The big Coronavirus thread

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  • surrey_commuter
    surrey_commuter Posts: 18,867
    First.Aspect said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Jeremy.89 said:

    kingstongraham said:

    And deaths among young people have actually fallen, which implies that there are other causes of death that have reduced because of lockdown.

    No one driving, or doing anything more interesting tbf.
    There is an interesting stat about far more people died post 9/11 on the roads than died in the Towers.
    It is interesting but is it true? And what does it mean? More people died on the roads that day fleeing the towers, more people died in the US on the roads that year etc. etc.
    As a safety measure they grounded all flights, this led to increased miles driven and an increase in deaths in accidents. In other words the safety measure led to more deaths.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    First.Aspect said:

    rjsterry said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    Rather grim reading from the FT on likely real numbers so far extrapolated from the ONS figures for the beginning of April.

    https://amp.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab?__twitter_impression=true


    Is that a whole article on simply using the excess deaths to be corona deaths?
    It's free to read to check it out for yourself.
    I skim read it but I find the FT a bit sensationalist these days to bother reading it properly. That doesn't mean other newspapers are more reliable.
    if you don't wanna know that's fine, just don't ask.
    I wanted to know if there was anything more to the article which is why I asked. If there was, and there was some nuance and reliable statistical analysis then I was going to read it properly. If it is just a rewrite of the ONS data then it is less interesting.
    It's not. I've posted a summary.
    You need to be more critical. I just skimmed it. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the FT have taken the increased "all causes" mortality for one week, attributed 100% of this to coronavirus and extrapolated over the course of the pandemic.

    Yes you are wrong. That isn't what the FT did.

    _
  • surrey_commuter
    surrey_commuter Posts: 18,867
    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    TheBigBean said:

    Some of today's news:
    - shipment of gowns arrives from Turkey
    - ventilator challenge is producing ventilators
    - test capapcity now at 39,000, but more subjects are required

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/21/we-made-right-choice-in-ventilator-race-says-uk-consortium-head

    Interestingly the DM is full of doom gloom and despondency
    - the plane was too small
    - Nightingale is turning patients away due to no nurses

    On the plus side, some people I had never heard of have been wearing bikinis during lockdown
    That Nightingale one sounds like BS to me. It's not like they are places where a patient will just turn up, they get moved there when deemed necessary. The plane one sounds like they've hired Rick to write for them, I thought I'd seen pictures of a C130 waiting on the runway and they aren't exactly small.
    A400M apparently and they only carry 37 tonnes
    So nearly double the payload capacity of a C130 and a bit more than a Boeing 737. I'm not sure if your 'only' 37t was sarcasm as that's a pretty big payload albeit a few tonnes less than a Globemaster.
    I am sure I kept reading that there were 90 tonnes of PPE coming from Turkey on Sunday. Always seemed a strange way of measuring what was coming.

    Anyway if I had somebody collecting 90 tonnes then I would be surprised if they sent a plane that only held 30 tonnes
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    SC - you happy that parliament is back open?
    _
  • Stevo_666
    Stevo_666 Posts: 62,022
    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    rjsterry said:

    coopster_the_1st said:

    So Rick has now moved on to defending the integrity of the FT.

    That should make an interesting hill for him to die on :smiley:

    So what's your source of choice? Genuinely intrigued.
    Go on @coopster_the_1st, don't be a tease. :)
    Not a question for me, but it's a struggle to find credible sources. Brexit was perhaps the worst example of such terrible coverage.

    I'm not sure whether standards of journalism are worse today, or that it is so much easier, with the internet, to establish that the journalist is wrong about something. I live in hope of finding a decent publication that will do analysis without prejudice.

    coopster_the_1st has a point about that FT headline.
    The FT have at least covered themselves by using the wording 'as high as...' and 'as many as...', so if the real figures do come out and are lower, they can always say that was only the maximum possible amount. Clearly indicates that they aren't at all sure either.
    "I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]
  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 29,929
    edited April 2020
    kingstongraham said:

    rjsterry said:

    Who's getting indignant? They've been pretty clear what they've done. We have ONS figures for deaths registered in w/c 10th April. Deaths take about 4 days to register so those figures are out of date. Using the trend from the hospital figures to 'see forward by ~4 days, they have estimated what the number of deaths occurring in w/c 10th April, and then extended this forward to 22nd April and then added them all up to give an estimate for total deaths so far.

