Dr Duncan Robertson Profile picture
Sep 13, 2020 14 tweets 7 min read Read on X
The real #testing story is Pillar 2 testing capacity appears to have been reached (i.e "on-line testing booking was periodically taken off line to 'throttle demand'") way back in late August - this by the DPH of Blackburn and Darwen themj.co.uk/We-must-rapidl…. Journalists: DMs open Image
It is not easy to see that testing capacity has been reached on the data dashboard. Here's what I see today at coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing for Pillar 1 and 2 - so what's the problem? Lots of apparent headroom between demand and supply Image
To see what has (and is) going wrong, you have to look at the data download in the top right corner. You can extract a spreadsheet. I have only added one column - the percentage of Pillar 2 used each day Image
And there we have it, 23 August - Pillar 2 capacity was exceeded in England. Exactly 3 weeks ago. And it still hasn't been fixed Image
As I say, this is consistent with this first hand account from the Director of Public Health in Blackburn with Darwen
For more analysis, follow me on Twitter or duncanrobertson.com - happy to answer questions from journalists on DMs
Pillar 4 (surveillance) tests vastly exceed stated capacity too. h/t @fascinatorfun and @_johnbye ImageImage
@AndrewSparrow re 'significant capacity weeks ago' - Pillar 2 breached on 23 August
Here are the latest Pillar 2 capacity and tests. The capacity figures haven't been published since 10 August (two days after the Head of Testing and NHS Test and Trace made her statement). My question: what is the current capacity in Pillar 2, and how is this figure calculated? Image
My @bbc5live interview this morning with @rachelburden and @NickyAACampbell discussing the COVID testing capacity breach: "In order to do Whack-A-Mole, you need to know where the moles are"
Quoted in the British Medical Journal
bmj.com/content/370/bm…

BMJ 2020;370:m3678 ; 370 doi: doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3…

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More from @Dr_D_Robertson

Jun 9, 2023
Data thread from today's @IndependentSage briefing including a discussion on sick pay, the topic of today's discussion. 🧵 Image
Cases and tests. Relatively low.
Caveat that the ONS Covid infection survey has been paused ImageImageImageImage
Hospital admissions. Trend not upward.
Caveat that testing has changed in hospital. ImageImageImageImage
Read 14 tweets
Apr 21, 2023
Covid data presentation for the @IndependentSage briefing on 21 April 2023 🧵 Image
Testing has changed from 1 April 2023, so it is difficult to compare before and after this date.
gov.uk/government/new…
The ONS survey has been 'paused', so we can look at the (less recent, less representative) data on PCR positivity

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testin… ImageImage
Read 11 tweets
Apr 20, 2023
Alright. Another maths thread. And why it's non-trivial to ask exam questions.
🧵
OK. So the 'exam question' is:

"Inflation is currently 10%. If inflation halves, how much will a £1 pint of milk cost".

Sounds easy. It's not. It's ambiguous. It's not a good question. Unless it's designed to be a bad question. In which case it's a good question.
1. It talks about 'inflation'. But *what* inflation? At the moment, we have overall inflation at roughly 10% but inflation of food at roughly 20%. So is the overall inflation rate the same as the inflation rate for milk? It's not clear. Bad question.
Read 9 tweets
Mar 24, 2023
Data thread from today's @IndependentSage briefing. 🧵
First, the @ONS Covid Infection Survey is being paused, and @CovidGenomicsUK is being retired. This will have implications for data reliability and availability going forward.
Read 17 tweets
Mar 20, 2023
OK, I'm going to write a response to this maths problem, published in @DailyMailUK, that has caused a lot of comment, some thinking the answer is 1 and some thinking the answer is 9.

A thread. 🧵

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…
So, what answer is correct? Is it 1 or is it 9?

Many of us would go straight to the answer 1. That's because we know (or our children know, and have taught us), that there is a 'rule' for how you deal with the order of doing the calculation - do you do + first or ÷, for example?
Enter BIDMAS (or BODMAS).

"It stands for Brackets, Indices [or Order], Division, Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction."

That's the conventional order. Forget about indices [or order] for now - that's not important for this one.
bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topic…
Read 12 tweets
Mar 20, 2023
Like it or not, this equation is ambiguous.

The thing about maths (and language for that matter) is you aim to express things elegantly, while being unabiguous.

Unless you're trying not to.
Read 4 tweets

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