And there is no Saturday post tomorrow, so these tests will be stuck in the system

Making people self test is a farce. A lot will not do it properly. I mean who is really going to stick the thing right to the back to the point that its very unpleasant?

I think there will be a lot of false negatives.

Gavin very kindly posts those figures daily, along with the percentages showing they’re down from yesterday.  I don’t know whether he gets those percentages from somewhere, or just does the maths himself.  But either way, they’re false. 

And meanwhile we have the highest death toll in Europe and second highest in the world behind Trump

Yet the entire media is praising the govt for reaching this nonsensical self imposed target, and as I said, self testing is not going to produce accurate results

That is how it appears to be being done at the drive through facilities based on the tv news pictures.

I think there are enough on here privy to certain information about schools who will get to know when things will be happening, and before it is properly out there (do keep us informed!). 1st May today and after the next half term schools would resume a month today on June 1st. So there's that decision of allowing schools to open for 6-7 weeks before they close again for the Summer holidays. It's a difficult call and the numbers would drive any return. Would classrooms remain exactly the same as before. If desks were apart could the kids mix at break. In all you can't really see any social distancing in schools given the sheer volume of kids to the size of premises. Imagine if there was an outbreak of the disease amongst the kids and there were fatalities, what a blame game there would be then and the fall out from that, schools would also shut up shop straight away. My guess is they won't open now until September for that reason perhaps, but even then what will be happening then may drive that decision.

As regards to relaxing of restrictions expected next Thursday, as with previous govt announcements there is usually a drip feed of information released, leaked, what have you before these so when it comes to the actual announcement, none are really that much of a 'surprise'. It seems to be a little easier to take when we know what's coming. I expect over the weekend we will gain knowledge for some of these and other parts daily until Thursday when the PM will tell us what we already know by then.

The worst part of this is screwing with the statistics.

At the end of the day the govt would meet its target on May 4th rather than April 30th. Isn't necessary to bodge the statistics.

It seems to be slowly dawning on the media, probably not Laura K though, that they’ve been had. 

The most worrying thing is we are still getting 6000 positives daily. I could be wrong but in the last few days hospital numbers tentatively look to be stabilising? (From memory so could be mistaken).

overall no change around here: country lanes almost devoid of cars; main road traffic dominated by commercial vehicles. I'd estimate perhaps one car out of every 3 or 4 vehicles. 

Exactly - posted the other day that Hancock needn’t resign if he doesn’t meet the target as it will be achieved shortly after anyway. This goalpost moving just leaves a sour taste. 

I thought that would be impossible, but by all accounts that has been achieved although I agree that he hasn't always come across all that well. 

Slimebag ?

That's hardly a fair comment 

Not really a suprise if R was as high as I thought it was. I know people think I was being overly pessimistic with the 0.98 figure but while that probably was an overestimate I don't believe the 0.7 figure at all. A R0 of 0.7 would be a much stronger downward force. If the numbers start coming up again we will know we have exceeded 1.

No. The goal as defined by the PM was 100,000 people per day. See my from the PM above.

In addition...

We’ve all been scammed 👇 https://t.co/HmkIDnxXmD

— *****Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 1, 2020

That’s his point - it’s all well and good letting a medic shove a swab 6 inches up your nose. It’s another when it comes to doing it yourself. 

But if it's taking ca 100,000 tests to find around 6,000 that's surely encouraging. If that is representative of the entire country it means maybe 5-6% have it and mostly not sufficiently badly to need hospitalisation, doesn't it?

If Furlough is going to end on 1st July, its summer holidays anyway but its going to be a problem for people who have to go back to work to find someone to look after the kids

Did she catch her boyfriend looking at porn perhaps?

I went on a 2m run this morning. I know that's a tiddler for you but quite frankly I don't think you would have made it home because you would have been incandescent with rage.  The number of people and cars was ludicrous and as you probably know this is a pretty decent area full of relatively affluent and educated folk.

But it hasn’t been achieved even though they say it has - hence the name calling I guess. 

Regional data for new cases today in England

The 7 English regions 

• London +180 (0.7%) 24,477


• Midlands +427 (2.1%) 20,042


• North West +420 (2.2%) 18,943


• North East and Yorkshire +505 (2.8%) 18,067


• South East +264 (1.5%) 17,095


• East of England +238 (2.3%) 10,512


• South West +127 (2.0%) 6,304

The 10 local areas with the highest cases

1. Kent +25 (0.7%) 3,356


2. Birmingham +43 (1.5%) 2,844


3. Hampshire +47 (1.7%) 2,781


4. Lancashire +37 (1.3%) 2,773


5. Surrey +29 (1.1%) 2,559


6. Essex +34 (1.3%) 2,540


7. Hertfordshire +28 (1.2%) 2,271


8. Sheffield +39 (1.8%) 2,132


9. Cumbria +69 (3.7%) 1,888


10. Staffordshire +33 (1.9%) 1,730

The 10 local areas with the lowest cases

1. Rutland 20 - No change


2. Isle of Wight +15 (12.3%) 122


3. North East Lincolnshire 134 - No change 


4. Hartlepool +12 (6.3%) 192


5. Torbay 202 - No change 


6. Bath and North East Somerset +5 (2.4%) 211


7. Bracknell Forest +3 (1.4%) 212


8. North Somerset +3 (1.3%) 234


9. Calderdale +3 (1.2%) 241


10. Peterborough +22 (8.9%) 246

The goal was to conduct 100k tests per day. I've looked at the original govt pledge. Some jounralists are frothing at the mouth because the #10 twitter account said 100k people but that looks like to be a slip up from whomever wrote the tweet.

So if the target was 100k tests per day and we are currently on 81k and due to go over 100k by May 4th at the latest then it would be fair to say that:

• The government narrowly missed their target but met it more or less in spirit


• Journalists are being ridiculous when they play semantic people/tests games


• Journalists are being ridiculous when they froth at the mouth over the target being met a few days late


• The govt is being ridiculous by massaging the statistics to make it seem like it hit the target a day or two earlier


• Both the government and the media need to stop playing this stupid spin ping pong.

What a poor post. Yes, the goal was to conduct 100k tests per day. It has not done so and has inflated the figure by including 40,000 tests which have been sent out but almost certainly not ‘conducted’.

Fortunately, there are still some journalists who are not sucked in by the ‘Johnson as Churchill’ narrative and prepared to point out fabrications. That is not ‘frothing’.