A World beating Testing System!

I wonder why we're not doing the same thing, do you suppose?

Womanly said

I wonder why we're not doing the same thing, do you suppose?

The testing stations should be on pub car parks or city centre streets at 10pm. Sorted.

indemnity

I agree.

In city centres, supermarkets etc etc.

Edited by Womanly

indemnity said

Womanly said

I wonder why we're not doing the same thing, do you suppose?

The testing stations should be on pub car parks or city centre streets at 10pm. Sorted.

Surely it would be better (and cheaper) to follow the science/evidence and just not shut pubs at 10pm.

Different culture different approach. Have you seen how the Chinese enforce testing? You are literally dragged off the street and thrown into a van.

Plus it's a collective mindset for the most part not an individualist society.

You can see that approach is going to work here obviously.

You can't have it both ways

Skaffler

I'd happily queue up in the high street to get tested.

They should just use a spoonful of the mackerel pate I tried recently - if someone can't taste that they must have covid...

I'm on my phone, so I can't make a long reply, but large scale testing like China has its own problems and results have to be interpreted with care. Molecular testing also detects non-viable from people who are no longer infectious and the length of time molecular material remains detectable is unknown and probably varies with individuals. Targeted testing of contacts is more reliable. The Chinese system that is apparently described (although I haven't read the article yet) isn't a rest and trace system, but a blanket testing system. To do something similar here would encounter cultural, resourcing and logistical problems. Using the term world-beating is rhetoric but neither is it failing in the way the media is reporting, who are exaggerating just as much as the Government.

Isn’t it a World testing beating system?

Womanly said

I wonder why we're not doing the same thing, do you suppose?

Because here people wouldn't accept the army forcing people to take a test whether they wanted to or not. And we wouldn't force labs to run 24/7 or have the people working there summarily executed ? And people would not publicly question where all 9 million tests had been taken, processed, and results where as the the authorities said they were. 

One person's slavery powered dictatorship is another's effective government.  

We really need to be less focused on how many tests are being done and more focused on what's being done with the data.

Whether or not someone can get their sniffling child tested so they can go back to school is important, but it's not the same as contact tracing which needs to be proactive at identifying infectious people before they develop symptoms. That means that tests need to be processed quickly and possible contacts identified to minimise the amount of time they're walking around and infecting other people.

Unfortunately, most of the media seems to be focused on counting tests and only pay attention to the tracing part of the problem when someone presses the wrong button in Excel.

Unless and until we have a vaccine, contact tracing with focused quarantines is the only way to control C19 without blanket lockdowns. They seem to be able to do it in Germany. I'll refrain from why we're not able to do it here.

Hm. Just saw I cross posted with Richard saying something similar!

David JC said

We really need to be less focused on how many tests are being done and more focused on what's being done with the data.

Whether or not someone can get their sniffling child tested so they can go back to school is important, but it's not the same as contact tracing which needs to be proactive at identifying infectious people before they develop symptoms. That means that tests need to be processed quickly and possible contacts identified to minimise the amount of time they're walking around and infecting other people.

Unfortunately, most of the media seems to be focused on counting tests and only pay attention to the tracing part of the problem when someone presses the wrong button in Excel.

Unless and until we have a vaccine, contact tracing with focused quarantines is the only way to control C19 without blanket lockdowns. They seem to be able to do it in Germany. I'll refrain from why we're not able to do it here.

Trace and isolate are managed locally in Germany, not here still.

I went to a walk in centre with my son to be tested. It was behind the Surrey Council

building in Kingston. It was very quick and with no queues. My son tested positive and me negative, but have now had a second test since I had symptoms. Went back to the same test centre. I was actually expecting there to be long queues on both occasions but it was very simple and painless. By the way it's a self test and the worst part of it is swabbing your own tonsils.

That is impressive if they can test that many people, but I expect there is some fear with the CCP. As we all know the UK citizens have a hard job following any rules.

Stolenfaces said

David JC said

We really need to be less focused on how many tests are being done and more focused on what's being done with the data.

Whether or not someone can get their sniffling child tested so they can go back to school is important, but it's not the same as contact tracing which needs to be proactive at identifying infectious people before they develop symptoms. That means that tests need to be processed quickly and possible contacts identified to minimise the amount of time they're walking around and infecting other people.

Unfortunately, most of the media seems to be focused on counting tests and only pay attention to the tracing part of the problem when someone presses the wrong button in Excel.

Unless and until we have a vaccine, contact tracing with focused quarantines is the only way to control C19 without blanket lockdowns. They seem to be able to do it in Germany. I'll refrain from why we're not able to do it here.

Trace and isolate are managed locally in Germany, not here still.

Germany is systematically federalised while Britain is inconsistently devolved. I don't think that's the reason why they have a working system and we don't.

From what I've picked up - which I admit is incomplete - they used their existing system of public health and built on tried and tested techniques for contact tracing. The British approach was to set up a parallel infrastructure run by a communications firm who tried to reinvent the wheel of contact tracing in the form of a smartphone app.

Hence Germany has a working contact tracing system and we don't.