COVID-19 NUMBERS ARE UTTERLY UNRELIABLE.

Does anyone really know the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic in this country ?

Yesterday, it was announced that due to "technical issues", a significant number of positive tests had not been included in recently published figures. Inevitably, some have blamed this omission on the government, but surely the blame lies with those directly responsible for compiling the numbers. A simple review of the figures released on a daily basis confirms this.

Day to day, the numbers change. not by much but by enough to make one wonder what is going on. I don't mean the total numbers, but going back to the early days of the epidemic, the numbers of cases and deaths recorded on a daily basis change almost every day; not for every day though some days seem to change more often than others. This latest announcement of thousands of cases being 'missed' over recent days simply convinces me that the bodies responsible, mostly Public Health England, are utterly incompetent. I have lost count of the number of times they have told us that the numbers have been adjusted due to some error or other and one can only wonder how reliable any of the figures really are.

Thankfully I have not contracted the virus and have even had a negative test a couple of weeks ago, so I know the epidemic has not reached me yet. That said, the uncertainty surrounding the published numbers leaves me wholly unsure that I'm not the only uninfected person left in the country.

Public Health England is a useless organisation and it can only be a good thing that it's to be abolished. The worry is that it'll simply be replaced by yet another pointless and useless QUANGO, run by a gaggle of faceless bureaucrats, many of them the same as are in post now. Surely it is now time for a genuine re-organisation of the NHS and associated bodies that will allow for the creation of something that is properly competent, is responsive to patients, is not driven by diktat from 'on high' and not drowned in demands for statistics demonstrating how wonderful it is.

The truth is that it's not bad for those who get into the system but it's bloody awful for those on the waiting list. It almost never admits its mistakes, frequently lies in its published statistics and is horrendously bureaucratic in outlook. Envy of the world ? Don't make me laugh !

ps As an afterthought, it occurs to me that "technical issues" was a possible excuse suggested by Sir Humphrey Appleby when looking for a way to explain a government 'cock up' in an episode of the wonderful 'Yes, Minister' / 'Yes, Prime Minister' series. More than 30 years on - how little has changed.