Tuesday 19th May 2020
Posted: Tue 19 May, 2020 6:42 am
Morning all.
So far so good, but thenThe Commons science and technology committee has criticised the government for what it described as “inadequate” coronavirus testing capacity throughout the pandemic.
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In a letter to the prime minister assessing evidence to the committee during the pandemic, its chairman Greg Clark – the Tory former business secretary – said:
"Testing capacity has been inadequate for most of the pandemic so far. Capacity was not increased early enough or boldly enough. Capacity drove strategy, rather than strategy driving capacity."
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"The decision to pursue an approach of initially concentrating testing in a limited number of laboratories and to expand them gradually, rather than an approach of surging capacity through a large number of available public sector, research institute, university and private sector labs is one of the most consequential made during this crisis.
From it followed the decision on 12 March to cease testing in the community and retreat to testing principally within hospitals."
From the G."Had the public bodies responsible in this space themselves taken the initiative at the beginning of February, or even the beginning of March, rather than waiting until the secretary of state imposed a target on 2 April, knowledge of the spread of the pandemic and decisions about the response to it may have made more options available to decision makers at earlier stages."
Hurrah, except for the weasel word 'suspend'.Labour is pushing the government to make “five immediate changes to our social security system to make sure no one is forced into hardship,” Reynolds adds.
They are:
Convert Universal Credit advances into grants instead of loans, ending the five-week wait
Remove the £16,000 savings limit which disqualifies individuals from accessing Universal Credit
Suspend the benefit cap
Abolish the two-child limit in Universal Credit and tax credits
Uprate legacy benefits to match the increase in Universal Credit, providing an immediate increase in Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment Support Allowance
The number of people claiming unemployment benefits increased by the most since records began in April to reach almost 2.1 million, according to official figures capturing the onset of the coronavirus crisis.
In a reflection of mounting job losses across the country, the Office for National Statistics said about 856,500 people signed up for universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance benefits in April, driving up the overall UK claimant count by 69% in a single month.
It's the first time I've seen it all in one place, that's all.AnatolyKasparov wrote:Its still a perfectly OK package overall.
Good bit from 11 minutes on steeply lowering oxygen levels which are NOT accompanied by breathlessness . ( Some ICU's have seen unprecedented low levels on people still functioning as normal )The coronavirus outbreak revealed an international shortage of ventilators. Across the world, govenrments scrambled to acquire new ones, not just from traditional manufacturers, but from anyone who though they could design a simple yet functional device. As a result, hundreds of teams and individuals have risen to the challenge, including university students and hobbyists. Jolyon Jenkins set out to design and build a ventilator himself, drawing on the wealth of shared informationi and designs that have emerged in the last few weeks. He soon discovers that it's harder than it looks.
Much publicity has gone to organisations that have produced ventilators that are not up to standard. And as knowledge of the disease has progressed, it's become clear that coronavirus patients need very careful and specialised forms of ventilation if it's not to do more harm than good. So are non-specialists capable of producing machines that will actually benefit patients?
Presenter/producer: Jolyon Jenkins
If Clark had taken the initiative of obtaining a cure for COVID-19 in November 2019 and had given it to everyone rather than pathetically attempt protecting Tory government now, wonderful people would still be alive.gilsey wrote:---
...Greg ClarkFrom the G."Had the public bodies responsible in this space themselves taken the initiative at the beginning of February, or even the beginning of March, rather than waiting until the secretary of state imposed a target on 2 April, knowledge of the spread of the pandemic and decisions about the response to it may have made more options available to decision makers at earlier stages."
People have been trying to do that tbf, and haven't got there yet despite their best efforts. Though of course I don't disagree with your more general pointcitizenJA wrote:If Clark had taken the initiative of obtaining a cure for COVID-19 in November 2019 and had given it to everyone rather than pathetically attempt protecting Tory government now, wonderful people would still be alive.gilsey wrote:---
...Greg ClarkFrom the G."Had the public bodies responsible in this space themselves taken the initiative at the beginning of February, or even the beginning of March, rather than waiting until the secretary of state imposed a target on 2 April, knowledge of the spread of the pandemic and decisions about the response to it may have made more options available to decision makers at earlier stages."
