# What do you make of this?



## Amity Island (Sep 29, 2020)

Hi Everyone, can anybody verify what is being said in this video? It's something to do with taking the false positives from the total number of tests done, not just from the the number of positive tests done. Giving a very different result.  

Thanks


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## Docb (Sep 29, 2020)

It would be easier to find the last "More or Less" on BBC sounds and have a listen where somebody far more articulate than me explains it.  Maybe the episode one before last.

Essentially there are two ways of defining the false negative rate and unless you say which definition you are using then whatever you say is rubbish - as demonstrated by Hancock and that crazy interviewer who thought she knew what she was talking about but clearly showed she did not.


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## trophywench (Sep 29, 2020)

Ah, well, see it's that Applied Mathematics - you have to understand a lot more about the subject and the  problem you're applying it to, to grasp the maths.


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## Amity Island (Sep 30, 2020)

Docb said:


> It would be easier to find the last "More or Less" on BBC sounds and have a listen where somebody far more articulate than me explains it.  Maybe the episode one before last.
> 
> Essentially there are two ways of defining the false negative rate and unless you say which definition you are using then whatever you say is rubbish - as demonstrated by Hancock and that crazy interviewer who thought she knew what she was talking about but clearly showed she did not.


Morning Doc B,

Having watched it again, is this what he is saying?

Correct me if I misunderstand him, but in a nut shell he's saying that the government are for example, publishing that they have had say 11,000 positive tests and then allowing for about 1% of the 11,000 (allowing just 110 of them) will be false positives, thus predicting 10,890 of the 11,000 positive test are true positives.

The chap in the video is saying this is completely the wrong method. You *don't deduct 1% from just the positive test results*, you *deduct 1% from the total number of tests done then, minus that 1% figure from the number of positive tests.* In the same example the governments 11,000 positive needs to be adjusted with the 1% false positive from the *entire* number of tests.

So in the example where you have done:

1,000,000 ( 1 million total tests) and a (minimum) of those are1% false positives. 

1% of 1,000,000 is 10,000. 

So from say 11,000 positive tests, *10,000 are false positives*, leaving in actual fact only 1,000 true positives. e.g in this example about 9 out of the 10 positive tests are false.

Changing the positive test results from 10,890 nearer to 1,000.


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## Bruce Stephens (Sep 30, 2020)

Amity Island said:


> The chap in the video is saying this is completely the wrong method. You *don't deduct 1% from just the positive test results*, you *deduct 1% from the total number of tests done then, minus that 1% figure from the number of positive tests.* In the same example the governments 11,000 positive needs to be adjusted with the 1% false positive from the *entire* number of tests.



That's silly. A test that's not positive obviously can't be a false positive, because it's not a positive at all.

The 1% (actually thought to be a bit less than that, and the ONS weekly survey have to do extra checking to reduce theirs further) is based on what people actually mean by false positive which is the proportion of the positive tests which are actually of people who do not have the infection. (If you wanted the proportion of all tests that incorrectly test positive you'd need a much smaller number which would also have to vary depending on the infection rate.)


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## adrian1der (Sep 30, 2020)

How many of the negatives are false negatives?


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## Docb (Sep 30, 2020)

I'll have a go @Amity Island, but its the thick end of 30 years since I looked at this sort of stuff professionally, so bear with me.

Not sure what he was trying to say except as usual he was trying to put the best gloss possible on whatever point was being made.  Trouble is he did not really understand what he was talking about.

The underlying issue is not too difficult.  No test is perfect.  There are always errors and it is wise to have an assessment of the extent of those errors.  Conventionally you would express that statistically but if you don't understand statistics then you look for something that you think you do understand.  That's where the false positive thing comes in.  By the way, there are also false negatives but they are not mentioned.  They then get things really twisted when they talk about the false positive RATE. If you do that you have got to define what rate is being referred to.

So, you evaluate your testing procedure, which will measure something.  Make the measurement a number of times on what you think is the same sample and you will get a measure of the reproducibility of the result.  You then set a value at which you deem the test to be positive and from your measurements calculate a statistical probability of your test being in error, i.e. giving a false positive or a false negative.  Normally this is expressed as something like 95/95 confidence level, that is you are 95% confident that 95% of the results fall into the category you have assigned it to.

