With the covid cases apparently increasing exponentially, the various levels of government are finally trying to get to grips with the problems they created by relaxing the rules over the Christmas period.
The junta has taken an arbitrary figure of 1 in 200 for the number of cases per head of population, and decided to use that as the trigger for its "tiers" of lockdown. It has also used the case rate over 14 days as the other factor. Why? Who knows? Their own site vacillates between 7 days and 14 days for the first-case data it displays.
It is generally accepted that the best way of preparing the data for analysis is by presenting it on a rolling average over a number of days, but the term "rolling average" does not appear anywhere in their blurb. No one knows whether it is Monday´s or Tuesday´s figures that encompass the previous weekend. But as they don´t work at weekends or holidays it is all very amateurish. Do they think the virus stops replicating at those times? (A bit reminiscent of the pollen count report which stopped over summer during the university holidays!)
So the base data is difficult to find. Personally I would prefer to see the raw daily data as it comes in, then work on it myself, but that is not going to happen and they can actually show whatever they want from the "statistics department". What I have to follow is the data as they present it (and be careful to watch for 7 or 14 day stats), but if I follow the same reports I can make my own assumptions (actually, if I record their reports, as they do not present any historical data). Basically, what I can see is the trend - and that is not good.
They are obviously unsure of what they are saying and find a need to check it - so, typically, they do a bit of population sampling. Last week they invited a "random" thousand people from Mijas to go to a fairground / car park to be tested. Only 400 of those people turned up (no one knows what percentage actually saw the SMS message as there was no response option) and of those 400 only one tested positive.
It seems to me as if that 1 in 400 has much stronger validity than a statistical "greater than 1 in 200" plucked from their data.
.... and that is assuming the tests are valid anyway. A recent quote in the Telegraph caught my eye -"Even a ‘perfect’ test cannot guarantee that individuals will not become infectious in subsequent days. This is an intrinsic property of the biology of Covid-19. Even a ‘perfect’ test for infectiousness could rapidly become out of date if the individual is incubating the infection or is about to contract it." and John Hopkins University quote"Results may also be affected by the timing of the test. For example, if you are tested on the day you were infected, your test result is almost guaranteed to come back negative, because there are not yet enough viral particles in your nose or saliva to detect."
Unfortunately they don´t give a time period for when results are likely to be accurate.
A pal told me tonight that some friends of his had eaten in an, otherwise deserted, restaurant and were called the following day to be told that "one of their waiters had tested positive". They tried to get a test the following morning, but the testing stations told them that their selected day was the one when the previous positives came in for a re-test, so it was not advisable. They later tested negative, but as that was all within 4 days, I am not clear, what was the point. What is the incubation period? Does anyone really know?
So based on dodgy testing, dodgy data and dodgy statistics, we are about to go into a "municipal" lockdown. But then don´t worry, it doesn´t start until tomorrow night - and there is a meeting of the junta to change the rules before that happens anyway.
What the hell. Lockdown is definitely safer than "travel where you like and meet with your family and friends".
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