Ah that's interesting. So it sounds from that like the xls file was an attempt to clean up csv files before uploading to the real database. That's poor, and there's no way an individual error (as that could have been) should have been allowed to survive past the first large import that triggered the fault.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Are you surprised? I worked with the NHS around the time they were trying to implement the centralised patient record system. I'm surprised half of them even manage to turn their PCs on. I never met an actual IT expert on what was supposedly the world's biggest IT project. It was all consultants, accountants and undefined project managers.
The problem is not that the tech is two decades old, the problem is that they have not used a database. Databases are critical for any data which you cannot afford to risk losing.
Remarkable that such errors are happening at such level. Any tech student could have told you what I just wrote.
If the Sky report that @CassiusClaymore linked is accurate, then there is a real database at the top of the food chain. The Excel section may have been an intermediate step used when preparing csv and similar stuff for upload.
It is basic stuff, a silly mistake to make and a disturbing one not to be noticed immediately, the first time an upload threw up errors - which of course makes you wonder about the error checking.
But that’s the problem. You’re suggesting two extreme approaches. That’s not balance. Finding a balance is incredibly difficult. Even more so when the populace is so split. Whatever approach we take will piss off half the country and there’s a good chance that the pissed off 50% (or whatever the exact % is) will sabotage the outcome (I actually suspect this is contributing to the second wave; people blatantly not even trying to social distance) It’s a nightmare and I don’t see any easy way out.
The complete crushing appeals because its at least a clear goal, with a definite outcome. But I don’t know how we do that as one country in an inter-dependant region like the EU (and an island with a land border with a separate state, in which the virus is running riot). I can’t even begin to think of what would be involved in isolating ourselves from the UK and the rest of Europe if we went with a zero covid approach. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible. So we are where we are. Up shit’s creek.
What about the signalling power of it though? I thought at first it was a sign of fear / danger in society but surely it's better to just see it as a sign of caution. I'm coming around to the Asian mask culture myself. Sure we don't have the air quality issues so wearing it all the time would be silly, but why not make it a norm in airports when it's so well accepted that people pick up colds and the like on planes, or when it's flu season why not encourage mask use?
I do see it now as a signal that people are taking things seriously. Not that they aren't taking it seriously if they aren't wearing a mask, but you don't know. So why not be helpful and let people know? Other than when you have an unruly beard I don't think you can really make the case that it's unreasonably uncomfortable.
I cant ever see a Zero Covid approach here. We are fecked. If we go to level 5 again the impact on people and the economy will be deep and long lasting. If we let Covid run its course it will be carnage as well.
I am taking it day by day. Working from home and not seeing anyone other than my kids and the parents I say hello to at the school drop offs and pick ups.
That's absurd
Yeah, I think you’re probably right. It’s a divisive enough issue so I don’t want to make people feel bad who do wear a mask (and many do). I’m going to wear one to school pick-up today anyway.
....and stop selling off licence alcohol thats fueling the house parties!
That’s the only way to get through this. Take it a day at a time. You should also try to find stuff to do that you enjoy, if you can. For the sake of your own mental health. You don’t want to wish away months of your life you’ll never get back. God knows watching the poxy football team we support won’t bring much joy in the weeks ahead!
I read it, still no excuse. How it is done is to import into database immediately, with no intermediaries. Any other apps that use the data can then read from the database.
Why is it done like that?
Well, exactly because of situations such as this.
I genuinely believe Boris was on the way to achieving this early on in the fiasco. The turning point in my attitude and many others from what i saw, was when CUMMINGS was rumbled going against government advice and was defended by Boris, rather than publicly shamed.
There was an opportunity there to set the precedent. Instead it was shrugged off.
Agree with that completely. Heavy handed measures threaten to destroy the economy, destroy the futures of millions and kill as many, if not more than the virus. And it'll hit the poor first and hardest.
Your first point is spot on too. My local area is now in a local lockdown and it's causing chaos for a lot of businesses. The inability to plan is the worst part of it.
I personally don't think it's viable to "crush this". Clearly a three month plus lockdown was always going to, and did, massively reduce transmission. Obviously, once people start moving around again it starts to spread. I don't understand why people are surprised by this. The idea however that we can close down whole swathes of the economy for extended periods is a nonsense. There's a reason why the furlough scheme has ended - we can't afford it.
Whilst the government response to this can be rightly criticised, no country in the world has managed to unlock this. The Countries lauded at the outset are either now in difficulty, or face problems down the line in terms of the inability to open up again. Nobody has the answer.
It's not nice to admit but there is a balance that leads to an acceptable number of deaths. That's just how it is.
That is something very few countries have articulated and probably why there has been so much of a chaotic shit show.
NZ targeted elimination (go Jacinta) but even Australia doesn't really have a federal aim. They say elimination isn't an aim but don't say what is. The State governments do seem to all want elimination and this seems to have restricted #Scottyfrommarketing's worst BoJo like instincts. Barring Victoria we haven't had a case of community transmission in well over a week and Victoria is down to just over 10 per day.
It's really not uncommon to use CSV or XLS to feed into disparate systems though, quite the opposite. Ideally you want to properly integrate the systems but considering it's a third parties system and time limited purpose I'm not at all suprised they went that route.
I think someone posted last week that the app doesn't include the Pillar 1 results so we already knew it wasn't integrated.
They've had the time to do it even with the complexities involved but someone will have knocked it on it's head due to cost.
It is also not uncommon to try to open a website and get an nginx error, but it doesn't make it right. There is simply no excuse for something like this happening in an organization of that size and importance.
Seems to me that all the talk of restrictions on freedoms are absolute piss.
The rise in cases and the breakdown of where those cases occured seems to show quite clearly that the difference between now and the summer is schools and universities being back, coupled with an insane push to get people back into the office.
The Universities issue was utterly avoidable, but I'm not sure how you solve the school problem. I'm pretty sure that creating a mental health crisis by telling people to lock down again is going to do feck all, though.
The rise in cases and the breakdown of where those cases occured seems to show quite clearly that the difference between now and the summer is schools and universities being back, coupled with an insane push to get people back into the office.
The Universities issue was utterly avoidable, but I'm not sure how you solve the school problem. I'm pretty sure that creating a mental health crisis by telling people to lock down again is going to do feck all, though.
This year's Freshers Flu is Covid-19.Greater Manchester's amended figures for the week to 2nd October. For Manchester itself, the huge leap is in the university halls of residence areas - about 55% of cases are in 18-21 year olds, mostly asymptomatic or with minimal symptoms.
The same effect is probably happening in places like Salford, where there are also high student numbers - I suspect we may see jumps there once the testing ramps up.
This is the crux of the issue and one that I hear more and more in the community.
My mother is on the verge of suicidal. She is 65 and lives alone now. My father is 10 years dead and she used to have a lodger but thats not feasible now as it makes her nervous. Obvs with restrictions we cant visit. Too risky. She is talking now in terms of "whats the point in living"!! Stark stuff.
My best friends brother lost his job as a bar manager and he tried to commit suicide last week - directly related to a sense of hopelessness because he has severe financial problems now as well as dealing with Covid.
Locking everyone down again is going to be very very dangerous
I don't even think this is a discussion now, I think we'll see just restrictions of activity more than anything else. There needs to be some context that around March/April time the probable case numbers in the country were around 100k per day, and that is the yard stick or threshold for where they would consider it.
Oh for feck sake, we truly are led by incompetent penny pinching feckwits!
Knowing these clowns they would have gone with MS access!
Very sad to hear.
I think it's easy, if you're fortunate and comfortable, with a job you can work from home, to look at the bigger picture and make bold statements about what we need to do to beat the virus. You constantly see people criticising others for wanting to enjoy a social life, but the reality is that is what makes life worth living for a lot of people, and further, those people support a whole host of people in hospitality and the supply chains that support those businesses.
The reality is that a lot of people are, probably rightly, more scared of the second order effects than of actually having the virus. Pre-corona we already had record numbers using food banks. This is a disaster.
I consider myself to be fairly left of centre in my political leanings, but I'm shocked by how many people who are clearly left wing and generally decent and well meaning, fail to recognise or accept what an economic disaster will do to the poor, working classes or those already marginalised - both current and future generations. Some even advocate closing schools, leaving another generation of the ordinary working class behind whilst those in private education have access to much better resources.
As I've said above, nobody has cracked the code. Lockdowns kick the can down the road at enormous financial and mental cost. Opening up and closing down week on week will destroy the economy. This is the reality.
The problem is, that the measures in place (in my local area, at the moment) have the same effect. It's akin to a lockdown except you can go to work and out with the people you live with but nobody else. They're telling businesses they can continue to trade but the measures make it practically impossible.
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Very good post. I think this perspective has been missing from much of the public debate, as the economic concerns have mostly been pushed by people/politicians who we know don't have the general public's best interest at heart. But that doesn't mean that the threat to people's livelihoods and therefore other aspects of their health isn't at significant risk.
Whether those pushing the agenda mean well or not is, in my opinion, largely irrelevant. A functioning economy is what allows us to put food on the table and that applies from the top to the bottom.
There are millions of people in the UK in low paying jobs who without those jobs, won't be able to put food on the table or keep a roof over their heads and it's largely those jobs that are at risk. The idea that there is a limitless amount of money to subsidise the economy long term is a nonsense. A young person working in such a job and dependent on that income to live (or worse, support a family) is, I suspect, much more frightened of losing their job than catching the virus given the relative risk. I would certainly feel that way.
