Opinions on how the Government have handled the coronavirus outbreak

[slinger]

The fiddling bastards are at it again. Remember how a pair of gloves counted as two items of PPE, and a test in the mail counted in their stats? Now we have yet another example of "creative accounting" from the Conservatives.

Tens of thousands of Covid-19 tests have been double-counted in the Government’s official tally, public health officials have admitted.

Diagnostic tests which involve taking saliva and nasal samples from the same patient are being counted as two tests, not one.

The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England each confirmed the double-counting.

This inflates the daily reported diagnostic test numbers by over 20 per cent, with that proportion being much higher earlier on in the crisis before home test kits were added to the daily totals.

Almost 350,000 more tests have been reported in Government data than people tested since the start of the pandemic.

The discrepancy is in large part explained by the practice of counting salvia and nasal samples for the same individual twice.

Public Health England oversee the testing of patients who are seriously ill in hospital, as well as the most critical key workers.

The test involves a swab from the mouth and nose as well as a sample of saliva. Although both of these are taken from the same patient, they are counted twice by the Government in its daily data.

It is not the first time the Government has been caught massaging the testing data. It was accused last month of including thousands of home tests which had been posted but not completed in a bid to reach its target of 100,000 tests.

Jon Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Ministers have already received an embarrassing slap on the wrists for their dodgy spin on testing figures. It seems they haven’t learnt their lesson. We need absolute transparency in the presentation of these figures”.

The Government announced at the beginning of May that it would be extending its target from 100,000 tests per day to 200,000 tests per day. But so far it has only hit the 100,000 target nine times in the 20 days since its introduction.

Global health experts said the Government should stop fixating on its arbitrary targets and instead focus on making testing work to drive down Covid-19 infections in the UK.

PHE said that there were other reasons why one person may receive more than one test. These included repeating a test after receiving inconclusive results and double-checking a negative result.

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[karatestu]

Disgusting. Is this incompetence part of the plan ? Lying bastards.

[SteveTheShadow]

It’s not a plan. It’s how target target-driven culture works, pure and simple. When you set targets, you get figures being massaged, and people outright lying to make themselves look good. End of story. I saw it all too often as a teacher.

Successive governments of both colours have been addicted to this US imported claptrap, since the mid-to-late 1980s. This means that the likes of Hancock, Gove, Johnson, Patel and anyone else in their age group or younger, simply don’t know how to operate any other way.

In a target-driven, performance-led, career structure, bullshit is everything and admitting mistakes is not an option; “deflect, distract and blame“ is the standard cover-up method for incompetence. Someone further down the food chain will always carry the can. That’s how you rise up in any organisation and these people are absolute masters of the craft of bullshit, but utterly inept in any real world, practical situation. You see it right across this government and right across British and American management structures.

[slinger]

That's the second u-turn in as many days too. They published their approach to the Northern Ireland border protocol yesterday, saying "some checks will be needed," as opposed to saying that there would "absolutely not" be any checks on the border between North Ireland and the Irish Republic after Brexit in 2019.

The third u-turn...

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... FeYcE-KpGb

They're so f*cked up I'm having trouble keeping up.

[slinger]

Herd immunity by the back door ?

[slinger]

Herd immunity by the back door ?

It could be even more basic, Stu, simply a case of "couldn't give much of a crap about the plebs," maybe?

[CN211276]

Widly reported that Demonic Cummings travelled to Durham during the lockdown when he was showing Covid 19 symptoms. This has to be the end of him.

[slinger]

Widly reported that Demonic Cummings travelled to Durham during the lockdown when he was showing Covid 19 symptoms. This has to be the end of him.

In your dreams. He'll get a slap on the wrist if that. One rule for them...

[CN211276]

Widly reported that Demonic Cummings travelled to Durham during the lockdown when he was showing Covid 19 symptoms. This has to be the end of him.

In your dreams. He'll get a slap on the wrist if that. One rule for them...

He is the most hated person in the country. The longer he stays around the worse it will be for Johnson and the Government. The opposition have to go to town big time on this. This is far worse than the cases of others who ignored the lockdown and resigned. He travelled 260 miles with the virus and would have come into contact with people. There can be no excuses.

[slinger]

I hope he gets sacked, I really do, but they've got a nasty habit of not giving a shit when it's one of their own.