    Figures out for week ending 10th April so far, not week commencing.

    I think where it might fail somewhat is in this statement "And if you assume a stable pattern in location of deaths, the numbers for those outside hospitals now suggests over 10,000 people have died in care homes more than would have been expected for this time of the year so far"

    I don't think you can assume that stable pattern in location of deaths, and he claims to be being conservative, but the number must be over 30,000
    Yes, sorry, week ending. I must be looking at a slightly different article as the only reference to 'stable' is "The FT’s analysis has extrapolated these figures using the latest trends in the daily hospital deaths assuming the relationship between these and total excess deaths remained stable, as it has so far over the course of the pandemic." which seems reasonable. As you would expect actual deaths to peak before registered deaths, I'm not sure how they have adjusted for this. They do assume that all the excess all causes deaths are directly or indirectly linked to C19, which may be an overstatement, but from the relevant ONS figures, the ratio of directly attributed C19 to other excess deaths was about 3:1, so as you say, it might be a bit less than 40K, but is probably north of 30K.
    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    (not my joke)

    "I owe the Jurassic Park franchiser an apology. it is in fact very realistic that rich people would re-open a park in spite of it consistently resulting in mass death".

    _
  • kingstongraham
    kingstongraham Posts: 28,302
    rjsterry said:

    I'm not the more obvious

    kingstongraham said:

    rjsterry said:

    Who's getting indignant? They've been pretty clear what they've done. We have ONS figures for deaths registered in w/c 10th April. Deaths take about 4 days to register so those figures are out of date. Using the trend from the hospital figures to 'see forward by ~4 days, they have estimated what the number of deaths occurring in w/c 10th April, and then extended this forward to 22nd April and then added them all up to give an estimate for total deaths so far.

    Figures out for week ending 10th April so far, not week commencing.

    I think where it might fail somewhat is in this statement "And if you assume a stable pattern in location of deaths, the numbers for those outside hospitals now suggests over 10,000 people have died in care homes more than would have been expected for this time of the year so far"

    I don't think you can assume that stable pattern in location of deaths, and he claims to be being conservative, but the number must be over 30,000
    Yes, sorry, week ending. I must be looking at a slightly different article as the only reference to 'stable' is "The FT’s analysis has extrapolated these figures using the latest trends in the daily hospital deaths assuming the relationship between these and total excess deaths remained stable, as it has so far over the course of the pandemic." which seems reasonable. As you would expect actual deaths to peak before registered deaths, I'm not sure how they have adjusted for this. They do assume that all the excess all causes deaths are directly or indirectly linked to C19, which may be an overstatement, but from the relevant ONS figures, the ratio of directly attributed C19 to other excess deaths was about 3:1, so as you say, it might be a bit less than 40K, but is probably north of 30K.
    "Stable" was taken from the accompanying tweets - has the same effect.

    I would agree with most of the assumptions that they have made, but understated it because I can see that I agree because it fits with what I already thought likely.
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 43,692
    surrey_commuter said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    TheBigBean said:

    Some of today's news:
    - shipment of gowns arrives from Turkey
    - ventilator challenge is producing ventilators
    - test capapcity now at 39,000, but more subjects are required

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/21/we-made-right-choice-in-ventilator-race-says-uk-consortium-head

    Interestingly the DM is full of doom gloom and despondency
    - the plane was too small
    - Nightingale is turning patients away due to no nurses

    On the plus side, some people I had never heard of have been wearing bikinis during lockdown
    That Nightingale one sounds like BS to me. It's not like they are places where a patient will just turn up, they get moved there when deemed necessary. The plane one sounds like they've hired Rick to write for them, I thought I'd seen pictures of a C130 waiting on the runway and they aren't exactly small.
    A400M apparently and they only carry 37 tonnes
    So nearly double the payload capacity of a C130 and a bit more than a Boeing 737. I'm not sure if your 'only' 37t was sarcasm as that's a pretty big payload albeit a few tonnes less than a Globemaster.
    I am sure I kept reading that there were 90 tonnes of PPE coming from Turkey on Sunday. Always seemed a strange way of measuring what was coming.

