved their peoples from such tragedy.
June 14, 2020
Shut due to panic media, scientists and the likes of you!
Lets ban groups, education, transport and shopping- who knows the Black Death may appear anytime soon.
June 14, 2020
People are starting to query this now Martin. All those people in Dorset on the beach parents, children all mixing all day long no spike, all those in London parks sunbathing weeks ago, no spike, all those blm two weekends shoulder to shoulder shouting – Police officers face to face with them no masks – no spike.
June 14, 2020
The death rate is stuck at about two hundred per day, with thousands of new infections.
The end is nowhere in sight for the UK.
June 14, 2020
â36 reported fatalities today (weekend caveat), the lowest number since the day before lockdown was announced. 77 & 115 the last two Sundays for comparison.â Sikora
June 17, 2020
Martin,
200 a day is totally incorrect. Itâs literally a few people a day which is statistical noise. For children they literally have more chance of being struck by lightning.
NHS Englandâs own data showing 95% have pre âexisting conditionsâ cancer heart attacks renal failure dementia etc
The way this is being recorded is a scandal.
Single doctors allowed to add âcovidâ to the death Certificate after a chat with someone over the phone from a care home where some poor old person died alone with âcoughâ. This automatically becomes a CV death.
Or someone with terminal cancer. Tested daily until they test positive for CV. As the testing is so inaccurate false positives so common that everyone will eventually test positive
June 14, 2020
Depends on the school – my grandson is back in the mornings at his and is loving it. My friends grandson (who lives in different area) is also back. Neither children are ‘key workers’ but both go to well managed state schools. It can be done if there is a desire to do so.
June 14, 2020
@Iain Gill; “the playgrounds, swings, sandpits, and so on are FULL of children this weekend.”
As have the streets around Westminster., and the weekend before…
“Is there really any point keeping schools shut”
Being outdoors is a little different to being inside classrooms.
Just because some unthinking parents allow their children to (metaphorically) play on railway tracks it doesn’t mean the entire nation should!
June 14, 2020
Jerry, we are told there have been teachers working throughout with key workers children, the parents were working throughout the last 11 weeks, how many children in those classes became ill, how many teachers?
June 14, 2020
@a-tracy; You tell me. It’s for those wishing to reopen schools to prove it is safe to reopen them!
June 14, 2020
No itâs for those who want them to remain closed to prove why. Open is the default situation. You have to justify deviation from default.
June 15, 2020
No Lynn, actually the default is Closed, even before this virus, hence why we get school snow-closures etc.
Under H&S laws it is for those who wish others to work or be in a possibly hazardous situation/area to prove that it is safe.
Yours and others logic is asking for a “wrong-side failure”…
June 15, 2020
The Precautionary Principle – which informs most law in rational societies – says that Jerry is correct.
June 17, 2020
I can’t tell you Jerry, all the figures and facts are hidden from public view.
I think we would have been hearing in the BBC Guardian and Independent if there had been an outbreak amongst these key worker children and their teachers.
This whole debacle is very badly handled, if the teachers didn’t want to work in July then put them on holiday and bring them back earlier in August as they do in Scotland.
Teachers should be furloughed max ÂŁ2500 per month.
June 14, 2020
If space is a problem, put some temporary portacabins or similar in the playgrounds.
Not rocket science is it.
June 14, 2020
Iain Gill: The reason the schools are remaining closed is that the hard-left teaching unions have popped up with an unattainable “12 point checklist”, which “must be met in full” before they’ll let teachers return. In effect this means teachers are on indefinite strike, of course, while the rest of us are held to ransom. Perhaps the government would care to treat them with the status that “withdrawing their labour” deserves?
I’ve reached the conclusion that the Left have no reason to be in government as their strategy is to hold all their power and influence at local level, anyway. We voted overwhelmingly for a centre-right Party at the GE, but it rarely touches our lives as huge chunks of the government’s authority has been willingly transferred to the Left at local level, Ă la mayors, etc. Unless the Tories make a concerted effort to shift temporarily to the right to “Take Back Control”, the Brexit Party will rise from the ashes to do it for them. The “battleground” should be in Parliament, not at street level.
June 13, 2020
Most of the population knew this for weeks….
