| Who signed this edict off? 10:22 - May 18 with 288 views | ROTTWEILERS |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 12:22 - May 18 with 279 views | BringBackTheRedRoom |
Here's what the Government told Hospitals on the 2nd April (since updated), it's a bit messy but the interesting line is ....
"Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home".
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attac
Gove's quote that it was up to the clinicians at the hospitals yesterday was stunning. | |
| ‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’ |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 14:25 - May 18 with 273 views | spell_chekker |
Staggering government decisions. | |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 18:34 - May 18 with 261 views | ROTTWEILERS |
I implemented this policy. Wanting to do my bit, taking overtime to help the service.
By sheer fluke, I only ever discharged individuals who were living in their own homes but the message was crystal clear - 'get people out of hospital pronto'.
Everything leads back to Professor Ferguson's doomsday computer model. | |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 18:49 - May 18 with 255 views | spudgun |
I`m going for the` Scooby Doo` ending.
When it becomes apparent to all that the game is up and the country is in ruins, Johnson rips off his mask to present a swivel-eyed Chris Grayling...
"If it wasn`t for that pesky James O`Brien, I might have got away with it"... | | | |
| Who signed this edict off? on 19:18 - May 18 with 249 views | spell_chekker |
I find the way the UK government has dealt with the whole thing to be very Oystonesque.
Half by incompetence and half by intention.
A nasty business whichever way you look at it.
Is anyone surprised that the UK is the coronavirus death capital of Europe?
I did speculate that would be the case on several occasions. | |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 19:35 - May 18 with 246 views | ROTTWEILERS |
You did. It's all been dangerously haphazard. | |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 09:37 - May 19 with 237 views | BringBackTheRedRoom |
Yup, called that right Spell.
Was it Eisenhower that had the sign on his desk "The buck stops here". Seems we have a pass the buck onto anyone, mentality now.
Article from today's Times....
Coronavirus: Stop passing the buck, top scientist tells politicians
Ministers should not say “we are simply doing what scientists tell us” over coronavirus and be more open about the advice they have received, the incoming president of the Royal Society has told The Times.
Sir Adrian Smith, a statistician, said that the “extraordinary amounts of uncertainty” with new viruses had been played down in a political environment where ministers felt they needed to appear decisive.
He said that any backlash over the handling of the coronavirus outbreak would not be aimed at the scientists because politicians made the decisions.
Sir Adrian said he expected that his term leading Britain’s most distinguished scientific society, which begins in November, would be marked by an in-depth review into Britain’s response and there was a risk that scientists would be drawn into a blame game.
“The danger is if the politicians keep saying, ‘We’re simply doing what the scientists tell us’. That could be awkward. Politicians ultimately must make the decisions,” he said.
A list of the members of the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) was released only a fortnight ago, and full minutes of its meetings are still not released. Sir Adrian said that this had been counterproductive. “Even if nothing terribly secretive and terrible is going on, you feed suspicion if you’re not transparent.”
His criticism came as MPs called on the government to open the process of scientific advice to public scrutiny, complaining that there was “no transparency” in what is guiding ministers in dealing with the pandemic.
The science and technology committee said that without the minutes or a summary of the advice given to Boris Johnson “it will be difficult to corroborate the government’s assertion that it always follows the scientific advice”.
The cross-party group of MPs, chaired by the Conservative Greg Clark, recommended that ministers publish a summary of the advice they used, as well as a constantly-updated membership list of Sage.
The MPs were heavily critical of a testing regime that they said lacked boldness, failed to increase capacity fast enough and left care homes exposed. “Capacity drove strategy, rather than strategy driving capacity,” they said. “The failure of Public Health England to publish the evidence on which its testing policy was based is unacceptable for a decision that may have had such significant consequences,” they added.
Mr Clark said that part of claiming to follow the science was behaving in a scientific manner. “The government should follow the best traditions of science in being transparent about the evidence and advice on which it makes decisions, and by being willing to continually learn from evidence and experience and not being afraid to adjust its approach in response,” he said.
Sir Adrian said that it was crucial for the government to be seen to be open. He said that politicians and scientists needed to be clear about the divide between advisers and decision-makers, but also that the process lacked the certainty that is sometimes implied by ministerial claims to be following the science. “We should really talk about the uncertainty that hangs over science in general,” he said in his first newspaper interview since being elected to Britain’s most prestigious scientific society. “We’re fairly sure about how the planets work, but once you get into new viruses you get extraordinary amounts of uncertainty.”
