Baking The Perfect Cake
Trying to fathom Test & Trace data tables (rev 1.2)
I am a simple man with a simple mind. I like numbers to add up and I like to be able to understand what those numbers mean. This morning I took it upon myself to update my spreadsheet with the latest Test & Trace England figures and run a few checks just ensure all was well and groovy.
But all was not groovy for I once again noted more people being tested than tests processed which doesn’t make sense. In my book if 10 people are tested this means you’ve processed 10 tests at the very minimum, and considerably more if those 10 people re-test themselves a few times per week. Hence I am expecting to see virus test to persons ratios exceeding 1.0, but that’s not what we find!
If I take the pillar 1 scheme1 processed PCR total and the pillar 1 scheme people tested figures I get this chart:
This starts out groovy but rapidly sinks into nonsense as the blue wiggle descends below the ratio of 1.0, and particularly so during the autumn of 2021. Either we are missing tests or have double-counted pe…