I'm lucky. I can work from home, in comfort. My life, currently is inconvenienced and no more. It's much worse for a lot of others, suffering with mental health or fear of being homeless, having to get into debt to pay their way.
Generally, there's a reason why countries with a broken economy have a low life expectancy. The balance needs to be found.
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We are at over 2k cases and over 50 deaths now for the first time since pandemic started. Our health system is dangerously close to getting overwhelmed, covid beds almost gone and large amount of people do not believe virus exists and won’t wear masks. They’ve now enforced obligatory mask wearing in all yellow and red zones with high prevalence of covid and now people in those areas are trying to organize protests to walk the streets without masks and go into stores without masks and try to pull them off ‘slaves’ faces. It’s getting ridiculous.
I honestly dont know how people deny it exists. We can debate all day long about how dangerous it is to people but feck me it cant be debated that it actually exists
New restrictions in Belgium
The close contacts are limited to a maximum of three. For those you don't have to respect the five-foot rule.
Private meetings: up to four people are welcome under your roof.
For bars, tables are limited to four people, unless you live under the same roof. Do you meet with more people? Then you sit at different tables. The cafes must close at 11pm. Nothing will change for restaurants.
Non-organized gatherings: maximum four people. This does not apply to guided walks or cultural events.
The close contacts are limited to a maximum of three. For those you don't have to respect the five-foot rule.
Private meetings: up to four people are welcome under your roof.
For bars, tables are limited to four people, unless you live under the same roof. Do you meet with more people? Then you sit at different tables. The cafes must close at 11pm. Nothing will change for restaurants.
Non-organized gatherings: maximum four people. This does not apply to guided walks or cultural events.
The UK government has made an initial order of 1m antibody tests from the UK-RTC, the consortium that was set up to produce these.
This is just an initial order and the plan is (hopefully anyway!) that everyone gets one eventually.
They are finger prick blood tests that you can do at home, doesn't need a lab analysis, its a pregnancy style test and is amazingly accurate for a non-lab test.
Some in NI may have been involved in the 2,000 people trial for this.
Good news for everyone.
This is just an initial order and the plan is (hopefully anyway!) that everyone gets one eventually.
They are finger prick blood tests that you can do at home, doesn't need a lab analysis, its a pregnancy style test and is amazingly accurate for a non-lab test.
Some in NI may have been involved in the 2,000 people trial for this.
Good news for everyone.
The implication that they aren't taking the economy into account, or looking for the right balance, is clearly false. Leo Varadkar's interview and decision yesterday is the most explicit example of your fallacy. On the one hand he is putting in restrictions that you believe are more dangerous than the virus, and on the other hand he's rejecting the official medical advice in the most serious health crisis he's faced.
That's the reality. There is no good choice so criticising something for being a bad choice is misleading at best. The balancing act they're playing will always lead to bad outcomes.
My mate which I play footie with has been hospitalized after testing positive for covid as virus has got to his lungs (30y old, skinny lad). Brings it home really.
At no stage have I said that they (I assume you mean the Government) aren't taking the balance seriously. I live in the UK so wasn't making any comment on what's going on in Ireland at all, of which I have no knowledge whatsoever.
My view, personally is that the need for that balance (as hard as it clearly is to find) should be something which we all recognise and which is at the forefront of the debate and decision making, as well as all of the other relevant concerns. We don't (again, in my opinion) see enough honesty on this from politicians.
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I hope your mate pulls through
Shit. Best wishes.
Yeah there are different views on why governments have made it up. It’s either to:
- Depopulate Earth by ordering people to suffocate by wearing masks
- To get extra money from NHS and equivalents for putting covid as cause of death
- To control population by telling them to wear masks and incapacitate their brains preventing them from thinking logically
- Depopulate Earth by producing a deadly vaccine
- Put more money into Bill Gates pockets
see that crap on FB all the time so have taken a break from it
I’d love to but it literally seems to be half of the country that have gone this dumb. It’s hard to avoid.
Why would it not be at the forefront of their decision-making? That's a fairly radical premise, given the governing party's consistent preference for putting the economy before healthcare, so it needs extraordinary evidence to demonstrate it.
The evidence for the opposite is pretty strong, and Leo Varadkar's words clearly echo the actions of the UK government, along with almost every other developed nation in the same scenario. How could it be that they've all settled on roughly the same plan, despite a range of economic priorities and a variety of health experts, if not for the simple fact that is the balancing act?
Arguing it's sub optimal is easy, because every decision is sub optimal. Arguing it isn't seeking to put balance at the heart of the decision-making process is a little absurd, without substantive evidence to support it. The more likely explanation is that your idea of balance and their idea of balance is different, which is inevitable in a scenario like this. It frames the problem in an entirely different context.