Give that to a Hancock or a mouthy journalist and they, probably like you, get totally lost.  What they want to know is how many tests are wrong and they want a simple answer.  Well, there isn't one.  Rather than say they are not clever enough to understand they finish up with rather silly concepts of false negatives and false positives and the even sillier concept of a false positive (or negative) rate.  Sounds impressive but it is all actually a bit meaningless.

They do very silly things like taking 95/95 confidence intervals and say quite erroneously it means that 5% of the tests give false results.  Some then move that on and say that 5% of the positive results are false.  Others use that to say that 5% of all results are false.  Quite clearly you cannot have 5% of positive results being false and 5% of all results being false at the same time.  Neither is right and all you end up with silly conclusions of the sort you mention in your post.

Personally I would ban the use of percentages by politicians and journalists unless they have a recognised qualification in statistics and statistical analysis. Even then I would not trust what they are saying.


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## Bruce Stephens (Sep 30, 2020)

adrian1der said:


> How many of the negatives are false negatives?



A false negative is a negative test for someone who is, in fact, infected (so someone who ought to test positive). So the number of the negatives that are false negatives depends a lot on the real infection rate, and the infection rate isn't that high.

It's thought to be fairly small: most actually infected people will get a positive test so you don't end up with many in the testing-negative but really infected set.

I think this is the relevant episode of More or Less: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08s7b5d


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## atoll (Sep 30, 2020)

my understanding was with 1 million tests you get 1% that will give an incorrect pos result,or 10,000 incorrect tests.

using the 1 million tests on 1 million UNINFECTED people it would appear that there are 10,000 infected,when actually nobody is infected..

now assume 10,000 people ARE infected,and using those million tests,this would show that out of a million tests,20,000 people are infected this would indicate a 2% infection rate,which would be wrong by 50%!


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## Amity Island (Sep 30, 2020)

Bruce Stephens said:


> That's silly. A test that's not positive obviously can't be a false positive, because it's not a positive at all.
> 
> The 1% (actually thought to be a bit less than that, and the ONS weekly survey have to do extra checking to reduce theirs further) is based on what people actually mean by false positive which is the proportion of the positive tests which are actually of people who do not have the infection. (If you wanted the proportion of all tests that incorrectly test positive you'd need a much smaller number which would also have to vary depending on the infection rate.)


Hi Bruce,

It seems to make sense to me lol. If you've tested 1,000,000 people, apparently you will get 10,000 false positives. -- Bruce, is this bit correct? if using a 1% false positive.

Bruce second bit:

If in that same 1,000,000 tests you get 11,000 positives, you'd then have deduct the 10,000 false positives from it. Leaving just 1,000 true positive test results.

What do you reckon?


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## Bruce Stephens (Sep 30, 2020)

atoll said:


> using the 1 million tests on 1 million UNINFECTED people it would appear that there are 10,000 infected,when actually nobody is infected.



Yes, which is obviously a concern for the ONS survey. And we can be sure that whatever they're doing gives a false positive rate much lower than 1% since their estimates for the infection rate have suggested that 0.02% or so of the population are infected (with a large error margin, but even so).

That kind of false positive rate is presumably not practical for the regular PCR tests. Since we're getting O(7000) positives (the "confirmed cases") from testing O(80000) people a day, that seems large enough that false positives don't look like being that important to me. (We might do 200,000 tests a day, but the weekly report shows that's on 80,000 or so people.)


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## Bruce Stephens (Sep 30, 2020)

Amity Island said:


> It seems to make sense to me lol. If you've tested 1,000,000 people, apparently you will get 10,000 false positives. -- Bruce, is this bit correct? if using a 1% false positive.



Yes. Fortunately(?) we test less than 100,000 people a day and we're getting over 5,000 positive tests.



Amity Island said:


> If in that same 1,000,000 tests you get 11,000 positives, you'd then have deduct the 10,000 false positives from it. Leaving just 1,000 true positive test results.



No, I don't think any statistician would support doing that. Rather, you'd just have to say that your test isn't good enough to say anything beyond that there might not be any infection at all (though there might be).