June 13, 2020
Where were those 11 people from?
How did they catch it?
What occupations?
Had they been in to a hospital in the past fortnight?
June 13, 2020
It’s over, release us now.
June 13, 2020
And yet we are still at stage 4 economic lockdown ?
June 14, 2020
@glen cullen; Yes because the virus is still widespread, still viable, what some seem to fail to understand is that the infection rate is low because of the ‘lockdown’ restrictions, not in spite of them.
June 14, 2020
We face economic and cultural devastation in lockdown.
June 14, 2020
@Anonymous; What price do you put on human life?
Culture survives what ever, in fact the CV19 pandemic will have added yet another layer to it, but then you were probably thinking more about the commercialisation of Culture…
June 14, 2020
Don’t you dare tell me what I think.
June 14, 2020
Wrong, Jerry. The latest facts are that the transmission curve was in decline before the lockdown measures were put in place. The infection rate was following its natural decline; and the government lockdown was entirely unnecessary, having no effect on the natural outcome – Canute and the sea. You cannot control Nature – learn to live with it.
June 14, 2020
@JB; Nonsence, otherwise the body count would have decreased, not increased, during April, the infection rate waned because of the lockdown.
June 15, 2020
Nonsense, peak deaths on 08/04, so peak infections would have been at least three weeks earlier so the lockdown did not work…
zorro
June 16, 2020
@zorro; You seem to forget that many businesses started their own informal lockdown measures, such as closing offices in favour of home working, well before the 23rd March official lockdown, along with many elderly who also lockeddown.
The Govt issued their CV(19) “Action Plan” on the 3rd March, so it was the locking down, official or not, that brought the virus under control, if the lockdown was ineffective it was due to govt dithering, seeing that until a few days before the 23rd they were still peddling the herd immunity approach.
June 17, 2020
Try reading about how the way ONS told doctors to record the CV deaths and you will see it is total insanity
Speaking on April 16th the UKâs Chief Scientific Officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, stated:
âIt is worth remembering again that the ONS rates are people whoâve got COVID on their death certificates. It doesnât mean they were necessarily infected because many of them havenât been tested. So we just need to understand the difference.â
The UK State instructed the ONS to record any and all mentions of COVID 19 on the death certificate (MCCD) as COVID 19 mortality. Furthermore, the ONS were told to accept suggested COVID 19 mortality figures from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) even if COVID 19 was not mentioned on the MCCD.
In practice you can reduce the death figures by 95%
June 14, 2020
I agree
June 14, 2020
@JB. Absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree. Nobody who agrees with the lockdown and the decimation of our civil liberties has ever been able to produce a scrap of evidence that these measures reduced the transmission but still we are fed the line that it is somehow “obvious”
June 14, 2020
Most of the rest of the modern world of evidence and reason-based societies completely disagree – and they have beaten or are beating this menace to prove it.
You want to join Brazil etc.
Your wish is being granted as I write.
June 14, 2020
Yes, because there are thousands of new cases and hundreds of deaths every, single day.
This survey strikes me as highly selective and therefore meaningless.
June 13, 2020
Does the government know or want to know what the % is in hospital and care home staff? This would be easier to test, but perhaps it it was much higher they would put other patients coming back for treatment.
June 14, 2020
I see it is now estimated that some 20% of all cases were acquired by those in hospitals. That is both patients and staff. The staff will have been the main spreaders (including among themselves), because patients are mainly confined to their beds. Patients already hospitalised for other reasons are of course particularly vulnerable, and much more likely to suffer a serious case or even die. These infections are likely to have resulted in a much higher proportion of deaths. We already have some data on NHS staff on this.
June 13, 2020
Fine comments JR, except that as recent events show, Covid 19 is no longer the enemy…..left wing biased police and left wing government masquerading as conservatives are the real enemy.
I don’t know why Boris hides it, may as well come clean and show the ‘conservative’ party for what it is.
Boris can have the police take no action against left wing thugs viciously attacking our history and culture, but when we defend it the police do their best to stop us doing so.
Maybe it’s because we don’t throw pyrotechnics, bricks and ironmongery at horses, eh. After all that seems to guarantee police protection these days doesn’t it.
