UKH

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52547869

Boris doubles down on the first meaningless number - the shamble continues...

His ambition is to get to 200k tests per day by the end of the month. He is not saying it will definitely happen. 

They must be planning on having 120,000 test kits ready to post on 30th May.

What a load of bollocks, did he answer a single question?

I gave up watching.  The first question did it for me regarding our horrendous death rates.

Swerve the issue, followed up by plant in slogan/government message

What do they think in their quiet moments at night? 

Sadly, the massive child can say pretty much anything, and he's never held to account.  The media aren't pushing any hard questions, the public can't be bothered to sharpen their pitchforks for when we're allowed out, and the other party members tow the line.  

I used to be a Project Manager.  I think some of you may be attributing far too much emphasis to "targets" and "ambitions".  The clue is in the name.

Al

Disgraceful for the BBC.

Headline "Boris Johnson promises 200,000 tests by end of May".

Followed by "He said his "ambition" was to hit 200,000 tests "by the end of this month".

I think many of us understand the nature of targets like this and would have given Hancock credit for achieving 89,000 *completed* tests by the end of April as a pretty good effort - it was an 8-fold increase in a month - had he played it straight.  But he didn't.

The infuriating parts were to see him playing politics with it.  Some examples...

1.  Including incomplete tests in the figure.

2.  When asked about the incomplete tests in the briefing, hand off the question to someone else with the casual comment that he "didn't recognise" the reason for the question.

3.  Email Tory party members prior to the end of April inviting them to apply for tests.

I’ve heard that a large number of care home deaths are now being reported as CV19 because there’s no where to get regular autopsies done and suspected CV cases don’t require them. 
 

Expect excess deaths to reduce while care homes ‘apparently’ increase. 

Excess deaths of total deaths (all causes) minus baseline (longterm average) will remain the same which is why it is a good indicator that does not depend on how many deaths are attributed to Covid19.

Odd that his ambition has dropped by 50,000 tests from last time he spoke on the subject

"I say, what an absolutely smashing job I'm doing, aren't I? I'm the best PM ever."

You expect him to remember every bit of random bollocks he utters...? 

As an ex pm myself I'd agree, generally.

However I also find myself thinking about the progress meeting where someone reports they've met their target. Great you think, don't have to worry about that anymore.

Then you find out that the first number is fiddled and the implementation hasn't been thought through and you're left thinking, "wtf didn't they just come clean" and "can I believe anything this clown tells me ever again?".

I think that’s what I said. But in your phraseology: excess deaths minus baseline, may well reach zero while large numbers of care home deaths are still being attributed to CV19. 

Seems odd that as a project manager you let other people pick a meaningless target if its not progressing your project. 
 

Presumably 200,000 tests is progress? Depends who you are and what your ultimate aim is, whether it’s a useful target. 

As an overall idea of deaths compared to the usual situation that makes sense, but does not differentiate between deaths due to the virus, and deaths because of knock on effects due to the way the situation is being dealt with (although there might also be a reduction in some kinds of 'normal' death because of this too). A death due to lack of medical attention of non covid conditions would add to excess deaths as could other things like suicide. Deaths due to road accidents would be particularly interesting, as overall journeys are hugely reduced, but strangely feels like there are a significant numbers of serious accidents happening, don't know if this is just due to reporting because there is little else going on?

Sometimes targets are set to motivate.  Ambitions to describe where you want to go.

Al

Then they’re not meaningless. 

I don't recall saying they were.  Was your reply meant for someone else?

Al

Excess deaths by the conventional definition (current all deaths minus baseline) would only reach zero if death rates return to normal. That would be the same if all deaths or no deaths attributed to CV19.

Road deaths from zero to double normal would make tiny changes (about 35 a week typically).

I’m not sure what you’re saying there. 

If all deaths returned to normal baseline levels. 

But care homes were still reporting large numbers of CV19 deaths.

What would you take from that?

No. I just wasn’t entirely sure what you were saying. Were you agreeing with my statement? 

Which one? I was simply pointing out that targets are not the be all and end all and not meeting them is not and should not be a sack-able offense.  The tone on UKC seems to be if someone doesn't reach a target, off with their heads. 

Al

Very strange event requiring investigation, possible but not very plausible suppression of non covid deaths.

What would you make of it?

