Barry the Badger

They can test positive because all NHS staff are being tested at least twice weekly pro-actively.

Fair enough, that’s what I was missing then!

Ah thanks, that makes sense but pretty useless on their part (not that I’m surprised) to get it so wrong and give completely the wrong impression.

I see the media are leading with the headlines of hospital numbers being their highest since March. It's an attention grabbing headline but the numbers have barely risen over the past 2 weeks despite the panic predictions. Also as far as I can see, this is innacurate https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-number-of-people-in-hospital-with-coronavirus-in-england-hits-highest-level-since-march-12504769 " The number stood at 8,474 as of 8am on Monday, according to NHS England. This is up 27% from a week earlier and is the highest number since 5 March, when the country was under tough lockdown restrictions." https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare According to the 'patients in hospital' graph here though, it looks to me that it's only the highest since 16th November. Also last Monday the figure was 7825, so 8474 is about an 8% rise not a 27% rise. Am I missing something here?

For once I actually think he's doing the right thing. It would've been wrong to introduce a lockdown based on worst case scenarios, given that we know how hard lockdown impacts people, mental health and businesses (probably even more so at Christmas). Seems like a genuinely sensible approach to keep a close eye on the stats and wait and see this time, then react quickly if it does actually seem like hospitalisations are increasing (the national stats show no signs of this yet).

Once again they fail to report on how many tests gave that result, making it impossible to know whether the prevalence seems to be going up or down. # of cases is a somewhat useless stat on it's own, so it annoys me that everybody continues to cling to it.

Sorry to break it to you mate but we never will

Well, positive tests are up certainly, whether that actually means there's more covid out there is debatable. 16th November - Tests taken 807,598, positive tests 45,444 (5.6% of tests positive) 16th December - Tests taken 1,598,910, positive tests 76,329 (4.7% of tests positive) Cases in the UK | Coronavirus in the UK (data.gov.uk) You could argue that more people are taking tests because there are more people with symptoms, but equally it could be people taking tests ahead of travelling for christmas, or driven by the fear over omicron. I'm not convinced that the cases hitting record highs is a sign of there being more covid out there, just of people panicking and taking tests (or at least that's a major factor)

Feels like sage are losing the plot to be honest. Seems as though they're so worried about it turning out they should've recommended a lock down but didn't, they now go into panic mode every time anything happens and making ridiculous worst case predictions. Remember in early/mid October they were crapping themselves about rising cases and throwing around scary numbers? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/22/act-early-on-rising-uk-covid-cases-rise-or-face-harsher-measures-experts-warn What happened then? People in hospital went up from about 7000 to about 9000, hardly worth the panic was it!

I am no fan of VAR but they have to draw a line somewhere so that doesn’t sound like lunacy to me

Gotta love saintsweb, thanks for cheering me up by making up your own definition of a near post goal and then swearing that everybody else is wrong

Red vs Green is not good for my eyes. I have no idea what’s happening at corners!

When I got my flu jab this year I was quite impressed. They did it on a Saturday, you booked in for a time, walked up to the door and somebody checked you were on the list, then ushered into the next available room, walked in, nurse administered jab, then ushered out. I would be surprised if I was in the building for 60 seconds. They must’ve done hundreds of people in that day.

Exactly this. If it’s anything like the call centre I worked at, the people there will be under pressure to meet nonsense targets and so everybody will be engaged in a game of trying to inflate their numbers rather than applying any degree of thought to the work.

Although it’s annoying, the reason it’s mentioned is because the club stuck with Ralph and we are now doing great, it is a good and unusual story. Sunderland just continued to sink like a stone so it was nowhere near as interesting.