- “Covid hospital cases will rise warns Dame Jenny Harries as Health Security Agency chief says ‘latest Coronavirus wave hasn’t finished yet’” – The Mail reports that the UKHSA Chief Executive said: “It doesn’t look as though that wave has finished yet, so we would anticipate that hospital cases will rise.”
- “Benefit fraud during pandemic cost taxpayers an ‘eye-watering’ £10.1bn” – The amount lost to scammers during 2021 and 2022 was five times more than all other years put together, official figures show, according to the Telegraph.
- “‘Perfect storm’ of Covid cases and early flu wave could make clearing NHS backlog ‘very difficult’” – The Telegraph reports yet more doom and gloom from experts who say the ‘double-whammy’ could threaten the health service’s plan to tackle its ever-growing waiting lists.
- “Our obsession with Covid has allowed other diseases to thrive” – MP Esther McVey writes for the Telegraph that it is time we acknowledged that our response to the pandemic has been worse than the disease, especially for children.
- “U.K. polio outbreak ‘is our price for obsession with Covid’” – The Telegraph reports that MPs have warned that placing too much focus on the coronavirus vaccine for children led to other routine inoculations being de-prioritised.
- “The wrong kind of news” – Tom Lennie writes for TCW Defending Freedom that it’s all too easy, as trusting citizens, to naively accept what we’re told by the media, yet we need always to be diligent and discerning, to search out news outlets we know to be reliable and check stories to see if they correspond with reality.
- “Why are thousands of people dying at home?” – Michael Simmons at the Spectator asks why more people are currently dying at home – though is quickly dismissive of the idea the vaccines could play a role.
- “NYC Mayor Eric Adams plans to mandate Covid vaccines for kids this fall” – Steve Kirsch reports on the disturbing news from New York of a vaccine mandate for all children.
- “Life Insurance CEO Reveals Deaths Are Up 40% Among Working People: “Just unheard of”” – Watch the report on Facts Matter with Roman Balmakov.
- “Boris Johnson took official jet home from weekend with family in Cornwall” – The Net-Zero fanatic PM spent the weekend before the Tiverton and Honiton byelection in the South-West and flew back on a Government plane, reports the Guardian.
- “June In Tokyo, Hachijojima Island Hasn’t Warmed In Decades” – However, the maximum daily temperatures show a clear urban heat island effect compared to rural Hachijojima Island, writes Pierre Gosselin in Watts Up With That?
- “Yes, You Can Blame Biden For High Energy Prices” – Michael Shellenberger says the war on fossil fuels is a political agenda driving high fuel costs.
- “What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?” – Astral Codex Ten sets out the case that the 2020 BLM riots and police pullback triggered a U.S. murder spike.
- “Identity politics is breathing new life into anti-Semitism” – Why did Germany, of all countries, sponsor an art exhibition that contained virulently anti-Semitic art, asks Daniel Ben-Ami in Spiked.
- “Trans people are not an oppressed minority” – They enjoy exactly the same rights as the rest of us, writes Jo Bartosch in Spiked.
- “Who is feminism for?” – Daniel Kodsi for the Critic praises Holly Lawford-Smith’s new book from Oxford University Press, Gender-Critical Feminism, as the inevitable calls for it to be banned appear from the militant trans lobby.
- “The Woke Inquisitors Have Come for the Freethinking Heretics” – Once governments normalise censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date, says J.B. Shurk at the Gatestone Institute. “Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of ‘good intentions’.”
- “Real American hero-ism” – John Ashmore writes for CapX that before this week few outside politics had heard of Tory MP Danny Kruger, but now, thanks to the venomous power of the internet, he has become an unlikely poster-boy for the groundless but popular idea that American abortion politics is heading to the U.K.
- “Suella Braverman: ‘People fear they will lose their job if they point out the basic facts of biology’” – The Attorney General tells the Telegraph she has had enough of the “collective frenzy” over some rights that sees the “basics of biology… turned upside down”.
- “Take it from a Russian – the alternative to Western democracy is far, far worse” – Douglas Murray writes in the Telegraph that in Konstantin Kisin’s excellent new book, the comedian and podcast host asks why people in the West so often spit on their luck.
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Is the algorithm used to determine what counts as “close contact” documented/ published somewhere? And ideally, also the implementation.
