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> So the 7 day rolling avg was being put out on the news, a 7 day rolling avg means the data lags by 7 days.

I like playing with data. Rolling averages are simple to do and they are handy at smoothing out weekend spikes. Weekend spikes were a problem in the US because a bunch of people would get tested on the weekend and Monday would show a Spike. People (and Drs) have absolutely used data to lie - but I'm not quite convinced this is an example of "blood on their hands"

>However it also turned out that essential workers were the main spreaders

This is tantological. The people who were active were the ones spreading it. Yes. Fact.

>The military knew everything the Govt was going to announce at least two weeks before it was announced

I like to think that the government was well coordinated. This doesn't seem to be a bad thing. In the US, we had clear disagreement between different gov organizations and I'm not sure that is an improvement over "2 weeks of coordination"

>You could shut down corner shops at their peak times, which has racist elements to it, you could also shut down other businesses during peak time

This sucks. I hadn't anticipated this impact previous to this post and I appreciate you sharing this.

a 7 day rolling avg means the data lags by 7 days

Actually, no. That's not what "rolling average" means at all. It means the average number from the previous seven days. There is no "lag."

It means that on May 9, it is the average from May 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Then on may 10, it is the average from May 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

And so on.

Getting something that basic wrong makes me think there are other fundamental flaws in the rest of what you wrote.

A rolling average will always slightly lag if there is a significant change in the rate of infections. If you are experiencing exponential growth, the rolling average is significantly lagging behind.

1 case on day 0 2 on 1 4 on 2 8 on 3 16 on 4 32 on 5 64 on 6

7 day average is only 18 cases but the next day you have 128 cases and the average is still only 119. If there's a major down turn in case numbers, the average will be slightly higher. This is an extreme example but my point still stands.

Its still a helpful metric when you have infrequent reporting since the incubation time is not consistent, not everyone is getting tested immediately when they feel symptoms, the time a positive test result and official reporting may be delayed, and there are spikes of infections that likely occur on weekends or holidays when people are having social events. The best data would come from daily testing of everyone with immediate reporting but that simply was not possible.

> a 7 day rolling avg means the data lags by 7 days > Actually, no.

So you can predict the future? OF course the data lags, it also lagged at weekends because the staff keying in the stats only worked Mon - Fri. and they also had keying in mistakes which meant only coming clean _once_ via the BBC news.

Now it just so happens the US and China back in 2015 had wanted to set up a global body to avoid such pandemics but Europe didnt want it, which is why every country did their own thing. You can read the studies from 2015 detailing Covid from a joint effort between Wuhan virology institute & the Uni of Virginia!

The whole thing reeks of stupid criminality at the top.

>It was also used to shut down businesses, anyone could say they had covid, report it on the NHS phone app and then that would trigger all those people in the vicinity to have to isolate

I had significant misgivings about the app and it's efficacy. It is those misgivings that mean I don't believe this is an accurate representation.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, a positive case report on the app had to be backed by a PCR result, which required a code provided on a positive PCR test. A bad actor as you describe would have only one shot at a malicious shut down (and would actually need to be Covid+ to do it).

Secondly, the exposure limit was... generous. Proximity and duration had to be sufficient to form a close contact that would then be advised to self isolate and seek a test. People walking past a bad actor loitering outside a shopping centre would not meet this criteria. The shop keeper would...

...but shop keepers, retail staff et al by and large did not have the app. Employers were actively preventing their employees from downloading the application to prevent having to close for staff shortages while they were advised to isolate.

Ignoring all of this, you get into the crux of the app with the "check ins". All venues were meant to enforce the "check in" procedure - in actuality, it was pretty much only restaurants that did so. Even if you "checked in" to a venue, _you had no ability to check out_ so that if a positive case was reported on the same day you happened to be at a venue, even hours apart, you would be flagged. This meant that every positive venue ping had to be reviewed by a person, who would be tasked with reviewing which of the contacts in the venue should be contact traced. The criteria for doing so was opaque - and without the knowledge of what time people left vs arrived - and the actual device:device exposure being invisible to the contract tracer - we can only surmise that an element of inference and good old fashioned guess work was at play. And as was publicised at the time - the contract tracers found themselves with very little work to do.

>Should I also mention the Prime Minister was telling everyone to get onto Zoom for their meetings and then later on a zero click zero day exploit in Zoom surface which conveniently had given GCHQ enough time to hoover up data off plenty of systems. LOL

The Prime Minister has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be fundamentally incapable of understanding even the most basic aspects of his job, let alone technology. Hanlon's Razor comes to mind here.

> Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, a positive case report on the app had to be backed by a PCR result, which required a code provided on a positive PCR test. A bad actor as you describe would have only one shot at a malicious shut down (and would actually need to be Covid+ to do it).

All they had to do was do a test, type in the code and say it was positive, this is my point about the NHS app could have also required a photo of the positive test result but it didnt! I was poking around with it, and you could trigger the mobile app into telling you to self isolate simply by having one or two of the leading question symptoms, it was that "cautious".

So if earlier that day I spent my time around loads of people like in a shopping centre, on a military base, in a police station, I could get those people to self isolate by being in their vicinity and the app doing the rest, if they had that app, but the US Military bases here in the UK were doing their own US testing and where it was only a suspicion, they got US personnel to do an NHS test in order to keep the brits happy and the NHS happy. In actual fact Covid was ripping through some RAF USAF bases and the US mil were soiling their pants at how many active personnel were going down, what a way to take out the most powerful military on this planet!

Now it just so happened, you could also reset the app without any problem so you could rinse and repeat the next day!

> ...but shop keepers, retail staff et al by and large did not have the app. Employers were actively preventing their employees from downloading the application to prevent having to close for staff shortages while they were advised to isolate.

That would have been illegal in the UK, cant comment on how bad the US is.

> Hanlon's Razor

Yeah, if you are caught with your hands in the till put it down to Hanlon's Razor and say you found some money on the floor and you were putting it back! LOL

Looking at this globally, its fcuked the Just In Time global business sectors as we have seen with shortages et al and continue to see.

It’s literally their job to do that kind of thing, but was there legitimate concern in the UK that they unnecessarily targeted people in a malicious way?

You don’t just burn a vulnerability like that without a target.