    Anyway if I had somebody collecting 90 tonnes then I would be surprised if they sent a plane that only held 30 tonnes
    I can't remember. You may be right but the 400k gowns is the bit I remember. I thought there was talk of an overall order of 80t but yes, it's a weird way to quanitify it.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    edited April 2020
    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    TheBigBean said:

    Some of today's news:
    - shipment of gowns arrives from Turkey
    - ventilator challenge is producing ventilators
    - test capapcity now at 39,000, but more subjects are required

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/21/we-made-right-choice-in-ventilator-race-says-uk-consortium-head

    Interestingly the DM is full of doom gloom and despondency
    - the plane was too small
    - Nightingale is turning patients away due to no nurses

    On the plus side, some people I had never heard of have been wearing bikinis during lockdown
    That Nightingale one sounds like BS to me. It's not like they are places where a patient will just turn up, they get moved there when deemed necessary. The plane one sounds like they've hired Rick to write for them, I thought I'd seen pictures of a C130 waiting on the runway and they aren't exactly small.
    A400M apparently and they only carry 37 tonnes
    So nearly double the payload capacity of a C130 and a bit more than a Boeing 737. I'm not sure if your 'only' 37t was sarcasm as that's a pretty big payload albeit a few tonnes less than a Globemaster.
    I am sure I kept reading that there were 90 tonnes of PPE coming from Turkey on Sunday. Always seemed a strange way of measuring what was coming.

    Anyway if I had somebody collecting 90 tonnes then I would be surprised if they sent a plane that only held 30 tonnes
    I can't remember. You may be right but the 400k gowns is the bit I remember. I thought there was talk of an overall order of 80t but yes, it's a weird way to quanitify it.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52362707

    Yesterday, a government minister, Matt Warman, released all those details for one NHS hospital trust: the United Lincolnshire Hospital Trust, which covers three hospitals with intensive care units, four in total. Although they don't service the entire population of Lincolnshire.

    Even in an area with relatively few Covid-19 infections, the daily use of PPE is pretty staggering: 39,500 surgical masks per day, 11,495 gloves, 1,501 gowns and 4,201 highly-protective FFP3 respirator masks, as well as aprons and eye protectors. That sums to a staggering 72,000 items a day in for one trust, alone.

    It gives some sense of the scale of PPE usage in the NHS. The United Lincolnshire Hospital Trust trust has seen just 0.5% of NHS England's coronavirus-related deaths. The county represents about the same proportion of cases, and it has the same proportion of England's hospitals. The trust is one of 223 hospital trusts in England.


    400,000 gowns for 223 hospital trusts is gonna last less than a week.
    _
  • surrey_commuter
    surrey_commuter Posts: 18,867
    rick_chasey said:

    SC - you happy that parliament is back open?

    Really don’t care, those deadbeats won’t influence anything
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660


    Where countries are re testing.
    _
  • Stevo_666
    Stevo_666 Posts: 62,022
    rick_chasey said:

    (not my joke)

    "I owe the Jurassic Park franchiser an apology. it is in fact very realistic that rich people would re-open a park in spite of it consistently resulting in mass death".

    Let's hope for their sake that they don't do comedy for a living....
    "I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]
  • First.Aspect
    First.Aspect Posts: 17,510
    rick_chasey said:

    First.Aspect said:

    rjsterry said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    Rather grim reading from the FT on likely real numbers so far extrapolated from the ONS figures for the beginning of April.

    https://amp.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab?__twitter_impression=true


    Is that a whole article on simply using the excess deaths to be corona deaths?
    It's free to read to check it out for yourself.
    I skim read it but I find the FT a bit sensationalist these days to bother reading it properly. That doesn't mean other newspapers are more reliable.
    if you don't wanna know that's fine, just don't ask.
    I wanted to know if there was anything more to the article which is why I asked. If there was, and there was some nuance and reliable statistical analysis then I was going to read it properly. If it is just a rewrite of the ONS data then it is less interesting.
    It's not. I've posted a summary.
    You need to be more critical. I just skimmed it. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the FT have taken the increased "all causes" mortality for one week, attributed 100% of this to coronavirus and extrapolated over the course of the pandemic.