George Eustice, Tory MP for Camborne & Redruth since 2010 and current government minister, grew up at Trevaskis Fruit Farm.George Eustice is now talking about the availability of foreign labour for the harvest.
Normally workers from countries like Romania and Bulgaria come.
But only around a third of them are here, he says.
He says the government is encouraging Britons to take these jobs.
He says staff who are furloughed may want to supplement their income with a second job.
pestilence and feudalism...Eustice decided to take a different farming route and after one too many unsuccessful vegetable crops, he started growing fruit.
oh, would you look at this hereScience and Technology Committee
Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Chair
Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP Prime Minister (By e-mail)
18 May 2020
Dear Prime Minister,
COVID-19 pandemic: some lessons learned so far
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On 2 April the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock MP, announced a target of 100,000 tests a day to be carried out by the end of that month. However, Professor Whitty made clear to the Committee that “SAGE did not give that specific target”. Even public officials emphasised that the 100,000 target was the Secretary of State’s choice, with Professor John Newton explaining:While there was some public debate at the time about whether the target was met by 30 April, it is clear that it drove a major expansion in capacity at least, comparable with what Germany had enjoyed for several weeks.I think specifically, no, it is not a SAGE target; it is the Secretary of State’s target. I think he has taken advice from the programme and from colleagues [...] I am afraid you would have to ask the Secretary of State himself exactly where he got his advice from.
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For such an important determinant of a wide range of policy responses, it is surprising that a target designed to galvanise a tenfold increase in testing capacity appears not to be on the advice of PHE, NHS England or SAGE but was more of a personal initiative by the Secretary of State.Had the public bodies responsible in this space themselves taken the initiative at the beginning of February, or even the beginning of March, rather than waiting until the Secretary of State imposed a target on 2 April, knowledge of the spread of the pandemic and decisions about the response to it may have made more options available to decision makers at earlier stages.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/c ... so-far.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Indeed, let's see if they take their "advice".Willow904 wrote:From the G liveblog:
"Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser, said that scientists have told ministers that they should only relax the lockdown when a proper contact tracing system is in place"
Well, that was interesting and informative!
Priti Patel
@pritipatel
We’re ending free movement to open Britain up to the world.
It will ensure people can come to our country based on what they have to offer, not where they come from.
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6:10 pm · 18 May 2020·Twitter for iPhone
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Target-setting galvanisation doesn't help, serve or save anyone's life."...it is surprising that a target designed to galvanise a tenfold increase in testing capacity appears not to be on the advice..."
- Greg Clark
Tory minister
"...saying '100,000 tests a day by the end of April' without any thought to what was being done with the information learned from those tests, without having follow up contact tracing and isolating in place, without even providing effective testing.
That's how you use targets effectively- don't pick a number, work out what you want to achieve and set a target to get the conditions in place for it to happen. '100,000 tests' isn't strategy - what do we want to achieve? - it's just tactics - what are we going to do to start to achieve it'. 'Schools must starting going back on June 1st' is just tactics, with no strategy. All of their focus is on short term tactics and deflection."
- from adam's post three days ago
It would in her case be genuinely hard to tell the difference.citizenJA wrote:That's Patel's real account. I thought it might've been a parody. I wish to god it was a parody.
Lord Forsyth, the committee chair, said there was a consensus about adult social care needing much higher funding. Sunak affected surprise, and said that if there was a consensus, he would like to hear about it (implying that he thought no such consensus existed). Forsyth said that his committee published a report last summer saying the sector needed another £15bn. The report said the money should come from general taxation, but it did not make specific recommendations as to which taxes should go up.
I've deliberately missed out the figures there, for effect. I asked mr gilsey what sort of basic tax rate he thought would be unacceptable, in this context, he said 40%.Sunak said he thought the plans would require income tax rising by either ?p or ?p in the pound. He implied that he thought it would be hard to get consensus support for tax increases on that scale.