Dont blame us if we become ‘radicalised’
Coronavirus, pah ! it’s a cover for the greatest coup in history.
June 14, 2020
Extremism on both sides is the problem. Priti shouldn’t have made such big deal of slave-trader statue – fuelled the anger on both sides.
June 14, 2020
Steve, it makes you wonder if the police gave permission for the very large organised gathering in Brighton yesterday? They started well with their social distancing organisation but it soon turned to chaos all in each otherâs space, no police with helmets on, where did they all go to the toilet no mention of them having no toilets nearby! No kettling, no restrictions on where this organisation could be. This lockdown is becoming a joke now. If there is no spike then forget locking those people previously obeying âthe rulesâ up any longer! Theyâre making our government look foolish.
June 13, 2020
Interesting piece on Matt Ridley’s blog relating that pandemics die out as milder strains win over the more lethal ones because those catching the latter stay at home and don’t infect anyone whereas those with milder forms go out and infect others – UNLESS there is lockdown wrecking this beneficial evolution.
Thus lockdown may have made the pandemic worse.
June 15, 2020
Of course it did – that was the plan. Ruin people’s immune systems and make them vulnerable
zorro
June 13, 2020
âThe latest figures for the period 25 May to 7 June show the figure down to just 11 people having a positive test out of the 19,933 people in the sample or 0.06%. â
How convenient.
It has been quite useful to keep people isolated for elites that seek to maintain control. They donât have to worry about the economic consequences.
Black Lives Matter are exempt from Lockdown. They are useful for a âDivide and Rule â policy. Get rid of the nationâs statues and history. Then you can start again from Year Zero.
Meanwhile, all the sheep will have been conditioned to accept laughable instructions from the government who make it all up as they go along.
A second wave can be magicked up in Autumn/Winter by reclassifying flu symptoms. Maybe have another mini Lockdown to reinforce the message ?
What a carry on.
June 14, 2020
Ah, I thought it was only me who could see the authoritarian scam we see now under way using the CV-19 as justification
Tories in government but not in power and are now forced to assist the fascist sub-State created by Blair (and to construct it that it is beyond democratic accountability) in 1997 to impose cultural Marxism on the majority who are now held in complete contempt
The NHS. The wonder of the world. Except for Mids-Staff. And er, Morecambe. And er……
Keep clapping as you walk towards your subjugation
June 13, 2020
Although disappointing news from:
– Tokyo, where there are 20+ new infections for the third day in a row (following recently lifted business restrictions), and
– Beijing, where there is a new outbreak apparently linked to Xinfadi meat/seafood market with 6 initial cases- of which contact tracing found 45 close contact friends/family members who also tested positive (all showing no symptoms as yet).
No doubt our SAGE experts are ready for similar occurences here.
June 14, 2020
Are you aware, that those outbreaks – which were expected and for which plans were made – are only about one thousandth of the daily new cases in the UK?
If only the UK were in such a blessed position.
June 13, 2020
Your post does not make sense.
June 13, 2020
End it. Likewise in Wales and SCotland and N. Ireland. Families are still forcibly separated by differences of opinion in these nations’ assemblies. All we are getting is “you can form social bubbles”….I don’t want to form a “bubble” with anyone other than my own relatives who are scattered across the four nations.
June 13, 2020
Prof Karol Sikora has pointed out in an interesting interview with the Telegraphâs Liam Halligan that in the U.K., unlike most countries in Europe eg Germany, deaths are still recorded as they were 50 years ago on paper and not digitally. It is amazing. âCovidâ has been put on death certs whenever there is the slightest suspicion of death by Wuhan virus. And not even by medical professionals, sometimes by coroners by phone. In Germany the end of life medical team has positively to confirm the virus as the cause of death.
So no wonder the stats are all over the place. Prof Sikora thinks the actual level of Wuhan virus deaths in the U.K. is probably 20,000+, and most of the 60k excess deaths so far recorded are probably due to the lockdown (eg untreated cancers etc).
We will see the proper statistics in September apparently. There will doubtless be much to criticise, but the BBC / left narrative of how much worse the UK is will be shown to be false.
June 14, 2020
“19,933 people in the sample”
Out of a UK population of 67,886,004….
June 14, 2020
Jerry
Exactly !