    Yes you are wrong. That isn't what the FT did.

    Classic Rick rebuttal. File = zero bytes.

    So they did extrapolate for two weeks (not over whole course) and they did assume all extra deaths above mean are coronavirus related?

    Also, this methodology doesn't give you a number you can compare to anything else, because no other countrys' death rates are calculated this way.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    edited April 2020
    First.Aspect said:

    rick_chasey said:

    First.Aspect said:

    rjsterry said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    Rather grim reading from the FT on likely real numbers so far extrapolated from the ONS figures for the beginning of April.

    https://amp.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab?__twitter_impression=true


    Is that a whole article on simply using the excess deaths to be corona deaths?
    It's free to read to check it out for yourself.
    I skim read it but I find the FT a bit sensationalist these days to bother reading it properly. That doesn't mean other newspapers are more reliable.
    if you don't wanna know that's fine, just don't ask.
    I wanted to know if there was anything more to the article which is why I asked. If there was, and there was some nuance and reliable statistical analysis then I was going to read it properly. If it is just a rewrite of the ONS data then it is less interesting.
    It's not. I've posted a summary.
    You need to be more critical. I just skimmed it. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the FT have taken the increased "all causes" mortality for one week, attributed 100% of this to coronavirus and extrapolated over the course of the pandemic.

    Yes you are wrong. That isn't what the FT did.

    Classic Rick rebuttal. File = zero bytes.

    So they did extrapolate for two weeks (not over whole course) and they did assume all extra deaths above mean are coronavirus related?

    Also, this methodology doesn't give you a number you can compare to anything else, because no other countrys' death rates are calculated this way.
    You could just read it yourself. It is free to read.

    I haven't been comparing this figure to other nations anyway.
    _
  • Jeremy.89
    Jeremy.89 Posts: 457
    First.Aspect said:

    Jeremy.89 said:

    First.Aspect said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Jeremy.89 said:

    kingstongraham said:

    And deaths among young people have actually fallen, which implies that there are other causes of death that have reduced because of lockdown.

    No one driving, or doing anything more interesting tbf.
    There is an interesting stat about far more people died post 9/11 on the roads than died in the Towers.
    It is interesting but is it true? And what does it mean? More people died on the roads that day fleeing the towers, more people died in the US on the roads that year etc. etc.
    Possibly this is the stat referred to


    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/05/september-11-road-deaths

    Basically the change in behaviour (driving instead of flying) was nearly as deadly as the original attack.

    If fewer younger people are dying, it would suggest that for the time being we are swapping dangerous behaviours for safer ones. Telecommuting for car commuting, netflix instead of getting smashed in clubs, zwift instead of road racing...

    (Obviously the death rates of road racing isn't going to register on annual statistics!)

    It is a really good example of a deeply misleading "statistic" then. Not only is it not true (50% being not "nearly" or "far more" - at least the last time I tried paying for anything), but the truth is hugely less shocking or surprising than the headline.
    Fair point. Poor summary on my part. Although given some claimed that when China increased Wuhans corona death toll by 50% they were doubling it, maybe I should have gone all out.

  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 29,929
    edited April 2020
    @TheBigBean and @coopster_the_1st I think the latter. Everyone has an agenda of one sort or another and an absolute absence of prejudice is a fool's errand. Just read as broad a cross-section and go back to as many primary sources as you can. It's also worth remembering that one minor error in a report doesn't immediately invalidate the rest of the content. On the FT headline, I'd say it's not really about ventilators at all, but the situation of a civil servant giving one unambiguous answer to a parliamentary select committee and then shortly after writing to 'clarify' that what he actually meant was the exact opposite. Maybe I wouldn't put it on the front page but it's worthy of note.
    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 29,929
    First.Aspect said:

    rick_chasey said:

    First.Aspect said:

    rjsterry said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    Rather grim reading from the FT on likely real numbers so far extrapolated from the ONS figures for the beginning of April.

    https://amp.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab?__twitter_impression=true


    Is that a whole article on simply using the excess deaths to be corona deaths?
    It's free to read to check it out for yourself.
    I skim read it but I find the FT a bit sensationalist these days to bother reading it properly. That doesn't mean other newspapers are more reliable.
    if you don't wanna know that's fine, just don't ask.
    I wanted to know if there was anything more to the article which is why I asked. If there was, and there was some nuance and reliable statistical analysis then I was going to read it properly. If it is just a rewrite of the ONS data then it is less interesting.
    It's not. I've posted a summary.
    You need to be more critical. I just skimmed it. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the FT have taken the increased "all causes" mortality for one week, attributed 100% of this to coronavirus and extrapolated over the course of the pandemic.