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## Amity Island (Sep 30, 2020)

Bruce Stephens said:


> Yes. Fortunately(?) we test less than 100,000 people a day and we're getting over 5,000 positive tests.
> 
> 
> 
> No, I don't think any statistician would support doing that. Rather, you'd just have to say that your test isn't good enough to say anything beyond that there might not be any infection at all (though there might be).


Hi Bruce,

So in simple terms, is what the chap in the video saying correct or not?

Thanks


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## atoll (Sep 30, 2020)

looking at the trend of hospital admissions would be a better metric as to actual increase or decrease of infections over time.
although testing numbers give a good indication of immediate level of exponential spread which indicates future hospital admissions aprox 2-3 weeks later


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## Bruce Stephens (Sep 30, 2020)

Amity Island said:


> So in simple terms, is what the chap in the video saying correct or not?



He's wrong. (He claims Carl Heneghan supports his idea of what false positive means, which I find very hard to believe. I suspect a misunderstanding, and I think More or Less conclude the same.) 

(Lots of Heneghan's critiques seem perfectly reasonable to me: PCR isn't really a yes/no test so knowing the iteration number would surely be useful; it seems plausible that some positive tests are showing people who aren't infectious, and maybe we shouldn't worry about them if we could measure that. I'd like it if he took seriously the possibility that this infection might have an unusual rate and severity of long-term complications; I think whenever he's talked about that he's dismissed it by saying that other viruses can also (rarely) cause long-term complications.)


Suppose there's some condition (or other property) of a person, X (which most people don't have), and a test for it which just returns positive or negative.

There are two relevant errors for this test

if I get a positive test, what's the chance that I don't in fact have X?
if I have X, what's the chance that the test returns a negative result?
To estimate the first one you obviously take some people who've tested positive and check how many of them in reality don't have X. To estimate the second one you need to find some people who have X, test them, and see how many test negative. Neither involves the total number of people you tested.

(For our coronavirus tests we don't have a great idea of what the two error rates are.)


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## Amity Island (Sep 30, 2020)

Bruce Stephens said:


> He's wrong. (He claims Carl Heneghan supports his idea of what false positive means, which I find very hard to believe. I suspect a misunderstanding, and I think More or Less conclude the same.)
> 
> (Lots of Heneghan's critiques seem perfectly reasonable to me: PCR isn't really a yes/no test so knowing the iteration number would surely be useful; it seems plausible that some positive tests are showing people who aren't infectious, and maybe we shouldn't worry about them if we could measure that. I'd like it if he took seriously the possibility that this infection might have an unusual rate and severity of long-term complications; I think whenever he's talked about that he's dismissed it by saying that other viruses can also (rarely) cause long-term complications.)
> 
> ...


Thanks Bruce.


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## Amity Island (Sep 30, 2020)

Amity Island said:


> Thanks Bruce.


Hi Bruce,

So using the official figures, this is what he's saying (watch video at 2:50sec).

Total covid19 tests done to date
19,583,360

Total covid19 positives found to date
423,236 (which hasn't been adjusted properly for false positives -- which is his grievance)

Using a false positive average of 2.3% of the_* total*_ number of tests done, *not* just 2.3% of the positive tests (Government's 0.8% low and 4.3% high averaged to 2.3%)

2.3% of 19,583,360 = 450,417 false positives

A sum which is greater than the official 423,236, which outweighs any possible true positives.

As he said, even with a conservative 0.8% / 156,666 false positives this still brings true positive tests figure down to 266,570 which is almost 50% less than the official figures.


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## rebrascora (Sep 30, 2020)

To my mind, if you were randomly testing the population then this false positive percentage might be correct, but you are mostly testing people who are symptomatic or have had contact with people who are symptomatic and therefore much more likely to test positive than a random sample, so those false positive percentages will no longer be valid to be applied.

As you clearly demonstrate, you end up with a net negative or people testing positive for the virus and we know from hospital admissions that cases are rising so clearly there is a problem with this guy's maths/logic and he is doing the country a disservice in spreading his views because it encourages people to ignore the government guidance. 
That is my take on it anyway.