June 14, 2020
Apparently picked to exclude anyone likely to get covid19 too.
June 14, 2020
The public have decided already.
The Tories are crushing the economy out of spite now.
(That may or may not be true but it will be Labour’s claim from now on and you deserve it.)
The People gave you an 80 seat majority to start to free us from the Leftism that has a grip on every institution.
We now have regime change replete with the imprisonment of our people, the removal of statues, the boarding up of beloved monuments and the vilification of anyone who wants to stand up for them.
June 14, 2020
+1
June 14, 2020
The boarding up of Churchill’s statue and the Cenotaph are a humiliation of our people.
June 14, 2020
Tories like Priti lost support over making big deal of slave-trading statue. But the left-wing protestors lost HUGE support the moment they went near Winston Churchill’s statue.
Most Tory votets love / admire Churchill (especially me). Most Tory voters ashamed / don’t want to be reminded of slave trade.
June 14, 2020
‘The boarding up of Churchillâs statue and the Cenotaph are a humiliation of our people.’
– Well said. But NOT the desecration of a slave-trading statue.
June 14, 2020
@Anonymous; “The public have decided already. “
Indeed, that is why so many, the majority, are dutifully following the ‘lockdown’ rules/guidance!
“That may or may not be true but it will be Labourâs claim from now on and you deserve it.”
Surely better that then another, possible, claim,Tory anti-lockdown polices cost lives…
“The People gave you an 80 seat majority to start to free us from the Leftism that has a grip on every institution. ”
The electorate did no such thing, many otherwise leftwing voters [1], gave BoJo a 80 seat majority to “Get Brexit Done”, that is all, because BoJo talked about little else and his friends (when he still had friends) in the MSM even dutifully called it “The Brexit Election”.
[1] many of whom were eurosceptic or outright europhobic when Thatcher was still touting EEC/EU membership as our future
June 14, 2020
Not where I am. Lockdown is but a memory.
We’ll open the pubs even if the government don’t . We see how they respond to violence.
June 14, 2020
I’ll support that. I’m insensed at the betrayals evident all around, the weakness, the appeasement of Marxist mobs for there is no doubt that is what we are faced with, a grievance hijacked and manipulated, as is the way, and our pathetic leaders fall for it, encouraged by the Fifth Column. We are at a moment if this doesn’t change we are lost, our ways removed. Why are opponents vilified?
We need big figures in politics to speak up again and again in speeches not soundbites, where are they? I suppose as always with every single Tory, the party comes before principle, freedom and morality. Even if the country and people go down, the party must survive.
June 14, 2020
“Beloved?
You hadn’t the faintest who these people were until the media brought them to your attention.
June 14, 2020
What a patronising comment, MinC. Just because YOU don’t know your history and may have no interest in it, doesn’t mean other people are as ignorant.
For my part, statues and monuments are very important landmarks in our country. If you don’t feel the same, that’s your loss, but don’t tar everyone with your own brush.
June 14, 2020
The faulty crystal ball out again Martin? Your superior education that you told us about obviously allows you to know the whole population’s knowledge and feelings.
June 14, 2020
True Conservatism is to love one country’s as opposed to hate left-wingers.
True liberalism is to love one’s country as opposed to hate right-wingers.
We need to get rid of both forms of extremism in this country that’s more about hating some group as opposed to truly loving one’s country and / or liberty.
June 14, 2020
Are the Cenotaph and Churchill not beloved ?
No wonder the Left couldn’t win through the ballot box and now win by violence and slander.
Learn to read proprly ( my original post.)
June 14, 2020
I look forward to Rishi Sunak becoming Tory leader and PM. He comes across as light years ahead of Boris and his cronies in terms of business / leadership skills.
June 14, 2020
11 out of 20K randomly sampled is good news. What were the figures previously for a similar random sample?
Can you shed light on why the daily number of hospitalisations is rising?
June 14, 2020
They weren’t randomly sampled.
Read John’s post more carefully.
June 14, 2020
@MiC; Actually it is you who should read our hosts post more carefully, but then context and nuance are not your strong point are they?
Yes, no one in hospitals or care homes were selected for testing, that’s the point! We need to know how many people on “Civvy-Street” have (or ideally, has had) CV19.
