United Kingdom VI: Summer Lovin'

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/13/coronavirus-theatres-music-venues-and-beauty-salons-in-england-to-reopen

Cases are on the rise and travel restrictions to other countries are coming back one by one, so the Tories are taking the only action they can.

From Saturday Beauty Salons, Theatres, Music Venues and Softplay Centres will all reopen in a new wave of restriction lifting.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/government-quietly-drops-1-3m-covid-tests-from-england-tally/ar-BB17WSOR?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds

The Government has quietly removed 1.3m tests from the England tally as it turns out... they can't count and have done significantly less of them than originally claimed.

[Dogg Thang]

Had a call this morning with my best mate in Auckland. They're in lockdown now but, man, it's depressing to hear how well they've handled it when we're making such a mess of it over this end of the world. They were 100% back to normal life locally, except where it came to foreigners coming into the country. We could have had that. And actually, with the current wave of xenophobia, it would have fit right in with where the UK is at right now, keeping Johnny Foreigner out - everyone would be a winner, even the racists. But nope.

[fallenangle]

There's irony in that yes but the fact is keeping Johnny Foreigner out and quarantining those Brits stupid enough to have taken holidays abroad at this time is effectively what NZ and some other 'successful' countries have done.

Surprise, surprise they open up to Johnny Foreigner and boom C-19 arrives with him.

Some proof of what I was saying here weeks ago that as lockdown eases you see new infection spikes where isolated populations or groups who've observed strict lockdown rules are suddenly exposed to C-19 for the first time.

No matter what we do, short of total lockdown again that is going to keep on happening until either a vaccine arrives or the whole population has been exposed and those susceptible have died or survived.

Sad but inevitable when you have a prevalent infection with no cure.

[Dogg Thang]

There's irony in that yes but the fact is keeping Johnny Foreigner out and quarantining those Brits stupid enough to have taken holidays abroad at this time is effectively what NZ and some other 'successful' countries have done.

That is exactly what I was saying.

[MartyG]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coron...rtan-dhp-feeds
The Government has quietly removed 1.3m tests from the England tally as it turns out... they can't count and have done significantly less of them than originally claimed.

It's been obvious the number of tests done data has been exagerated for weeks - there is still double counting going on even now as it's number of tests analysed, not number of people tested, which again will be lower than even the adjusted headline figure. At least it is getting adjustment to better reflect the real numbers.

In other news, Imperial College London has been sampling people for antibodies around 100,000 of them. The results show that Gupta is, as expected given the masses of data from other countries, completely wrong about the spread of Covid-19. The tests show that just 6% of the country has been exposed to the virus, not the 50% as spuriously claimed by Gupta.

[Dogg Thang]

Can anyone explain this A-level algorithm thing to me? I don't fully understand what it was and why it happened.

[MartyG]

The government thought it knew better than the teachers so downgraded all the poor students.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/14/coronavirus-infection-rates-levelling-off-english-data-suggests

The Office of National Statistics have announced there is no clear sign that the infection rate in England is rising or falling.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/14/coronavirus-infection-rates-levelling-off-english-data-suggests

In the last 24hrs there have been 1,441 new confirmed cases in the UK, a new record on the march to Second Wave.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/14/gcses-2-million-grades-set-to-be-downgraded-researchers-warn

2 million GCSE's are said to have been downgraded

[Cassius_Smoke]

Interesting article. I think there is a conflict of interest. Neither workers or the managers want workers to return to the office. Businesses could down scale offices and save money and people have a more work/life balance. But the government wants us all to return so we can buy lunch, use shops and public transport.
I think those days are over personally. If productivity is the same, why go to the office? Work is a thing you do, not a place you go.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/13/office-future-britain-commuter-towns-home-working

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-nhs-staff-deaths-secret-cover-up-ministers-a9667156.html

NHS worker death figures are to be kept secret

[Zaki]

I can't believe what's happened to this country.

It's like a sitcom alternate reality episode.

[Zaki]

The government thought it knew better than the teachers so downgraded all the poor students.

Privilege algorithm. More reason to jump off a bridge.
So angry.

[cutmymilk]

Don't believe the downgrading nonsense. We were asked to give realistic grades reflecting the usual results our department would achieve with the cohort we get, year on year, in our area. That's what our department did - we distributed the grades to pretty much match results based on the last 5 years.

Believe it or not, results are always pretty much the same as boundaries are set after marking. And yes, poorer postcode school don't fare as well as other schools for obvious reasons.

Standardisation was needed for this purpose. Schools jumping 10%+ in a year is unheard of, but it will happen this year due to the bad press.

It is absolutely true that some pupils will get Ds when maybe they could have gotten Cs and vice versa, but it was always an impossible task to get it absolutely right. We will never know. Teachers haven't done their job properly by unflating the grades so much, though, and they should be reigned in. That is why some straight A pupils have been marked down - the school gave out too many straight As, and not a few as is usual.