The “vast majority” of positives test results in schools are likely to be false, according to Jon Deeks, Professor of Biostatistics and head of the Test Evaluation Research Group at the University of Birmingham. The Telegraph has more.
Official data shows that the positive rate among secondary pupils is around 0.05 per cent, meaning there is a “high risk” that most rapid antigen tests carried out in secondary schools are false positives, according to Professor Jon Deeks.
Of the 3,867,007 lateral flow tests that were carried out on secondary pupils, just 1,805 were positive, according to the latest figures.
Health officials said that less than one in 1,000 results is a false positive overall. However, when the virus is on the wane, there is a higher likelihood of such results, as the number of true cases falls.
The positive case rate in schools equates to one in 2,142. At a rate of one in 1,000 false positives, from 3,867,007 tests you would expect 3,867 false positives.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Department for Education updated its official guidance today to say that all positive lateral flow tests taken in schools should be followed up by a confirmatory PCR test. Previously, this was only the case for tests taken by students at home.
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At the going forward of the clocks, Energy Fortress Europe and Plucky Blighty battles on in the 30-Years Gaslight War against that Invisible Enemy lurking in every breath we all take. Just as an Enemy no more deadly than old age lurked behind the Blitzkrieg on Breathing – The War on Sombreros to End All Wars on Sombreros.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Generals Gore, Kerry and Obama singlehandedly defend the beaches of Montecito, Martha’s Vineyard and Long Island from Enemy encroachment. Court martials, iron rations and fatigue squads all round – Generals dishonourably excepted. Footprints forward, five more minutes to madnight. Anyone seen Citizen Kane lately?
In litany of human folly, cant and deceit dating all the way back to the Pharoahs, the Convenient Untruth takes the mouldy biscuit. Perverted Science knows no bounds.
Yawn, yawn. Back to putting the clocks forward.
Very well said
And a wonderful peice by Ben
On the climate change issue just take a look at these abominations!
Funny how, when turbines are the only alternative, they can do no wrong and are defended to the hilt by the green mad crowd, then when something else comes along they start naming all the problems with the current wind tech!
Personally I think these f-ing things look worse! and they brag about them singing, no thanks, I’d sooner just have peace and quiet
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/meet-seaflute-1200-mwh-wind-turbine/12683/
Here is a bit of humour from the RSPB.
Excellent point Ben and one we on the Sceptics side can easily over…. what next, because there always has been a next. Biodiversity is a good shout. As part of my work I speak to a range of people across the utility sector and I’m starting to hear the phrase ‘Nature Collapse’, which has all the hallmarks you refer to. Buckle up for another ride.
Ecology and Nature Collapse put under the microscope by the Daily Sceptic just over a year ago…
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/01/08/can-we-trust-the-science-of-ecology/
…As the final commenter observes, “97% of climate and ecological scientists agree they’d be out of a job if there was no climate or ecological crisis.”
I think we need to suggest “litter picking” when faced with a catastrophic mindset and what can we do???
i.e. pollution is real and we can do our bit.
Very good article especially the reference to Hohn and Bloomberg.
I wonder what Greta is up to with the pro Palestine support and this ties up with the Farage speech at RUK and the prediction of more MPs from Muslim parties.
It also ties in with the recent cases of the Nurses being suspended over trans men and the suppression of women in sport and women’s spaces.
My money is on another Plandemic with mandatory killer jabs for those not toeing the line.
They’re in for a fight if they try to get one of those things into my arm!
Indeed, that is a hill many of us are prepared to die on.
Absolutely.
I fear it may not be in our arms but hidden in some other food or common pill that we would take without realising the danger.
People are still dying from the last lot of jabs.
Not to mention the multiple jabs going into babies and young children every day.
H L Mencken said it all….
What the longer view of environmentalism’s history shows is that any vaguely plausible story about ecological doom has always been absorbed into the green ideological litany, driving arguments against democratic control of politics, abolishing reason from campuses, and worse.
Well, we could use the same draconian tactics and laws that are used against us today, on them tomorrow. Purge the blob. Purge the NGOs. Purge the universities. Purge the charities. We don’t have to accommodate them or their views. If this is too strong, then other methods will have to be found.
So ask yourself a question – is Climate Change Activism a psychic epidemic, perhaps now almost completed running its course? Was the COVID Pandemic more of a psychic epidemic, perhaps now almost completed running its course?
Carl Jung thought that reason was no use in challenging psychic epidemics because reason did not affect unconscious motivations.
Great quote, thank you. Filed away for future reference.
When people are on a mission to save the planet, the last thing they want to hear is that the planet doesn’t need saving.
Quite but the litter does need to be picked up (see my earlier comment) and they will feel better about themselves if they do.
Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, increasing methane and increasing plastic nanoparticles in our brains and arteries is a consequence of too many people. They were right in the 1960s to focus on population numbers.
In fact the population is falling world-wide except in Africa and perhaps in India. Now it is considered racist to be concerned about population numbers.
What we need to do is to try and work out the optimal population worldwide to sustain a good life for everybody. I suspect it is closer to 2 billion than the current 8 billion rising to perhaps 10 billion.
With 2 billion people there would not be a problem with using fossil fuels as the annual amount of carbon sequestered on the ocean floor would equal the amount put into the atmosphere. we should also by then have bio-degradable plastics. So the long term future on earth is bright but the next 100 years will be a problem.
How to keep GDP per head rising as the population in the UK slowly falls over the next 100 years is the problem. Part of the solution is capping population levels now and expanding food production in the UK so that we can survive when famines strikes later this century.
Climate The Threat that never was
Momentum. The climate gravy train, like the CoVid gravy train won’t screech to a halt, it will slowly come to a halt, probably replaced by something else. It will take longer because it built up much more speed over 30 years than the relatively short-duration of the CoVid Express.
Too much political capital has been invested, too much bureaucratic enlargement and big budgets rests on it, the so-called scientists have too much to lose and there’s still £billions in hand-outs being offered for “green” projects.
”Europe” is now turning its attention to militarisation, the new existential threat being “Putin” to replace “climate”, so that will contribute to “climate change/net zero” go8ng out of fashion.
Excellent article but when I hit “..Net Zero policy scepticism being now properly established on the political mainstream by both the Tories and Reform” I stopped reading.
“it was not global warming that drove the agenda, but neo-Malthusian framings of pollution, overpopulation and resource depletion – data about which were fed into simulations running on some of the first supercomputers, which in turn predicted the imminent collapse of society. Those simulations’ predictions established global green politics, yet by the turn of the century the prophecies had been debunked by nature and history. ….”
Well now we have AI, on top of super computers.
The ‘green juggernaut’ is a cover for very wealthy and very neo-Malthusian (nazi?) bankers, corporation bosses and techie folks who want super control over the rest of us. Environmentalism, New Age stuff and their unaccountable but very well-funded NGOs are the mantle they use (plus non-science) to cover their nefarious intentions – which have been in planning since the world wars.