    Yes you are wrong. That isn't what the FT did.

    Classic Rick rebuttal. File = zero bytes.

    So they did extrapolate for two weeks (not over whole course) and they did assume all extra deaths above mean are coronavirus related?

    Also, this methodology doesn't give you a number you can compare to anything else, because no other countrys' death rates are calculated this way.
    Why would you want to compare it to another country?
    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • tailwindhome
    tailwindhome Posts: 19,477
    coopster_the_1st said:

    tailwindhome said:

    coopster_the_1st said:

    rjsterry said:

    rjsterry said:

    coopster_the_1st said:

    So Rick has now moved on to defending the integrity of the FT.

    That should make an interesting hill for him to die on :smiley:

    So what's your source of choice? Genuinely intrigued.
    Go on @coopster_the_1st, don't be a tease. :)
    I'll answer when I have time to give a complete answer.

    However this is today's FT headline. What is the point of this?
    UK medical teams have known for at least a couple of weeks that ventilators are not as important in the treatment of C19 as previously thought.


    They didn't know that when the decision was made.
    The 'political decision' point was wrong as well and known to be incorrect before going to print.

    You've not answered the question though, what was the point of the headline article?

    With hindsight it was a great decision and the UK is now manufacturing the ventilators required




    The point of the article is that the Government made a political decision not join a EU procurement scheme.

    The correctness of this claim looks like it may be a matter for the inevitable inquiry to unravel. We currently have a senior civil servant saying it was a political decision then remembering that it wasn't.

    The outcome with regard to changing requirements for ventilators isn't really relevant. Matt Hancock didn't know this when he was on TV begging UK manufacturers to start retooling

    “New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!
  • kingstongraham
    kingstongraham Posts: 28,302
    First.Aspect said:

    rick_chasey said:

    First.Aspect said:

    rjsterry said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rick_chasey said:

    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    Rather grim reading from the FT on likely real numbers so far extrapolated from the ONS figures for the beginning of April.

    https://amp.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab?__twitter_impression=true


    Is that a whole article on simply using the excess deaths to be corona deaths?
    It's free to read to check it out for yourself.
    I skim read it but I find the FT a bit sensationalist these days to bother reading it properly. That doesn't mean other newspapers are more reliable.
    if you don't wanna know that's fine, just don't ask.
    I wanted to know if there was anything more to the article which is why I asked. If there was, and there was some nuance and reliable statistical analysis then I was going to read it properly. If it is just a rewrite of the ONS data then it is less interesting.
    It's not. I've posted a summary.
    You need to be more critical. I just skimmed it. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the FT have taken the increased "all causes" mortality for one week, attributed 100% of this to coronavirus and extrapolated over the course of the pandemic.

    Yes you are wrong. That isn't what the FT did.

    Classic Rick rebuttal. File = zero bytes.

    So they did extrapolate for two weeks (not over whole course) and they did assume all extra deaths above mean are coronavirus related?

    Also, this methodology doesn't give you a number you can compare to anything else, because no other countrys' death rates are calculated this way.
    It's attempting to get to a number of dead people, nothing to do with comparing it to other countries.

    These are the assumptions:
    1) @ONS can count death registrations
    2) Excess all cause mortality is a good measure of deaths directly or indirectly linked to Covid-19
    3) There is a stable pattern between hospital Covid-19 deaths and all deaths

  • kingstongraham
    kingstongraham Posts: 28,302
    Knock the number down a bit if it makes you feel better.
  • ugo.santalucia
    ugo.santalucia Posts: 28,336
    surrey_commuter said:



    I am sure I kept reading that there were 90 tonnes of PPE coming from Turkey on Sunday. Always seemed a strange way of measuring what was coming.