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## Amity Island (Sep 30, 2020)

rebrascora said:


> To my mind, if you were randomly testing the population then this false positive percentage might be correct, but you are mostly testing people who are symptomatic or have had contact with people who are symptomatic and therefore much more likely to test positive than a random sample, so those false positive percentages will no longer be valid to be applied.
> 
> As you clearly demonstrate, you end up with a net negative or people testing positive for the virus and we know from hospital admissions that cases are rising so clearly there is a problem with this guy's maths/logic and he is doing the country a disservice in spreading his views because it encourages people to ignore the government guidance.
> That is my take on it anyway.


Hi Rebrascora,

Thanks for joining this discussion, it's really nice to hear everybody's take on it . It's interesting that the number of positives being found is similar to the number of false positives one would expect for the total tests done. What if nobody had it? We'd still get all these covid cases. He was saying we need to base the lockdowns on deaths and hospital admissions, which are very low.

Regarding his views, I don't think he necessarily sees it as "his views" he sees it more as presenting the facts? Particularly about the false positive rates.


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## rebrascora (Sep 30, 2020)

Yes but the "facts"  he is presenting don't make sense. You can't have a negative number of positives. You also have to consider that there will be false negatives too which may well negate any false positives. I think his mistake is in applying the false positives from random testing to the actual high risk sample being tested. 

We know that Covid cases are rising.... that is a fact because it is shown in hospital admissions and those admissions are just the critical cases ie the tip of an iceberg that represents the much larger number of people infected who are still within the general populous (I assume you can accept the proposal that not all people who have the virus are hospitalised) but hopefully mostly self isolating.


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## Bruce Stephens (Sep 30, 2020)

Amity Island said:


> Total covid19 tests done to date
> 19,583,360
> 
> Total covid19 positives found to date
> ...



Oh darn it. You're right, and I'm wrong! (Though I think there is also a kind of thing that's what I referred to as the false positive rate, it's not what we're talking about here.)

I'm still not sure it matters as much as he's making out. The ONS survey (where they do extra checking (I think they check each positive test again, or something like that)) is currently producing a rate of 1 in 500 or so. So that means their false positive rate can't be very much larger than 0.2% right now, and since they haven't changed their processes that much recently it can't be very much more than 0.02% (since they were measuring that a month or so ago).

So as the ONS survey numbers continue to increase (presuming they do) we can be reasonably confident in them (at least that they're measuring something actually meaningful, though not necessarily infectious people). And we have the other measures of hospital admissions and eventually deaths; I agree the numbers don't match up with what was seen in March/April but I think it's plausible that's explained by just the enormous differences in testing.

(The 19,583,360 tests done doesn't seem all that helpful. What would be more meaningful would surely be people rather than tests? That kind of data can be found in the annex of the weekly reports, 10 September to 16 September. The difference looks like a factor of roughly 3. Oddly it looks like about the same factor for total tests/people and positive tests/people.)


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## Docb (Sep 30, 2020)

What he said does not make sense. Thats because it was nonsense. He is so poor with numbers that he cannot see it.   

A tiny proportion of the tests that have been returned as positive will be in error.  That has been expressed as a percentage.  What he and other numerically illiterate people have done is to take that percentage and use it to give a measure of the "false positive" rate by applying it to the total number of tests carried out.  The result is you get the nonsensical numbers you are referring to, @rebrascora.  All he wanted to do was to try and make things look better than they are.  Do not trust any numbers he comes out with.  Double check everything he claims, you cannot take what he says at face value.


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## Eddy Edson (Sep 30, 2020)

Overall I think all the false-positive angst is pretty dumb, in the face of facts.

First: No diagnostic is perfectly sensitive & specific - ie you always have some false positives and some false negatives. This is is true of every medical diagnostic & nobody says it means we should abandon medicine or whatever.

Second: The false positive rate for gold-standard coronavrius PCR tests must be very low.  For example, here in Oz outside of Victoria the positivity rate is less than 0.02% in recent weeks which naively puts on upper bound on the false positive rate. In my state, there are *zero* cases being detected which tightens the upper bound further. Similar comments if you look at NZ.


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## grovesy (Oct 1, 2020)

I thought the ONS were testing random members of the population, not people who had symptoms or were contacts.


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## Docb (Oct 1, 2020)

Look at the ONS website and their latest report.





__





						Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey: methods and further information - Office for National Statistics
					

The methods used to collect the data, process it, and calculate the statistics produced from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey.



					www.ons.gov.uk
				




They are happy that false positives are not an issue.


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## Amity Island (Oct 1, 2020)

Docb said:


> It would be easier to find the last "More or Less" on BBC sounds and have a listen where somebody far more articulate than me explains it.  Maybe the episode one before last.
> 
> Essentially there are two ways of defining the false negative rate and unless you say which definition you are using then whatever you say is rubbish - as demonstrated by Hancock and that crazy interviewer who thought she knew what she was talking about but clearly showed she did not.


Morning Doc B,

Thanks very much for your posts, they're really helpful.

So, I found the programme you mentoned, Wednesday 23rd Sept at the BBC radio 4 More or Less interview with David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge (great find btw) had a listen, although it takes a bit of thinking to understand it.

Suprisingly, the crucial bit about the "9/10 tests being false claim" is *confirmed* to be true at 13.10mins (which is what the Paul Weston video is refering to I think). Spiegelhalter said the 9/10 false positives claim *is* the case _"where a 1000 people are tested at random"_ in the community using a 0.8% false positve. But then goes on to say, but at pillar 2 this is not the case because in pillar 2, they are only testing those with symptoms.

Like you said, he does confirm that the politicians (the ones informing the public) have no understanding of the stats.

Doc B, So the question to solve this mystery seems to be, "have/are people in the community been tested at random?"

Doc B, do you happen to know what the answer to this question is?

The answer would be a combination of the random testing and the pillar 2 testing to get an overall truth.

Thanks Very Much









						BBC Radio 4 - More or Less: Behind the Stats - Downloads
					

Podcast downloads for More or Less: Behind the Stats




					www.bbc.co.uk
				





			https://twitter.com/d_spiegel?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor


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## Bruce Stephens (Oct 1, 2020)

Eddy Edson said:


> Overall I think all the false-positive angst is pretty dumb, in the face of facts.



That's my feeling, too. Yes, the numbers are probably slightly wrong, but we now have increases in hospital admissions, increases of people in ITU, and the beginning of increases in deaths.

Maybe the relative low numbers of deaths compared to cases isn't explained by the radically different testing regime now. (I'm quite partial to the viral load idea: that physical distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, means the average infected person gets a much lower amount of virus than they did back in March. That one feels to me more plausible than the population immunity, mutating virus, etc., ideas.)


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## Docb (Oct 1, 2020)

@Amity Island.  Yes, ONS are doing random tests in the community and these data are used to provide some of the stats.  It will not, and cannot, provide data of test accuracy because as far as I can see you cannot get that from that sort of testing.  I am not sure you could get a definitive answer from any of the routine testing.  You would need a specific experiment to do that.  I would imagine that was done as part of the test protocol development and that data will be around somewhere but probably not readily available.  The best assumption is that the test would not exist if it gave silly answers.


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## Eddy Edson (Oct 1, 2020)

Bruce Stephens said:


> That's my feeling, too. Yes, the numbers are probably slightly wrong, but we now have increases in hospital admissions, increases of people in ITU, and the beginning of increases in deaths.
> 
> Maybe the relative low numbers of deaths compared to cases isn't explained by the radically different testing regime now. (I'm quite partial to the viral load idea: that physical distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, means the average infected person gets a much lower amount of virus than they did back in March. That one feels to me more plausible than the population immunity, mutating virus, etc., ideas.)



For me, the conceptually simplest answer lies just in the huge increase in fatality rates with age, better protection of older people since the early days, and more testing of young 'uns. But dunno if the data actually backs that up.


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## Amity Island (Oct 1, 2020)

Docb said:


> @Amity Island.  Yes, ONS are doing random tests in the community and these data are used to provide some of the stats.  It will not, and cannot, provide data of test accuracy because as far as I can see you cannot get that from that sort of testing.  I am not sure you could get a definitive answer from any of the routine testing.  You would need a specific experiment to do that.  I would imagine that was done as part of the test protocol development and that data will be around somewhere but probably not readily available.  The best assumption is that the test would not exist if it gave silly answers.


