PSA (so please RT): After the death of Awaab Ishak, a few words on black mold. Do you have a couple of spots of mold in your shower? Like, maybe top corners on the grouting? That. Well, it might be. It might be a different mold. The really nasty one is Stachbotrytis chartarum.(1) This one. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachybot…

There are others it can be, the most likely is Aspergillus niger en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergill…

Which do you have? And should you be worried? (2)

Nobody cares, but here's the solution to the energy price crisis in the UK, at least this Winter. (1) Start with a windfall tax on producers. The excess profits they're making here, based on our relative political stability, are worth extra because £ is so low. That's just a start (2)

Pet hate. Company puts a card through your door "We will be in your area on these days doing (X)". You phone them. They offer you an appointment date a month or months later. So your card was basically a lie, wasn't it @OVOEnergy? Straight up, flay out a lie. "well the appointments went really fast..." No. If the card comes through my door, posted yesterday to the whole area, all 5 days did not fill up in that time, you did not book out for a whole extra month in that time. I don't believe you @OVOEnergy

Let me stop you there, David. Peak infection can be calculated from peak fatalities, we know average time it takes Covid to kill. Peak infection was just prior to lockdown, if you cast your mind back you'll recall lockdown was a reaction to public behaviour, not a leader thereof.

https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1567069407477698561

In other words we have mathematical proof that lockdown 1 was both needed and way, way too late to save as many lives as we could. Lockdown was soft, without masking, and infection continued to spread in supermarkets etc....

There were things wrong with the first episodes. This wasn't one of them. There are times when a producer concentrates on inclusivity while failing on content (most recent BBC version of Dracula, Doctor Who spinoff Class) but it ain't casting that's the problem, it's content... ...the problem is that whoever you cast, the show can
still be crap. Rings of Power was just OK rather than great, Lenny Henry as a hobbit and a brown guy cast as an Elf weren't the reasons why it didn't meet higher expectations...

So, Polio in London? I'm going to meander on a bit. Sorry. A thread by a microbiologist (but not that kind of microbiologist) detailing what you need to know (1) Unusually, for me, I'm going to start with a tl;dr point. Should you be worried? Only a little bit, so far. Get your kids vaccinated if you have not. Call your doctor - now-. NOTHING is gained by this risk (2)

Weird incident. Out for a wander, there's a dead pigeon by a tree, in front of some houses where children play. Nudge it with my toe, nudge it again. Yep. Dead. Not that there is any doubt... ...still has rigor, it's relatively fresh, no sign of cause of death. Might be tempted to hoik it into a hedge away from where kids play, but there isn't a hedge. So I flick it into my rucksack for disposal - I'm not leaving a dead animal where kids play...

Phoned @camcitco to chase up to make sure they're not going to install a bollard to keep themselves back from the railing they put up because the fence they put up to protect my garden from them (a hedge didn't work), to stop them damaging my property yet again. And... its weird ...apparently they're in an 'emergency line'. I asked what the emergency was, they specified several types of emergency they might take calls on. No, I asked, what's the emergency that's led you @camcitco to be 'an emergency line'...

Looking at UK Covid data right now, I've got to say, what a mess. What a hell of a mess. Here's the overall picture, I'll try and describe what happening in this thread (1) Firstly, deaths. They're continuing to rise. We should be seeing the rise in deaths falling now if the drop in cases was real (it isn't). Over 1500 deaths over 7 days. (2)

Covid picture in the UK right now is very complex. Here's the overall picture, I'll try and take us through various current trends in this thread (1) Lets start with deaths. We're still seeing a slow rise (as an average over 7 days). 263.3 a day, over 1843 a week (2)

Covid data in the UK right now is nothing short of catastrophic. Our healthcare system is struggling to cope, and its quite understandable why. Here's the overall picture, I'll go through whats happening in this thread (1) I'll start with deaths. 97 reported today, the highest on a Sunday since the 28th of February (2)

Last Friday we saw 189,846 reported cases, 203 deaths, and 2,036 hospitalisations. Cases were a little inflated by some carry over, deaths, less so. Today, based on the last 7 and 14 days we can project what we may expect to happen (1) On trend, deaths have been rising, we'd see 262 to 337 deaths. Data is all over the place, we may see lower than that, lets hope so. To get back to where we were before Christmas Eve we'd need -75 deaths. In other words, deaths are rising regardless (2)

So we've had a big hospitalisations data drop today, as well as the rest of the normal daily Covid data. Might split this stats update into a couple of parts, pre and post dinner. Here's the overall picture before delving deeper (1) 179756 cases. Thats insane, bud lower than last Thursday. Don't get too excited though, last Thursday we had some delayed data (2)

Today we're getting to the meat and drink of real Covid data in the UK. Deaths in particular, we'll start to see real data and we'll finally have a better idea of where we are. For context, where we were (1) In the week running up to Christmas we were averaging 111-116 deaths a day. Deaths per day had been falling almost imperceptibly slowly during December (2)

Even including catch-up data for deaths, thats ghastly. Genuinely ghastly. Tomorrow is likely to dee a drop from last Thursday but we are now, unmistakably, seeing deaths rise quite fast. Hospitalisations also rising, and fast.

https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1478760210365927425

This -should- be the last catch-up data day for deaths. And last Thursday was also a catch-up day. But whatever the deaths data we get tomorrow, it is now impossible for deaths to be lower than before Christmas. We're already up over that, for 7 days, in tomorrows data...

Looking at projections for Covid cases and deaths today and the turbulence in the date makes them really quite wild. Deaths, on trend, would be 65-95, a wide range because over Christmas the numbers have been all over the place (1) Whereas cases, they've been more bonkers on Wednesdays than other days, of late its been the day when we've seen the biggest rises. On recent trend, based on last Wednesday and average changes, it would be 253,923 to 283,036 (2)

Todays Covid data is shocking but perhaps most worrying in how incomplete it is. Here's the overall picture, I'll go into the key parameters over the next few tweets (1) Cases are bonkers, and while its fair to say we've had some crazy days of reporting, its still very obviously enormous. 218,742 cases today, and its not even a surprise (2)

I kind of feel I must interrupt festivities to talk about Covid data in the UK right now. tl;dr version: literally every indicator is going to shit. Here's the overall picture before going into it all (1) Where to even begin. Well I suppose, lets start with cases. We've hit the most astonishing milestone of over 1 million recorded cases in a week (2)

Record Covid cases again in the UK today, deaths up, hospitalisations rising FAST. Here's the overall picture, I'll go into each trend over the next however many tweets. (1) Deaths are rising again. Two of the last 3 days have seen big rises. Its not in itself huge yet but its cause for concern (2)

Not a full thread today. Obviously cases continue to skyrocket. But hospitalisations are, as I said, the next marker to look at. And there they go. We know that for the 20th and the 22nd they're also over 1000, we have English data but not all the rest (1)

https://twitter.com/gnomeicide/status/1473767673389592584

20th of December we already know will be over 1080, and the 21st over 1100 (waiting on Scottish data for that). Hospitalisations are starting to rise quite fast. If that follows the trend for cases, even a little, its a huge problem (2)

Reminder, should you feel the urge to back the Allison Pearson horse in the columnist vs. science race - she is always, but always wrong.

https://twitter.com/AllisonPearson/status/1253105466038784000

Here she spuriously and performatively doesn't understand infectious disease

https://twitter.com/AllisonPearson/status/1308110379529232384?t=1PiNwfPLEURiZF7iOw35GA&s=19