    Yeah, if it's packaged by Amazon, of the 90 tonnes, 85 are cardboard...
    left the forum March 2023
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    The Head of the ONS

    _
  • john80
    john80 Posts: 2,965
    Pross said:

    Jeremy.89 said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    Pross said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    TheBigBean said:

    Some of today's news:
    - shipment of gowns arrives from Turkey
    - ventilator challenge is producing ventilators
    - test capapcity now at 39,000, but more subjects are required

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/21/we-made-right-choice-in-ventilator-race-says-uk-consortium-head

    Interestingly the DM is full of doom gloom and despondency
    - the plane was too small
    - Nightingale is turning patients away due to no nurses

    On the plus side, some people I had never heard of have been wearing bikinis during lockdown
    That Nightingale one sounds like BS to me. It's not like they are places where a patient will just turn up, they get moved there when deemed necessary. The plane one sounds like they've hired Rick to write for them, I thought I'd seen pictures of a C130 waiting on the runway and they aren't exactly small.
    A400M apparently and they only carry 37 tonnes
    So nearly double the payload capacity of a C130 and a bit more than a Boeing 737. I'm not sure if your 'only' 37t was sarcasm as that's a pretty big payload albeit a few tonnes less than a Globemaster.
    Given the number of long haul passenger jets sitting unused, surely there could be something better...(although loading cargo into a plane full of seats isn't efficient)

    Heck, if moneys no object just charter a 747 F.
    Presumably it wasn't needed and the RAF transport plane was sufficient. It seems that someone at the Mail has gone 'the order was for 80t and that plane can't carry 80t therefore it's too small' whereas 80t is the whole order and the plane was only due to pick up part of the consignment. The RAF have a pretty high degree of expertise in matching equipment to logistical need so my money is on the Mail making a story out of nothing, it's not like they are renowned for accurate and responsible reporting.
    Government should have sent 10 planes to be safe. No point sending just the plane you need for the job.
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 22,090
    rjsterry said:

    @TheBigBean and @coopster_the_1st I think the latter. Everyone has an agenda of one sort or another and an absolute absence of prejudice is a fool's errand. Just read as broad a cross-section and go back to as many primary sources as you can. It's also worth remembering that one minor error in a report doesn't immediately invalidate the rest of the content. On the FT headline, I'd say it's not really about ventilators at all, but the situation of a civil servant giving one unambiguous answer to a parliamentary select committee and then shortly after writing to 'clarify' that what he actually meant was the exact opposite. Maybe I wouldn't put it on the front page but it's worthy of note.

    That's pretty much what I do except that I try to approach things without an agenda, and don't think it is unreasonable to expect others to do similarly. Of course, they need to sell papers, but I would like to buy the publication that targets people like me - although perhaps I am in a minority of one.

    To give one example, there was recent headline that x% of people that had died were from a BAME background. This was occasionally reported alongside y% of the UK being of a BAME background. Is it too much to ask for an attempt to weight this by area of deaths? E.g. If [50%] of deaths were in London, and London is [30%] BAME - is that not something that is worth reporting? I appreciate it may not fit in 140 characters though.
  • kingstonian
    kingstonian Posts: 2,847
    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    @TheBigBean and @coopster_the_1st I think the latter. Everyone has an agenda of one sort or another and an absolute absence of prejudice is a fool's errand. Just read as broad a cross-section and go back to as many primary sources as you can. It's also worth remembering that one minor error in a report doesn't immediately invalidate the rest of the content. On the FT headline, I'd say it's not really about ventilators at all, but the situation of a civil servant giving one unambiguous answer to a parliamentary select committee and then shortly after writing to 'clarify' that what he actually meant was the exact opposite. Maybe I wouldn't put it on the front page but it's worthy of note.

    That's pretty much what I do except that I try to approach things without an agenda, and don't think it is unreasonable to expect others to do similarly. Of course, they need to sell papers, but I would like to buy the publication that targets people like me - although perhaps I am in a minority of one.

    To give one example, there was recent headline that x% of people that had died were from a BAME background. This was occasionally reported alongside y% of the UK being of a BAME background. Is it too much to ask for an attempt to weight this by area of deaths? E.g. If [50%] of deaths were in London, and London is [30%] BAME - is that not something that is worth reporting? I appreciate it may not fit in 140 characters though.