All the choices made so far, he said, had been taken amid this uncertainty and we were a long way yet from seeing which country got it right. “People tend to like certainty and they tend to like answers. The nature of politics perhaps is to play down the uncertainties and make the judgments to appear to be decisive,” he said. “We don’t regularly run experiments of locking everybody down so we don’t have huge amounts of data and evidence about the impacts.
“Getting into the public conversation that we really are uncertain about lots of things, I think, is quite important.”
In a letter to the prime minister the science committee said that a lack of transparency had already opened the government to accusations that it was hiding behind science. In particular, the MPs said they were concerned that they had not seen the evidence that was used to take decisions to cease community testing at the beginning of March.
“The absence of disclosure may indicate that . . . no rigorous assessment was in fact made by [Public Health England] of other countries’ approach to testing. That would be of profound concern since the necessity to consider the approaches taken by others with experience of pandemics is obvious.”
Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, said that another virtue of transparency was that it encouraged policy changes when evidence changed. This was inevitable when the science was uncertain, he said. “Ministers need to make the best decisions they can now, but also be prepared to change tack later, in light of new evidence. Being able to do that requires an openness with the public,” he added.
“The public will feel misled if ministers use ‘the science’ as a prop to create a false sense of security and certainty only to change tack later. It will lead to an erosion of public trust.”
The committee made ten recommendations, including systematically recording ethnicity data, building vaccine capacity, learning from the testing and tracing experiences of other nations and setting out an approach to dealing with asymptomatic transmission.
Profile
One of the consolations of being president of The Royal Society is that unprecedented situations are rare.
When Sir Adrian Smith, 73, was elected this month, it was in the middle of the pandemic and he was been forced to conduct his business from his home in Camden. That, though, is unlikely to top the experience of Sir Isaac Newton, a previous president, who spent a year in the country to avoid the plague. And he did not even have Zoom.
Sir Adrian is aware that when his tenure starts in the autumn, there will be “a post mortem”, in which the actions of scientists – those he represents – will be examined to possibly a greater degree than ever before.
When it happens, he wants to make clear: advisers advise, they do not decide. He likes to quote Churchill: Scientists should be on tap and not on top. Politicians must make the decisions.
He was an unlikely choice to be in the running for president. He did not have a Nobel prize and was also a mathematician, always viewed as slightly separate by “proper” scientists. But an improbable CV in late 2019 seems like an inspired one now.
This is a year that has, from testing figures to R numbers, been about data and its intersection with policy. Sir Adrian leads the Alan Turing Institute, a data science institute. He was previously director general for knowledge and innovation in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, dealing with the financial crash.
When he takes office it will be at a time when he hopes a modern malady that began in that crash is, like the virus itself, in retreat. Britain, once, had had enough of experts. Not so today. “The re-establishment of experts is something that won’t go away,” he says.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-stop-passing-the-buck-top-sc | |
| ‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’ |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 10:35 - May 19 with 230 views | ROTTWEILERS |
Good article that, Red.
Yeah, you were right about the scientists getting it in the neck, Spell was right about this and that malaria drug he and Donald Trump uses 👀
I was right about there being a huge gap where children and social care should've been better represented throughout the decision-making process. It's only Robbie that's struggling thus far  | |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 15:52 - May 19 with 221 views | BringBackTheRedRoom |
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| ‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’ |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 17:18 - May 27 with 199 views | BringBackTheRedRoom |
This from BoJo's meeting with the heads of the parliamentary committees today
Hunt then asks about people being discharged from hospitals to care homes and passing on the virus.
The PM says there was a "huge effort... to try to protect care homes", adding: "Don't forget, every discharge was made by clinicians and not when they were suspected coronavirus victims.
"And the number of discharges into care homes went down by 40%. It is just not true there was some concerted effort to get people out of NHS beds into care homes."
Hunt then asks about why there isn't a 24-hour turnaround time for test results.
Johnson says it is the "goal" but refused to give the committee a deadline for it to be met, saying he has been "forbidden from announcing any more targets or deadlines" | |
| ‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’ |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 17:46 - May 27 with 190 views | ROTTWEILERS |
I saw that, Red. Guess I must have imagined it all. My mistake - silly me.
Seriously though, someone needs to put this clown out of his misery. He's also just said he reads the scientific advice, “only in exceptional circumstances”. | |
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| Who signed this edict off? on 20:55 - May 28 with 174 views | BringBackTheRedRoom |
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| ‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’ |
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