"More or Less" on R4 this morning is worth a catch-up listen if you missed it and have the required attention span. 

Relevant topics covered:

1. Gov't litany of lies on testing figures were laid bare (yet again).

2. Prof. Spiegelhalter claims schools reopening is safe.

3. The reasons why German Covid-19 deaths are so low compared to UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j949

I can think of a few reasons why they might want to start showing a sustained drop in figures. Especially before 1st June 

You could try throwing a jug or two of water around the points where you want to place the pegs just to soften up the soil a bit... or, just use your boot as a hammer.

It seems from Rob’s link that if a person has a throat swab and nasal swab, that counts as two tests. Most sane people would think these should be classed as being part of the same test.

As well as non-diagnostic tests included in the figures, as many as 30,000. This government has no shame.

Well worth watching if you have the time:

But the government does report both the number of tests and the number of people tested so there's no attempt at deception.  Apart from that, if the throat and nasal swab involve two laboratory tests then arguably it is relevant as a measure of utilisation of testing capacity.

This is the Vote Leave Government. The same people are running the scene and manipulating the numbers. Self testing is rubbish and the time it takes for some tests to come back makes a mockery of it and will lead to false negatives, perhaps done on purpose to try and justify opening up the economy

There is clear deception in relation to tests and targets. We already know that dispatched tests are being counted, as well as non-diagnostic tests which have no bearing on our number of positive cases (note to Gavin D who calculated the false % each day). As it mentions on the R4 programme RobN linked to, you wouldn't count going to a drive-in facility, having the swab and sputum checked as two positive tests (unless you wanted to boost your figures of course ).

Given the vast majority of the general public will look at the headline figures and nothing else I believe it is a form deception, given the reasons above that become clear when you look behind the numbers.

edit: and that doesn't even get into the shambles of the results and the time taken (median 4 days I think?)  Thanks Beast, forgotten that.

Good luck with that!

Regional data for new cases today in England

The 7 English regions 

• London +50 (0.2%) 26,579


• Midlands +206 (0.8%) 24,637


• North West +195 (0.8%) 24,132


• North East and Yorkshire +181 (0.8%) 23,182


• South East +96 (0.5%) 20,510


• East of England +138 (1.0%) 13,311


• South West +30 (0.4%) 7,370

The 10 local areas with the highest cases

1. Kent +55 (1.2%) 4,562


2. Lancashire +28 (0.8%) 3,406


3. Birmingham +21 (0.6%) 3,340


4. Hampshire +10 (0.3%) 3,193


5. Essex +16 (0.5%) 3,107


6. Surrey +3 (0.1%) 2,835


7. Hertfordshire +14 (0.5%) 2,782


8. Sheffield +7 (0.3%) 2,493


9. Cumbria +5 (0.2%) 2,153


10. Staffordshire +14 (0.7%) 2,119

The 10 local areas with the lowest cases

1. Rutland +1 (3.0%) 33


2. North East Lincolnshire 148 - No change


3. Isle of Wight 178 - No change


4. Torbay 221 - No change


5. Bath and North East Somerset 230 - No change


6. Bracknell Forest +3 (1.3%) 240


7. Windsor and Maidenhead 279 - No change


8. Calderdale 285 - No change


9. Portsmouth +1 (0.3%) 313


10. Hartlepool +15 (4.7%) 319

This is absolutely sickening. Shame on you @BorisJohnson @pritipatel https://t.co/fyLaAL3OJ0

— *****Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 20, 2020

Didn't the Express tell us there were zero cases?

They have different break times so not an issue

One thing i have noticed is that these figures do not add up to the total positive count for the day. Today that was 2472 and the regional totals shown above add up to 896. I doubt that Scotland, N Ireland and Wales had 1500 between them so was wondering where the extra positives come from? Does it depend on which pillar they are in?

Was just about to post the same

It’s clearly a very poor attempt at deception when the information is so widely available that you can ‘expose’ the alleged deception so easily.

You might want to think on this point awhile.

As I pointed out the vast majority of the public won't bother seeking that information out though. They need it screamed at them through bold newspaper headlines these days. 

I agree it isn't hard to see the cracks behind the apparent 'success' in the data. To me that makes it all the more insulting, the fact that this government seemingly take us for fools. Then again as is often pointed out we have a leader with similar parallels to Trump in that he is blindly followed by his cult no matter what he does.

The above then goes back to my first sentence - for these cultists even a damning headline of statistical lies and obfuscation would be glossed over and dismissed as a mindless attack on their precious government.

Yes. The regional breakdown is only for Pillar 1. As you can see here today, there were 1,048 positive in Pillar 1 and 1,424 in Pillar 2.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public

So I think we can deduce that Pillar 1 was made up of 896 positive in England, and a further 152 in Scotland, Wales and NI.

Antibody test to be offered to NHS and care staff within days apparently

Thursday’s GUARDIAN: “NHS and care staff to be offered virus antibody test within days” #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/WzO7YAhb9X

— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) May 20, 2020

 Thanks

Be nice to see how many pillar 2 figures there were per area too.