Thanks Doc B


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## mikeyB (Oct 1, 2020)

There aren’t enough tests to randomly check the population in any event. And there is no way you can check if a positive is false from the available data. There are an unknown number of people who have the virus, but are asymptomatic . So this discussion is becoming picky about stats that aren’t based on reliable data.

This situation is one where pragmatism rules. If the number of cases increases, and the number of deaths increases, then do something about it. It’s as simple as that. Plus, of course, have an effective trace and test system, as operates in Wales, Scotland, and NI.  

No amount of statistical analysis will help this, but for sure it can hinder it. It’s a bit like checking the tuning of the orchestra on the Titanic.


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## Amity Island (Oct 1, 2020)

mikeyB said:


> So this discussion is becoming picky about stats that aren’t based on reliable data.


Hi Mikey B,

I agree, I do, but it's obviously important to know if say 9/10 tests are false positives, when it's the testing and not the deaths/hospital admissions as the primary reason behind removing peoples liberties and freedoms.

This looks like it's going to be a permanent change in the world, and it seems less and less about the virus and more and more about some kind of Green Agenda (e.g shop from home, eat out at home, holiday near home, work from home, study at home, speak to your g.p at home, stay away from hospitals etc etc) or some other agenda which is not being made public. How can it be that "they" are restricting human interaction, socializing, meeting family, making it almost impossible to travel, to sing, to dance, live freely and be human in the name of protecting health and reducing hospital admissions, when at the same time they are making millions off selling toxic tabacco, toxic alchohol, promoting gambling, where were the lockdowns for these things which are bigger risks to life than covid19? Why isn't this being put into the context of other life risks which far out weigh the risk of death from covid19. It all seems politically driven and not science driven and its all having a devastating impact on peoples mental health, wellbeing, jobs, businesses and freedoms.

We can't sing in a pub, but we can drink ourselves into an early grave and be admitted to hospital putting uncessary strain on the NHS and others that support you.

Mikey B, I was watching TV the other day, when I saw 2 people shaking hands, my immediate response was one of horror I thought, what the hell are they doing! It cannot be right to think like that about seeing someone shake hands? 
Something is a miss.


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## mikeyB (Oct 1, 2020)

I don’t disagree with anything in that response,@Amity Island. You might also ask why we are told to wear masks, keep our distance and tolerate 10pm closing of pubs and restaurants, when in the House of Commons the bars are open well after 10, masks are not compulsory, nor is the rule of six or 2m distancing. A fine example to the general population, I must say. The government doesn’t even comply with its own rules - why should we?


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## Amity Island (Oct 1, 2020)

mikeyB said:


> I don’t disagree with anything in that response,@Amity Island. You might also ask why we are told to wear masks, keep our distance and tolerate 10pm closing of pubs and restaurants, when in the House of Commons the bars are open well after 10, masks are not compulsory, nor is the rule of six or 2m distancing. A fine example to the general population, I must say. The government doesn’t even comply with its own rules - why should we?


I don't like the direction all this is heading in and it seems to be in one direction at quite some speed...


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## Docb (Oct 1, 2020)

mikeyB said:


> I don’t disagree with anything in that response,@Amity Island. You might also ask why we are told to wear masks, keep our distance and tolerate 10pm closing of pubs and restaurants, when in the House of Commons the bars are open well after 10, masks are not compulsory, nor is the rule of six or 2m distancing. A fine example to the general population, I must say. The government doesn’t even comply with its own rules - why should we?



Actually the thing about the bars in the Houses of Parliament really was false news, as pointed out by the speaker in the house this morning.  As for the other things, it is a place of work and they do what is possible like any other place of work. Your other reflections on the quality of government, the lies, deception and general incompetence I have much sympathy with.


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## grovesy (Oct 1, 2020)

Docb said:


> Actually the thing about the bars in the Houses of Parliament really was false news, as pointed out by the speaker in the house this morning.  As for the other things, it is a place of work and they do what is possible like any other place of work. Your other reflections on the quality of government, the lies, deception and general incompetence I have much sympathy with.


I was just going to say this too!