If it either isn’t or involves any amount of non-deterministic behaviour, there’s no reason to ascribe more weight to its outputs than to that of flipping a coin.
The authorities have been very vague, other than suggesting that it involves being “in close proximity” for at least 15 minutes.I assume that the time function is relatively easy to calibrate, but that the determination of proximity may depend on the architecture in the immediate vicinity, the state of the smart-phone’s battery, and possible interference from WiFi etc. (I’m pretty sure this was why Robert Jenrick was immediately slapped down a couple of weeks ago when he suggested that the authorities might reduce the sensitivity of the system.) It’s not something that is under their control. (See https://www.techwalla.com/articles/the-effective-range-of-bluetooth)
I wonder how long the android OS has been performing Traffic analysis on EVERYONE via bluetooth.
If they’ve been “vague” about this, the default assumption is that the algorithm is the usual “random” mix of out-of-the-blue assumptions, timeouts and hacks intended to reduce the frequency of crashes “real-world software” tends to contain. If it’s also supposed to be “sensitive”, it’s entirely possible that it keeps tack of past results in order to emit as many positive ones as whoever made the purchasing decision wanted to have regardless of “proximity” of anyone to anything.
Hidden software developed to the “specification” of a political agenda is completely untrustworthy.
Good rant…..
But the reality is the full source code is available to the public along with compilation instructions on the NHSX Git hub.
So its the polar opposite to hidden and vague.
I did see somewhere a week or so back an explanation of the algorithm. It is based on a points system and is integrated. Up to five minutes 1m way from an infected phone gives one amount of points, 15 minutes for 2m gives another amount. The total, integrated over time so you can move away from somebody then back again, triggers the alert when it exceeds a certain number (1500 points if |I remember). What it doesn’t reflect is that the 1m/2m calculation is really a finger in the air as the range and strength of bluetooth depends on all sorts of factors.
Nobody mentioned that it might be triggering on white noise…
How do we ping the political classes out of office? They can easily make a decision like in Texas
Texas Prohibits Vaccine Passports
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOXPa5IRqBM
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
The full source code of the app is available online so yes the algorithm is completely public, as is the implementation.
Its all on GitHub.
The car industry has joined calls for the Government to bring forward the date for exempting fully-vaccinated adults from self-isolation rules.
might as well exempt everyone from self-isolating – its unlikely the un-vaxxed are dim enough to have the absurd app (except those who want to be pinged)
I know of a small pub chain who suggested that all staff remove the app on ‘Freedom Day’ (unofficially of course). Meanwhile the competition have had to temporarily close 2 of their pubs due to staff shortage caused by the very same.
In the same way, my vet has a notice on their staff notice board instructing their staff to ensure that the app is deactivated when they are on the premises.
One word : ‘Ludicrous’.
But what isn’t that comes out of government?
More evidence that the pre-2020 pandemic plans were right.
In my view there is no justification for any of this. “Asymptomatic” transmission is an unproven theory, and there is no certainty about how close or how long someone should be near to another before isolating.
In my view we should scrap all of this and lateral flow as well. PCR testing is designed for those with symptoms only. Temperature scanners are used in some places – that would be better than all these tests and pings (if needed at all).
Pingdemic is just lockdown with a new name
I wonder if this “pingdemic” is the result of buggy software or hackers having some fun. Both, perhaps?
Imagine receiving a ping notification for a sub-par performance on your weekly social credit ledger. No of course not, But PCR scores using Ct > 35 is fine. Carry one.
PS: I love the CCP
—
Digital wallet: IamLosin6It#1984
Can’t they just get VanTam to announce that Track’n’Trace has saved 20 million infections and over 60,000 deaths? That way everyone would rejoice at its success and the 680,000 pings a week would be worth it.
The app is basically used by people who cant be bothered going to work.
ITs completely optional, if it advises you to isolate, that too is completely voluntary.
So these people are deliberately choosing to not go to work. Its a convenient excuse.
They might have sent out 689313 ping alerts but that’s not the number being received. Many have deleted the app, many others are ignoring. Others taking tests but not uploading results. The decline in case numbers reflects a mini rebellion gathering pace since the onset of the pingdemic.
how do we ping the political classes out of office? They can easily make a decision like in Texas
Texas Prohibits Vaccine Passports
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOXPa5IRqBM
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
The deaths the MSM wont report: 1000 COVID Stories Share Your Story https://1000covidstories.com/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell