From the widely distrusted and non-credible Tom Gordon:
ONLY a ‘pathetic’ few per cent of Scotland’s care home staff were tested for coronavirus last week, despite the SNP Government announcing universal routine testing three weeks ago. Health Secretary Jeane Freeman announced on May 18 that all 53,000 care home staff would be offered routine tests to help cut infections among residents.
So, off we go again. I am tiring but I’m not going to stop until he does so I guess we might be here for some years to come:
‘SNP pledge?’ Was this in the last manifesto? Even BBC Scotland call the Scottish Government just that. Gordon places his reputation alongside that of the Sun and the Daily Mail where ‘SNP’ is a much loved label.
‘Pathetic?’ Who said that? Such is the predictability of Gordon’s reporting these days, readers are already thinking: ‘Oh yeh Jackson Carlaw. Of course. Who else.’
You have to laugh when Carlaw uses that word as he pathetically leads his branch into the political wilderness and as his own pathetic approval rates fall to only ‘a few pathetic percent.’
On a more scientific note, the words ‘asymptomatic’ and ‘false negatives’ do not appear in Gordon’s report. I don’t suppose either Carlaw or he have been reading the research telling us that mass testing of the asymptomatic is a waste of time because it’s both unreliable and because it can generate false negatives where infected workers think they are non infected and then confidently go in to work with several vulnerable patients.
A bad test is worse than no test!
In New Zealand they didn’t test the asymptomatic for these same reasons but insisted on proper infection control of the kind not apparently implemented by some care home owners here.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
Getting more desperate by the day , listening to them all shouting , lying , diverting, inventing, stamping, frothing, disappearing, re-appearing , dodging, has been a revelation ! .
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Yes they are more desperate than ever
In military terms once your foe is in complete retreat then it is normal to
Apply overwhelming force immediately
In order to soundly defeat them
But in this case
Our guns are our good governance
Our aim is what above achieves
Our trigger are their words
And tis their fingers (tongues ) that are upon the most sensitive of hair triggers now
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
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I strongly implore Gordon to seek alternative employment with the Forestry Commission
Where most certainly he will be unable to see the wood from the trees
Especially the ones being felled in the direction of his close proximity
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On the question of MSM bias, on 8th of June the Hootsmon printed this clearly “impartial” article by Brian Monteith: https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/statistics-shame-scottish-government-handling-covid-brian-monteith-2877181
It states: “Here are the horrifying facts: Northern Ireland, 235 deaths per 1m people and 1.47 deaths/1m per lived density; Wales 365 deaths per 1m people and 1.79 deaths/1m per lived density; England 499 deaths per 1m people and 0.94 deaths/1m per lived density; and Scotland 580 deaths per 1m people and 2.9 deaths/1m per lived density.”
This just goes to support the old adage of “don’t believe what you read just because it’s printed in a newspaper.”
The Scotsman article gives no precise source info and merely states that it comes from “a revealing table of comparative statistics released following the COBRA meetings”. I googled ‘COBRA Covid19 Statistics’ which gave no statistical data but does provide a link to ONS data which paints a very different picture. As at 9 June the ONS figures, which reflect the Registers of Scotland data, were:
England – Population 55,977,200; Covid19 Deaths 36521; Deaths/million 652
Scotland – Population 5,463,200; Covid19 Deaths 2415; Deaths/million 442
Wales – Population 3,138,600; Covid19 Deaths 1410; Deaths/million 449
N Ireland – Population 1,881,600; Covid 19 Deaths 537; Deaths/million 285
I suggest that population density is largely irrelevant – you might as well records deaths/sq mile – and the largest number of deaths will generally be in the areas of greatest population density.
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