I'm not sure what you've heard but it wouldn't be routine to do post-mortems on deceased care home patients anyway. Cause of death is "to the best of your knowledge". If other residents have had covid, and someone dies of a respiratory illness, the cause of death is COVID-19 to the best of your knowledge.

In "normal" times, if someone in a care home dies and hasn't been seen for 14 days, then some discussion with the coroner's office is required in order to issue a death certificate, but this rarely leads to a post-mortem. The only change has been to increase this period to 28 days.

Damn right Al. We should chop off the heads of everyone who didn't meet their covid 19 goals. I even made sourdough. 

Doesn’t that depend on the type of care home? They’re not all filled with elderly patients. 

The vast majority of people in care homes are frail elderly. There are younger residents (under 65s) , and some homes do specialise in this (for example things like MS)

A younger resident in a care home with something like MS still wouldn't be an unexpected or unexplainable death if they developed a cough and fever and deteriorated and if they'd been seen during their illness there'd be no reason to involve the coroner or do a post-mortetm

But they’d still be put down as COVID-19 with no testing? 

I watched ten minutes of Peston, don't know who the bloke was, but he never answered a question either, Peston let him get away with it too!

Sickening and pointless bollocks.

You're right they're an indicator of how shit you are, and how many lies you can tell to trying and hide how shit you are.

Care homes were always going to be hit hard, the very nature of them means a lot of the residents are likely to be at risk otherwise they probably wouldn't be in there. 

I don't agree with just putting Covid 19 on the death cert but as there is a limited number of tests available I would rather use them to protect the living than confirm the dead. 

I would assume that care homes keep records and it will be well documented that Gertrude started coughing and running a fever of X for X number of days before she died. 

(sorry if anyone has lost a Gertrude, I tried to pick an obscure name) 

What do you think will happen to the lockdown if they don’t reach the target and can’t test people? What is their motivation for deliberately failing to provide enough testing? 

If, in my job as a Project Manager, I constantly fail to meet self-declared targets then I would be concerned about my job.

For example - if I agree a set of objectives for the year with my boss and then fail to meet them, I know I won't get a payrise or a bonus. If I do that year-on-year, I'll be sacked.

Sarcasm and irony are hard to put across on a forum.  I'm not sure what you are saying. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? To be clear I'm saying missing targets is NOT as serious an issue as some would have you think. The off with their heads comment was meant to be a witty comment on how others on here felt. It's not the sentiment I subscribe to.

Al

Absolutely but the context of the OP was one target missed and people confusing targets and ambitions with set in stone contracts.

Al

Agreed - but the underlying message (another meaningless CV19 number) is that the govt. are setting lots of "targets" and failing to meet all of them, or changing the target just before the deadline to make it seem they've succeeded. 

I'd be deservedly sacked for doing that.

The fact that their electorate are effectively complicit in this (several tory supporters I know asking why the press won't leave them alone to fix this mess) makes it worse.

 Who said it's deliberate?

It's  incompetence and poor planning, not deliberate. The deliberate part is the lies about what they've achieved and the collusion of knowing 40,000 of the 100,000 never to to be used or returned by a person.

If you reasonably believe someone has died of something, that is put as the cause of death. A respiratory outbreak in a care home at the moment is almost certainly going to be COVID-19, no tests required (but extremely useful for all kinds of reasons).

If it's less clear-cut then you might put eg "Pneumonia in the setting of a COVID-19 outbreak" as the cause.

This is exactly what they've done with the official figures in NZ, "deaths from CV-19 and suspected Virus infections" So everything is lumped together, rather than "we didn't test so we don't know so we won't assign it to CV-19."

I do wish we had leaders in the UK like Jacinta.

Seconded.  And generally throughout the world instead of old men.

The semantic debate about 'targets' and 'ambitions' is a bit of a red herring. I'm not a project manager, but then neither is Matt Hancock or Boris Johnson. Come to think of it, most people aren't project managers.

Six weeks ago, on the 17 March, Johnson made the 250,000 promise; a couple of days later, he reiterated it in his "ramping up" statement: "we are massively increasing the testing to see whether you have it now, and ramping up daily testing from 5000 a day to 10,000 to 25,000 and then up to 250,000".

On the 2nd April, Matt Hancock downgraded that promise somewhat, saying “I’m now setting the goal of 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month. That is the goal and I’m determined we’ll get there.”

As I say, I'm not a project manager. So I understand targets to be things you hit or miss, and goals to be things you score. The quibbling over jargon words in the responses to your post... well, they miss the target.