Ditto

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56858158 An effective vaccine against malaria, which has been a massive killer of humans, is really exciting news. University of Oxford involved again.

I can only comment on G Suite, but I'm not sure it does fully. The school I was Data Manager at did not backup data that was in the cloud. I don't recall anyone asking for a deleted file to be recovered that couldn't be in the 5 years I was there. Items are recoverable for 30 days once they come out of trash, which as it stays in trash for up to 25 days, that's mostly 55 days. Now, I'm sure in time someone will want a file from further back than that, but retaining all the data for that possibility is costly. It's a business decision to judge whether it's worth the cost - and this school decided it's not worth the cost. In truth, the issue with G Suite was people keeping stuff forever, not deleting it! However, the recovering deleted files is just a minor part of the picture. Why do we take backups? A big factor would be in case of disaster recovery, be it fire or lets say ransomware. for physical risk, the view was Google can take care of that. For the ransomware scenario, that's a much tougher call. How far back and how often to take backups is a tough one to judge. I would still like to hear the view from My Cloud Backup as they must have had similar conversations with schools.

Welcome and thanks for sponsoring. A more general question. For some schools that are mostly G Suite users, or mostly M365 Cloud based users, or similar, be it Azure, G Cloud or other, they feel they don't need to take additional backup steps. They effectively rely entirely on their cloud application/storage provider to manage risk of data loss. I know from other threads that some here take this approach, whilst others take additional backups on top. From a strategic perspective, what's MyCloud Backup view on this. In particular, do you have real world examples where such a cloud based school has regretted not having additional security, or indeed ones that have been saved because they did!

Bonkers! You wouldn't accept that in normal times. I can understand it's been very tough on their industry, but if others don't see or read the notification, it is going to make for a very uncomfortable situation when three couples turn up to find they've been paired! The risk isn't probably any great than meeting 2 other pairs of your family, but it isn't really the point. On that point, it is beyond the wit of MiL to understand that mixing with family (people you know) isn't lower risk just because they are family. I think it's well understood that family transmission, particularly in multi-generational households, is one of the significant transmission routes.

Ask them all - it might draw a blank, but it might surprise you... either way, no response removes their right to grumble about what they receive, but won't stop them!

Any interesting point in the article is to it's reference to a follow up PCR test after a LFT positive. I'm a bit behind on my governance work, but what's the current situation here in schools - and is it different in primaries and secondary. A follow up PCR brings much greater accuracy - but I'm not sure if that's now a common approach.

Great links! I love the fact the first quickly takes you to Bayes's theorem. I'm pretty good with logic, but I remember spending quite a bit of time getting my head fully straight on this particular topic, and perhaps have let it get less clear over time! If anyone finds this easy or fascinating, head for a career as a data scientist!

I have a feeling we are going to need content warnings on future video feeds from @elsiegee40, or maybe one of those old red triangles from Channel 4 in the mid '80's

When I did something similar a few years ago, we setup in Kiosk mode an had the Chromebooks open a Google Form that had simple text field to enter in. No nice formatting of course, but allowed the pupils to type answers in. Chromex would be a better solution, but in the limited time given, you've limited time to react. to be honest, you could bounce it back and say 'Sorry, spell check is enabled, you'll need to have the invigilators monitor for breaking rules'. In the same way as you would monitoring to spot anyone using a dictionary.

Some years ago there was something called vapourware. Look for a cloud based product that is available now.

No eyed dear. Oh no, wrong joke!

I guess this was a 1 in 10 chance...

Very true and in the main, the numbers, the lumpiness of supply and the focus on second jabs in April is exactly what we were told to expect. I decided for interest to download the data or the Gov site and produce a couple of charts below. One is with a linear trend line, the second a polynomial trend line. It shows the value of charts over raw numbers, but even then you need to be careful interpreting the results. The first would indicate continual growth in rate, the second shows a clearer picture. I suspect neither would be good for projections. With Moderna coming on stream now, I'm optimistic things will improve further. I expect the vast majority of countries across the globe would be delighted to be in the same position as the UK at this point with their vaccination roll-out. An update on post jab2 symptoms after approaching the 24 hours mark. Definitely a stronger reaction, sore arm at injection point, but nothing more than the feeling of a punch and so far no flu like symptoms and slept fine. Fingers crossed it stays this mild over the next few days. ***Edit - could someone remind me how you control the image size so it is more visible without having to click on it! ***

Jab 2 done (Pfizer). 10 more minutes and can drive home. 1 week and in theory I'm as protected as I can be, but will continue with all the usual rules. Will have to wait and see whether Autumn/Winter leads to a booster. Regardless, I will get common flu jab this year for the first time. Wonder when I will start to think I'm a pin cushion

Are crystals carvable?

@localzuk - yes, I think that is a logical interpretation. I would add however that so far I haven't read anything that says any of the vaccines is entirely ineffective - in fact most reports show vaccines to be 'slightly' less effective. Going back to the BHF article, the worse case I see is at https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/coronavirus-and-your-health/covid-variant#SAoxford which reports efficacy as low as 10% for the AZ vaccine against the SA variant. However, it is noted the age range was low (average 31) and sample size small so it was hard to be conclusive and recommended more research was required. It is also worth noting just below this it reports "Moderna has developed a booster vaccine to target the South African variant (B.1.351), which is now in phase 1 clinical trials in the US." - Science is fighting back!

This isn't something I've heard before - the 8 times more likely scenario - is that compared to those who have had an earlier variant or no infection at all. In terms of 'worse', is that a case of a higher mortality rate. The UK variant was report by the BMJ as increasing deaths from 2.5 to 4.1 per 1000 detected cases. I've not tracked figures for other variants, but increases in death are significant. On vaccines, generally reports show efficacy is reduced for soma variants, but nothing so far to say completely ineffective. The following article from the British Heart Foundation pulls a lot of detail together in a convenient way. https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/coronavirus-and-your-health/covid-variant All-in-all, what is clear is it is a global pandemic and needs a global solution, which is why WHO are making strong comments about vaccine distribution.

I agree herd immunity via infection would be unwise - it will cost the lives of many more people, and those will include many more younger people who would otherwise have had a much greater amount of life to live without C-19. Besides, immunity through infection is not fully understood, but what is known is getting it doesn't mean you don't get it again, even ignoring variants. Bring variants in to the picture, and it makes even less sense. Vaccines are the strongest defence we have, and hopefully will be developed to defend against variants. Even then, it's not 100%. I expect they're will come a point where living life 'normally' will be traded with a certain infection and death rate (as we have currently with the common flu), but we are not at that point yet.

I think the picture is clearer with drives up to 600gb and I hope you can find the caddy's you need inexpensively - do you have a product code for what you need? The drives I was thinking about were 4TB but I believe the PERC 6/i only supports up to 2GB, so probably nee to rethink this. Looking at this document under drives, I'm left confused! There is reference to 'up to 600GB' for SAS. But also >2TB as a factory option as RAID 0. What I believe is probably the case is, 600GB is out of date ( I think 2TB is supported) and "> 2TB" is supported as a virtual drive using multiple drives (up to 2TB each) with one of the PERC adapters. I will dig a bit further, and wonder if a more up to date PERC (or LSI) will help.

Although getting on quite a bit, my Dell Precision T5500 workstation is going strong and inexpensively highly specced. I'm aware it can support SAS drives but currently it's just SATA in use. Does anyone know if you can mix them? I'm thinking of some internal backup security and wondering if cheap SAS drives is an option. I believe I have a PERC 6i controller too, which might be be of help. I'm not too worried about performance unless is dire!

Also did one a few years ago, but as a result of my initiative. It's probably a healthy sign your SLT is driving this, but simply, yes, they'll need your help. Once complete, you will be wise to engage in actions to follow as you'll nee to prioritise carefully. Take it in steps, it's not an all or nothing. Will your SLT be able to increase your budget with actions if required?

I counted 1 mask in that picture, being worn in a way that renders it totally ineffective.

Similar amount here in the Surrey lowlands. I won't be pedalling up the Surrey Hills today where there is often more and it all disappeared midday anyway.

Nice find! So, sort of recycling, recycling, recycling then

The situation in Chile is of concern https://inews.co.uk/opinion/chile-covid-cases-vaccinations-record-surge-949038. However, with the news recently around the Sinovac vaccine efficacy, the true picture as to why they are having a third wave will take time to understand - is it due to variants, vaccine efficacy or unlocking too much too soon? Probably a mixture of all three.