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## trophywench (Oct 1, 2020)

The only thing I can pick flies with @Docb 's post is his use of the invented term 'false news'.  It's the UK and the UK Government etc that we are discussing whereas the terminology used as far as I'm concerned has only ever been applicable in the US to one specific individual.

What's wrong with the time honoured term 'Red herring' ?


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## Docb (Oct 1, 2020)

I quite deliberately used the term "false news" instead of "fake news" for the reasons you suggest.

Red herring does not fit at all.  A red herring is something that is true but irrelevant and refers to something diverting attention from a substantial point.  The report about the bar opening times was false and it appeared in the news so false news seemed entirely appropriate.  

Get out of that!


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## trophywench (Oct 1, 2020)

Docb said:


> I quite deliberately used the term "false news" instead of "fake news" for the reasons you suggest.
> 
> Red herring does not fit at all.  A red herring is something that is true but irrelevant and refers to something diverting attention from a substantial point.  The report about the bar opening times was false and it appeared in the news so false news seemed entirely appropriate.
> 
> Get out of that!



In that case, you should not have used the word 'news' after 'false'. You should have used 'false' instead of 'thing' after 'Actually the'.

I accept the ruddy fish.


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## Docb (Oct 2, 2020)

Nowt worse for non pedants than a couple of pedants being pedantic.  

OK, your rewording suggestion is probably more elegant but it looses the opportunity to have a bit of fun with the ideas of fake and false news.


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## Amity Island (Oct 2, 2020)

mikeyB said:


> I don’t disagree with anything in that response,@Amity Island. You might also ask why we are told to wear masks, keep our distance and tolerate 10pm closing of pubs and restaurants, when in the House of Commons the bars are open well after 10, masks are not compulsory, nor is the rule of six or 2m distancing. A fine example to the general population, I must say. The government doesn’t even comply with its own rules - why should we?


Mikey B,

Yes, it does appear that there is still a fundamental difference in policy between houses of parliament bars and public bars.

1. Public bars and restaurants must "close" the premises at 10p.m (e.g everyone out at 10pm)

2. Parliament bars must only stop "serving" alcohol at 10p.m (e.g get a few rounds in and stay as long as you like after 10pm)









						U-turn as Parliament's bars will no longer sell alcohol after 10pm
					

The government was forced into a climbdown today after it emerged Boris Johnson's 10pm drinking curfew did not apply to establishments in Parliament.




					www.lbc.co.uk


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## Amity Island (Oct 6, 2020)

Amity Island said:


> Hi Everyone, can anybody verify what is being said in this video? It's something to do with taking the false positives from the total number of tests done, not just from the the number of positive tests done. Giving a very different result.
> 
> Thanks


The BBC have responded.

The BBC have now responded to the 90% false postives claim and confirm that in random testing you would in fact get 90% false postives, however they also state that not all tests are done at random and these symptom lead test results will have a more accurate result. So it seems, to get an accurate picture of positive tests, one needs to take into account both random and targeted testing.

This is what they said about random testing. Simply that 8 out of the 9 positives tests results would be false positives leaving the 1 true positive.

_"If you tested 1,000 people at random for Covid-19 in early September, for example, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) infection study suggests you should have expected one of them to actually have the virus.

With a false positive rate of 0.8% - a figure used by Ms Hartley-Brewer and within the broad range of what we think might be the actual rate for community testing - you would get eight false positives. So in that context, it's true that roughly 90% of positives would be false."_









						Coronavirus testing: What is a false positive?
					

Some commentators say rising cases are just because of false positive results. But that's not true.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## Amity Island (Oct 19, 2020)

mikeyB said:


> I don’t disagree with anything in that response,@Amity Island. You might also ask why we are told to wear masks, keep our distance and tolerate 10pm closing of pubs and restaurants, when in the House of Commons the bars are open well after 10, masks are not compulsory, nor is the rule of six or 2m distancing. A fine example to the general population, I must say. The government doesn’t even comply with its own rules - why should we?











						Official: MPs DID flout 10pm bar curfew
					

Matt Hancock is today under mounting pressure to come clean about his actions after a senior Tory MP witness insisted: 'I stand 100 per cent by my story. I know what I saw, and when.'




					www.dailymail.co.uk


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