Next you’ll be complaining the govts figures do not include those from HMP’s either – try thinking about it for a few seconds…
My objection is not this “Civvy-Street” testing, I called the the numbers last week in fact, but the woeful sampling rate, Circa 20k is hardly a good sample rate for the Greater London area alone [1], never mind England as a whole.
[1] av. 600 people per district, most of which have high urban density
June 14, 2020
My post makes perfect sense. I was correcting the wrong use of the word “random” by the original poster, not responding generally to John’s piece.
I think that I’ll go with the independent scientific consensus, not with the Government, nor with their PR wing.
June 14, 2020
@MiC; You comment makes no sense and your follow up makes even less, having totally missed the point I was making -not for the first time.
June 14, 2020
The sample was carefully constructed to be as representative of the country as possible, and results weighted where that was not possible. You can read about it here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/12june2020
June 15, 2020
@Mark; How can the ONS “weight” an unknown-unknown (variables), surely, statistically it is only possible to “weight” known-knowns!
June 14, 2020
Also, the desecration of King Charles I was far worse than the desecration of a slave-trade statue in Bristol. It was divisive, unBritish / anti-patriotic.
Not forgetting the Parliamentarians consisted of Puritans who were anti Patriots (they saw ‘love as country’ as worldly), anti the Monarchy as well as containing proto-Communists (Levellers / Diggers).
The Royalists weren’t perfect but things could have been improved over time instead of desecrating King Charles I.
June 14, 2020
‘We must not be led by Victorian writers into regarding this triumph of the Ironsides and of Cromwell as a kind of victory for democracy and the Parliamentary system over Divine Right and Old World dreams. It was the triumph of some twenty thousand resolute, ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics over all that England has ever willed or wished. Long years and unceasing irritations were required to reverse it … had led only to the autocracy of the sword.’
– Sir Winston Churchill
June 14, 2020
‘We must not be led by Victorian writers into regarding this triumph of the Ironsides and of Cromwell as a kind of victory for democracy and the Parliamentary system over Divine Right and Old World dreams … had led only to the autocracy of the sword.’
– Sir Winston Churchill
June 14, 2020
@Ed M; “Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day
passes without it being extolled, but some people’s
idea of it is that they are free to say what they like,
but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”
Winston Churchill, Speech, HoC, Oct. 13, 1943
June 14, 2020
When is the UK government going to publish reports of the number of recovered COVID-19 patients in the way that most other countries do?
Does it possibly think that good news is bad for us?
June 14, 2020
@LMcD; The govt has made no secrete that most people are not hospitalised, and many have slight or no symptoms. which is why the 2m separation is so vital.
The data you ask for is published -assuming a clue or two on the part of those reading it- take the total number tested, subtract the total number of deaths, the difference is the number whose immune systems have destroyed the CV19 virus. That said, beating the virus, for some, is just the start or their “recovery”.
June 14, 2020
The boarding up of Churchillâs statue and the Cenotaph are a humiliation of our people.
>
That is the idea, do not bite.
June 14, 2020
I totally agree with you.
Ive mentioned before I feel part of the reduction in deaths is because Hospitals have a much better understanding of Covid 19 and its affect on individual patients so are able to give more effective treatment especially in Intensive Care.
Also people are generally observing social distancing (ok there are exceptions)
The 2 m rule needs to be 1m
Hospitality sector needs to be opened ASAP with may be some additional Gov support as its a vital industry in terms of economy.
14 day quarantine should be scrapped
June 14, 2020
Makes you wonder why we are locked down with the economy going down the pan.
June 14, 2020
My latest map with today’s data shows even more decline in cases:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5LwC7/1/
Just a hotspot at Tameside, but even that is not serious, and almost certainly linked to a particular institution.
Of course, it is a Sunday, so perhaps there will be some pickup during the week. But now roughly half the country’s local authorities have had 2 or fewer new cases in the week, and almost 20% have had no new cases for a week or more.
June 15, 2020
The areas such as Dover and Ashford have higher numbers of cases which presumably come to hospitals. The same occurs in the councils in east London which contain the container ports.
June 14, 2020
How is it that places of worship can reopen but schools cannot? Are celebrations of religious nonsense more useful than mind enhancing learning?