    There's an awful lot of lazy journos out there, intoxicated by the lure of fame and fortune from a 140 character comment, that conveniently forget how getting the facts right should be a key constituent of their job
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 75,660
    TheBigBean said:

    rjsterry said:

    @TheBigBean and @coopster_the_1st I think the latter. Everyone has an agenda of one sort or another and an absolute absence of prejudice is a fool's errand. Just read as broad a cross-section and go back to as many primary sources as you can. It's also worth remembering that one minor error in a report doesn't immediately invalidate the rest of the content. On the FT headline, I'd say it's not really about ventilators at all, but the situation of a civil servant giving one unambiguous answer to a parliamentary select committee and then shortly after writing to 'clarify' that what he actually meant was the exact opposite. Maybe I wouldn't put it on the front page but it's worthy of note.

    That's pretty much what I do except that I try to approach things without an agenda, and don't think it is unreasonable to expect others to do similarly. Of course, they need to sell papers, but I would like to buy the publication that targets people like me - although perhaps I am in a minority of one.

    To give one example, there was recent headline that x% of people that had died were from a BAME background. This was occasionally reported alongside y% of the UK being of a BAME background. Is it too much to ask for an attempt to weight this by area of deaths? E.g. If [50%] of deaths were in London, and London is [30%] BAME - is that not something that is worth reporting? I appreciate it may not fit in 140 characters though.
    We had this discussion before and i disagree with you. You think it is important that *both sides* are reported, even when one side is demonstrably false, and to maintain a balance between those two sides.

    e.g. the passenger aircraft being shot down by Russian forces in Ukraine. I said, in that instance, the journalist, when it became clear this was what had happened, that they should have reported that the Russian government issued a false statement denying it, and, IIRC, you thought that it was fine to report the Russian position as the 'other side'.

    I might well have misremembered this discussion, mind.
    _
  • sungod
    sungod Posts: 17,496
    kingstonian said:

    Just had an email from the company we booked our now cancelled ski trip with. The airline (Air Canada) are not providing a refund, but instead going down the route of holding a credit in our name which we can use for a future booking with them. If we chose to not use that credit, we'd have to try to claim for the lost amount through travel insurance.

    I just saw on the BBS website that other airlines are taking the same approach.

    I realise that we are living in unprecedented times, but it feels odd that you can book a flight with a company to travel to a specific destination at a specific time, and they can cancel it with no opportunity to travel on that same route for many months and then not be obliged to refund the booking. As it happens we are looking to re-book our holiday for next year, but many won't and will then be arm-wrestling with their travel insurance policy.......

    if they are refusing to refund flights and you used a credit or amex debit card, you can go direct to your card issuer and get your money that way, for instance...
    https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/04/17/use-section-75-to-get-a-flight-or-hotel-refund/

    you have to go through the issuer's process, but in the end you'll get the money
    my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny
  • tailwindhome
    tailwindhome Posts: 19,477
    The good performance from Starmer at PMQ is something the country badly needs.
    Though he was helped immensely by the quiet in the chamber.


    “New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!
  • Longshot
    Longshot Posts: 940
    sungod said:

    kingstonian said:

    Just had an email from the company we booked our now cancelled ski trip with. The airline (Air Canada) are not providing a refund, but instead going down the route of holding a credit in our name which we can use for a future booking with them. If we chose to not use that credit, we'd have to try to claim for the lost amount through travel insurance.

    I just saw on the BBS website that other airlines are taking the same approach.

    I realise that we are living in unprecedented times, but it feels odd that you can book a flight with a company to travel to a specific destination at a specific time, and they can cancel it with no opportunity to travel on that same route for many months and then not be obliged to refund the booking. As it happens we are looking to re-book our holiday for next year, but many won't and will then be arm-wrestling with their travel insurance policy.......

    if they are refusing to refund flights and you used a credit or amex debit card, you can go direct to your card issuer and get your money that way, for instance...
    https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/04/17/use-section-75-to-get-a-flight-or-hotel-refund/

    you have to go through the issuer's process, but in the end you'll get the money

    I think I'm going to end up doing that too. I have three flights, two hotels and car hire cancelled. All three flights are supposedly refundable as is the car hire and one hotel. So far, not seen anything but holding responses.
    You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.

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