Covid-19 discussion thread

[MyNameIsTerry]

Paris is an odd one; bars are to close from Tuesday but restaurants can remain open with an enhanced safety regime.
https://www.bfmtv.com/sante/covid-19...010040195.html

Odd one; most bars also serve food. What do they do? What about the cafés?

Do like The Range and quickly install some food dispensers to reclassify your store as exempt...or along those lines. B'stards.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Pulisa, FM65; again, thank you for your kind words. I don't feel particularly strong at the moment, my nose and throat feel rough from - I hope - fumes from bleaching the bog today.

Well, tomorrow's another day.

Crikey, we didn't know it was you who was treating Trump

I pity you have to insert the Toilet Duck

[MyNameIsTerry]

Publication of today's figures has been delayed once again, which inevitably means addition of further previously unrecorded cases, which again no doubt equals further 'artificial' increases in day-to-day cases.

The disclaimer notice on the homepage of the Dashboard site reads 'Due to a technical issue, which has now been resolved, there has been a delay in publishing a number of COVID-19 cases to the dashboard in England. This means the total reported over the coming days will include some additional cases from the period between 24 September and 1 October, increasing the number of cases reported'.

Everyone please bear that in mind before freaking out and jumping to conclusions.

The paranoid person in me is thinking what those numbers would have done to the 7 day averages? Have to see next week how the increases added over several days affect them. It will be worse than a one day blip would.

[Pamplemousse]

Crikey, we didn't know it was you who was treating Trump

I pity you have to insert the Toilet Duck

It's the light inside that'll be fun...

[Lencoboy]

Most ironic in the sense that the daily 'dashboard' case stats with the previously missing numbers now added are probably now higher than the 'real' daily cases.

Shame on them, in particular for causing the mega-anxious to assume infections are now totally out of control, especially when taken at face value.

At least the dashboard site has at long last come up with an explanation, which has also been reported by the BBC, which might hopefully calm down many who are currently freaking out. Even the likes of the Daily Fail are explaining the situation (described as a fiasco) rather than spewing out the usual OTT scaremongering Armageddon-type headlines!?

[Pamplemousse]

Apparently it's all the fault of a limitation in Microsoft Excel, if you believe a certain newspaper...

I mean, the billions these idiots chuck at developing half-arsed IT solutions and no-one knew of this?

[AntsyVee]

Yeah, apparently that same issue got our state unemployment office back in June. No one had updated Excel in the systems for like 10 years...

[Pamplemousse]

Yeah, apparently that same issue got our state unemployment office back in June. No one had updated Excel in the systems for like 10 years...

I mean, if they were using Excel 2003 I'd get it, as it does have quite small limits; but since Office 2007 surely no-one could cock that up?!

And anyway, why are they using a bloody spreadsheet, if true? Shouldn't they be using a proper database system? I mean, isn't this what we pay all those millions of pounds for?

Edit: have a look. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54422505

PHE had set up an automatic process to pull this data together into Excel templates so that it could then be uploaded to a central system and made available to the NHS Test and Trace team as well as other government computer dashboards.


The problem is that the PHE developers picked an old file format to do this - known as XLS.


As a consequence, each template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data rather than the one million-plus rows that Excel is actually capable of.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I mean, if they were using Excel 2003 I'd get it, as it does have quite small limits; but since Office 2007 surely no-one could cock that up?!

And anyway, why are they using a bloody spreadsheet, if true? Shouldn't they be using a proper database system? I mean, isn't this what we pay all those millions of pounds for?

Edit: have a look. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54422505

XLS files are 65k per tab. You can have plenty of tabs in one file (much bigger in 2007 obviously). I had to get around limits like that in my work as 2003 was the latest back then. But if the builder is this big a numpty then loading multiple tabs back in might be beyond him.

A major fail for UAT there but using Excel will likely mean one bloke knocked up a format and added some macros to collate it to a central sheet.

A database should be how it's done but it will be a speed issue. You can knock out a fully tested MI kit in days. A database will mean bringing your IT dept in and setting up a project through your change management dept costing far more and taking a lot longer.

So they perhaps went with the option that saw one data analyst knocking it up in 48hrs. Rolling out something across a whole country is a much bigger project as much has to go into the interface, how it's stored and the IT guys (and change management bods) will turn a 1k project into 100k.

It takes me back to my job. We used to create fast solutions to cut out IT people. That way stakeholders got something that worked without all the red tape of PRINCE2 inspired slloooowww projects as an interim solution rather than keep drowning until the correct process caught up. The downside is stuff like this happening and to be honest, that's a very rookie mistake to make. Hardly takes much thought to put .csv or .txt in one line of code

What a cock up. And I bet you the guys building that solution were on excellent rates. The NHS always paid better than the private sector.

When you consider how fast the app came out none of the speed issues should matter but perhaps this process was put in a while back? Maybe thrown together overnight as the initial panic started. Damn, if only they had tested people properly they would have picked it up ages ago

Hopefully the same guy isn't building solutions to manage our vaccinations

[MyNameIsTerry]

It's the light inside that'll be fun...

Make sure you've got your James Herriott length glove on, I suspect you will be giving it quite a shove

I thought light shone out of his so ramming his head back in there seems a win for both recycling and stress relief

Some might say this process began some time ago