RE: gov and media2 Apr 2021 11:50
It’s genuinely too late for tests to be a genuine alternative. They completely screwed up that option at the start when they could have tried to nail it down straight away with a working test and trace strategy. South Korea have shown it can be done. The govt strategy is all about the vaccine to reduce deaths and serious illness. If they were genuinely serious about testing, the strategy would be to lock everyone in their houses and mass screen the entire population. They’re not doing it, it’s now about the one way route - that won’t probably won’t be, because of variants.
The vaccination roll out doesn’t stop the need for testing. It can still spread and most importantly it can still mutate. If they’re planning on letting it rip through once a decent proportion are vaccinated and go for herd immunity, they’re off the scale levels of stupid. The mutations have originated where it’s been allowed to spread and if they don’t use testing to reduce prevalence then vaccine escape will quickly follow. Here’s hoping that twice weekly testing happens to give us a chance to finally get a grip. The challenge will be that Joe public who are already asking why someone without symptoms needs to be tested, will question why they need a test when they’ve been vaccinated. That’s when the messaging around testing needs to be right