Issue 2) 3-4% of all tests are void, because of anything from issues with barcodes to (most commonly) samples leaking in transit.
They estimate 109 people who got a void result that week would have been positive, and therefore have the virus but don't know and won't be traced!
Issue 3) something is badly wrong at the Manchester Lighthouse lab (9% of tests voided, huge backlog) and Randox (5% of tests voided).
Not clear if this is a problem at the labs or with the tests they're being sent to process.
Issue 4) some labs are running at full capacity (in fact Manchester processed more tests than it's capacity on the day shown!), but Glasgow only used 2/3 of the capacity it claimed to have, despite having a backlog of 35,000 tests to process!
How accurate are capacity figures?
Issue 5) our own lab capacity has run out and we're sending tests to labs in Europe (Eurofina and Immensa).
These labs aren't always used, but are still included in the lab capacity figures!
For example, here Immensa has 10,000 capacity but hasn't reported processing any tests.
Issue 6) when these foreign labs are used, things sometimes go wrong.
The article says thousands of tests sent to Eurofina's lab in Germany were transported at the wrong temperature and may end up being binned!
Issue 7) despite their swabs being recalled over safety concerns and previous issues at their lab, Randox are still being used and still causing problems.
The article says 35,000 tests were voided there in August and work is being done by minimum wage staff doing 12 hour shifts!
And that's all from me glancing at one blurry screen of one day's data.
Experts may spot further issues I missed.
And anoyingly, void data is something @fascinatorfun and others have been asking for since testing began. We now know it's being tracked but not published.
It also confirms that some or all of the 150,000 tests a fortnight done for the ONS survey are handled by Pillar 2 labs.
Which means the government's claimed lab capacity figures are misleading, even aside from the other capacity issues listed above.
Also an interesting report here from @JenWilliamsMEN suggesting that pillar 2 labs that used students over the summer may now be running into staffing issues as they go back to university, while confirming that pillar 1 and 2 labs have been kept separate.
Last week Andrew Bridgen claimed Ukraine might be working on a dirty bomb to use in a "false flag" attack in Europe. Unsurprisingly his comments have now been amplified by the Russian military and state media, and echoed back by Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK. 🧵
Andrew Bridgen had an "incredibly productive" meeting with the Russian ambassador in London earlier this year.
Since then he's claimed Rishi Sunak called the election to avoid being a wartime PM, and that Ukraine's planning a "false flag" nuclear attack in Europe "like 9/11". 😳
Meanwhile Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK have been amplifying these claims of false flag attacks and dirty bombs.
John and Irina Mappin at least are known to have visited the Russian embassy recently, and all frequently share Russian propaganda on social media.
Reform's manifesto (or "contract") panders to conspiracy theorists, falsely linking covid vaccines to excess deaths and pledging to "reject" the WEF, WHO and digital currencies.
Unsurprising, given many of their supporters and candidates have rather odd views on these topics. 🧵
Nigel Farage and his Reform Party recently got an endorsement from Laurence Fox of the similarly named Reclaim Party.
Farage even recorded a video with Fox, who has repeatedly compared the Pride flag to the Swastika and promoted Islamophobia.
With friends like these...
Laurence Fox's fiancée also took selfies with Farage while out supporting him in Clacton.
She's recently claimed (amongst many other things) that the pandemic didn't happen and that "they" manipulate the weather to rob us of vital Vitamin D. Right before a heat wave started. 🤦♂️
Reform's candidate in Edinburgh South West, Ian Harper, was a vocal backer of ivermectin, and the grifters and frauds who promoted it as a cure for covid. In his bio for Reform, he talks about a "globalist agenda" seeking to "collapse society".
Not the worst thing he's said. 🧵
Ian Harper's first Twitter account was suspended, and he's now locked his second (presumably to stop voters seeing it). Luckily the internet (and its archives) remembers.
Most of his pandemic posts seem to consist of vastly exaggerated claims about the wonders of ivermectin. 🙄
Unsurprisingly Reform's Ian Harper was an enthusiastic supporter of Tess Lawrie, founder of a British group called BIRD which promoted the dewormer ivermectin as a miracle "cure" for covid, much of it based on flawed or outright fraudulent studies.
Reform's candidate in Twickenham is a member of anti-vax misinformation group HART. In leaked chat logs, Alex Starling called vaccinating children "a perverted abomination", and talked about sneaking HART content and campaigns into articles he wrote for UK news site Reaction. 🧵
If you've not come across them before, HART identify as "a group of highly qualified doctors, scientists and other experts" who just "question the narrative". But many of their members believe covid vaccines were designed to depopulate the Earth! 😳
Alex Starling fit right in at HART, calling wearing masks at school "depraved cruelty" and vaccinating children against covid "a perverted abomination". He also repeatedly suggested covid vaccines work in the same way lions "work" on a herd of zebras, "by taking out the weakest".
John Mappin appeared on Russian TV at the weekend, claiming the British public doesn't support Ukraine. Because he spoke to a few friends, and they all love Russia too. 🤷♂️
Mappin often retweets Putin's propaganda, and last year claimed he could instantly end the Ukraine war. 🤔
Russian asset / useful idiot John Mappin has also been out campaigning for Nigel Farage in Clacton-on-Sea. Haven't they suffered enough already?
Mappin previously backed Andrew Bridgen, after the MP compared covid vaccines to the Holocaust. Just the man you want on your side. 🤦♂️
John Mappin rather optimistically claimed afterwards that Nigel Farage is going to be Prime Minister, hailing him for "one of the most brilliant and sanest speeches in this island's history". 🤪
But then he's already fallen for Scientology, QAnon, and covid conspiracy theories.
The BMJ has had to issue a statement after everyone from The Telegraph and former Brexit Minister David Davis to anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists claimed that covid vaccines may be responsible for excess deaths, based on a dubious study published in @BMJPublicHealth. 🧵
The Telegraph's @sarahknapton has a history of this. Two years ago she tried to blame excess deaths (including some covid deaths!) on lockdowns, with a clickbait headline that the article (behind a paywall) failed to support. This is more of the same.
As for the BMJ article that inspired all of this, it simply takes excess death data from 47 "western" countries (ranging from the US and UK to Australia and New Zealand to Bulgaria and Moldova), adds them all up, then engages in a lot of vague arm waving.