Coronavirus (OLD)

[tweetiepooh]

Interesting issue with Scotland's trace app reading through walls.

---
Many years back I wrote code for a central London hospital and part of the code was to share data with health authorities about patient episode and appointments so to "collect" moneys from them (all "funny" money - we didn't really bill them like that).

Each year the government would issue out details of what data to supply and in what format and each year I would rewrite our reporting software (and maybe some collection in the main patient system) to match the requirement.
In April we would run the old code for the March data plus an optional annual rollup (Apr-Mar). The data would be in a known format (column width) with data items encoded to NHS standards (it was anonymised - only wanted the basics like gender, race, age, diagnosis codes, treatment codes etc). We would also update the patient system to collect any new data.
In May we would now run the new version of the reporting software and send out the new format files to the health authorities and would always get plaintive requests for the old format as they weren't ready yet. We couldn't because we were often now collecting data differently and our coding team was me for much of the time and I had other tasks to get on with.
The point is that what should have happened is that the NHS would tell the labs to provide data in their format and then make it easy to parse into the NHS database.
I'm wondering if the labs are all using their own formats or something and Excel parsing is being used as a quick way to get the data consistent. Much better for the parsing to be done by the labs as the volumes are lower then make it easier just to read into the central database.

[jfman]

As it's based on Bluetooth this won't be unique to Scotland.

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by jfman

As it's based on Bluetooth this won't be unique to Scotland.

Good job it's not based on white tooth,you won't find many of them in Scotland

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

Interesting issue with Scotland's trace app reading through walls.

---
Many years back I wrote code for a central London hospital and part of the code was to share data with health authorities about patient episode and appointments so to "collect" moneys from them (all "funny" money - we didn't really bill them like that).

Each year the government would issue out details of what data to supply and in what format and each year I would rewrite our reporting software (and maybe some collection in the main patient system) to match the requirement.
In April we would run the old code for the March data plus an optional annual rollup (Apr-Mar). The data would be in a known format (column width) with data items encoded to NHS standards (it was anonymised - only wanted the basics like gender, race, age, diagnosis codes, treatment codes etc). We would also update the patient system to collect any new data.
In May we would now run the new version of the reporting software and send out the new format files to the health authorities and would always get plaintive requests for the old format as they weren't ready yet. We couldn't because we were often now collecting data differently and our coding team was me for much of the time and I had other tasks to get on with.
The point is that what should have happened is that the NHS would tell the labs to provide data in their format and then make it easy to parse into the NHS database.
I'm wondering if the labs are all using their own formats or something and Excel parsing is being used as a quick way to get the data consistent. Much better for the parsing to be done by the labs as the volumes are lower then make it easier just to read into the central database.

The problem wasn't the individuals labs. It was the bringing together of all the different sets of results and using an older spreadsheet format that caused the problem.

Link

The issue was caused by the way the agency brought together logs produced by the commercial firms paid to carry out swab tests for the virus.
They filed their results in the form of text-based lists, without issue.
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.
And since each test result created several rows of data, in practice it meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases. When that total was reached, further cases were simply left off.
Until last week, there were not enough test results being generated by private labs for this to have been a problem - PHE is confident that test results were not previously missed because of this issue.

1,400 cases might seem a small number, but I should imagine when you add all the contacts for each case, then the total number of contacts will obviously be a lot bigger.

Taken alongside some comments about the work having been done on a 'legacy system' that was due to be replaced, I wonder whether it was the case that rather choosing to use XLS rather than XLSX, the user actually had no choice, as they were using a computer that was so old it was running a pre-2007 version of Excel.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Chris

Taken alongside some comments about the work having been done on a 'legacy system' that was due to be replaced, I wonder whether it was the case that rather choosing to use XLS rather than XLSX, the user actually had no choice, as they were using a computer that was so old it was running a pre-2007 version of Excel.

Agreed - and that itself was a corporate failure because, assuming Windows, that version of everything would have been out of support.

Like I said before, one of the hospitals I visited last year (Thatcham I think it was) was using Vista on the ward.

[jfman]

I forgot about Vista haha. That and Millennium always slip my mind.

Originally Posted by Chris

Taken alongside some comments about the work having been done on a 'legacy system' that was due to be replaced, I wonder whether it was the case that rather choosing to use XLS rather than XLSX, the user actually had no choice, as they were using a computer that was so old it was running a pre-2007 version of Excel.

Might even be to do with how they uploaded it to the 'NHS system'. Later versions of Excel require different drivers so it may be whatever software they used to upload the Excel files only supported xls.

It's all very weird. I am still not clear on if there was a Master cell sheet or they were simply loading a csv into a excel and the excel sheet loaded into a database.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jfman

I forgot about Vista haha. That and Millennium always slip my mind.

Millenium was a useless disaster. It was as if Windows itself has caught the virus! Vista was a lot better than W95 and I used it for about 4 years without difficulty. I was running some pretty sophisticated software (Relex reliability modeller) and Office 2000 wasn't too shabby either.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...ositive-426799

The top leaders of all the (US) military services are under quarantine after the Coast Guard's No. 2 officer tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, according to administration officials.

Adm. Charles Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, had felt "mild symptoms" over the weekend and got tested Monday, according to a Coast Guard statement.

Senior Pentagon leadership who had been in close contact with Ray all tested negative on Tuesday, and are all self-quarantining, a defense official said.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff includes the chairman, vice chairman, and the four-star heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, National Guard and Space Force.

“All the Joint Chiefs have all the capability to [conduct] command and control and direct forces from wherever they are working,” the defense official said.

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz has been on travel and has not been in contact with Ray, according to spokesperson Jay Guyer.

[richard s]

Don't be afraid of Corona Virus (Trump who supposedly had it).... Fake News.

[1andrew1]

NHS labs across the country that process Covid-19 tests have been hit by shortages of vital chemicals and kit used to test for a range of diseases following a problem at one of Europe’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.

The Swiss pharma giant Roche — one of the biggest suppliers of the machines, chemicals and equipment used to process Covid-19 tests by NHS labs across the UK — wrote to labs on Monday alerting them to the disruption. It blamed an issue at a new “automated warehouse” which had caused “a very significant drop in our processing capacity”.

https://storify.com/services/proxy/2...klCxLNE_ft.png
See also https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54435226

[Pierre]

https://news.sky.com/story/scientist...rking-12096597

Coming around to my way of thinking, eventually. It is clear the status quo is unsatisfactory

. It comes as a new declaration, signed by thousands of scientists, calls for a herd immunity approach while protecting the most vulnerable populations.

The so-called Great Barrington declaration states: "The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection."

[jfman]

There's always been scientists advocating the wrong approach. They've simply wrote a letter.

[jonbxx]

Originally Posted by Pierre

https://news.sky.com/story/scientist...rking-12096597

Coming around to my way of thinking, eventually. It is clear the status quo is unsatisfactory

The Great Barrington Declaration is an interesting approach - lock down the vulnerable HARD and let everyone else go about their day as an alternative to everyone being locked down a bit. According to this study, that would equate to around 20% of the population being super locked down.

The questions arising from this approach would be;

• Would those who are locked down comply?
• What would be the effects on this population?
• Is there long lasting immunity from COVID?