Whitty and his predictions

[avenueq]

It's being said everywhere now that Sage and Whitty wanted a full two week lockdown three weeks ago and were overruled,
but if that was based on the graphs they presented at the time have they not already been proved wrong? They said we'd be at close to 50000 infections a day by now... but we're not!!

I listened to radio 5 the day that Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance did the report. They were very clear on saying it wasnt a prediction but it could happen.
The moment they had finished the presenter said "50k that's very stark figure and I imagine that's what all the headlines will be tomorrow..." so absolutely treating it as a prediction.

Boris also said we'd be testing 500K a day by the end of October and that's no where near happening.

Test (if you can get one) are taking longer to come back. Last week only 25% were coming back within 24 hours.

For example I live in Bedfordshire and the testing people have gone from a 7 day a week testing centre to a 4 day a week testing. So how is that helpful if you can only test Monday to Thursday.

I think we are closer to the 50k a day if not higher as lot people have no symptom's. And the Government world beating track and trace are beyond crap.

Those charts were based on doing nothing, we have taken some measures so you’d hope the numbers would be lower. Of course if we’d taken stronger measures they’d hopefully be even lower. To be fair though, we’re not all that far off anyway, maybe moving a week or two slower.

They predicted what would happen if cases continued to rise at the rate that they were rising at the time.

New restrictions were put in place (rule of six, curfews and local restrictions).

Cases then started to rise at a slower rate. The restrictions slowed down the rate that cases are rising. Therefore the number of cases we have now.

I don’t understand why people don’t get this!

Is this the stuff from the a couple of weeks ago when they talked about the doubling of infections? Then they said clearly is wasn’t a a prediction but a possibility.

@frumpety

I am not sure we do test more than most other countries , because aren't we also counting tests sent out but not necessarily completed and antibody tests in our numbers ? *@sashagabadon*

Our testing numbers are for PCR tests only now. It is stated on the dashboard.

Additionally 50k positives in a day would mean 100s of thousands of negatives. There's only so many tests a day that they can process so we'd never see 50k positive on a given day as the official figure.

100% agree with you @tokyosushi

@cathyandclare do you know when they stopped including the serology antibodies tests in the numbers ?

@frumpety- I'm not sure, but I noticed a couple of weeks or so ago that they specified PCR numbers. I think it was around the time that there was lots of pressure on testing, because that was when I was closely watching the figures.

There's been lots of shambolic stuff, but it does look like the reporting is more transparent now.