All adults in England are being offered free, twice-weekly coronavirus tests as ministers prepare for the next stage of easing lockdown restrictions.
The lateral flow tests – which can provide results in around 30 minutes – are available from today, regardless of whether people have symptoms.
Boris Johnson said taking regular tests would be key to the continued easing of lockdown as he outlined plans for the next stage of the roadmap out of lockdown – which comes on Monday.
All adults in England, even those without Covid symptoms, will be urged to check themselves twice a week.
You can urge as much as you like, I won’t be enabling this idiocy. This is guaranteed to increase false positives.
However, what struck me was this:
It is still unclear if the tests will be compulsory but it is clear that people are being encouraged to take up the offer.
Given that we are seeing covid passports coming about despite denials, expect them to try forcing this one when there is insufficient take-up.
We were supposed to be out of this by Easter when the vulnerable were vaccinated, now despite vaccination being the golden bullet (sarc) we are to have totally useless and idiotic passports and now twice weekly testing. Every step of the way, they place another obstacle. It’s almost as if, having stolen so much power, they are loathe to let it go.
They are not free.
Someone is paying for the whole farce, and someone is getting the dosh.
Why do we need any of this crap in order to ease lockdown anyway, since it has been empirically proven that lockdowns don’t work. All that we need to do is admit that they don’t work cancel the lockdown as a waste of everyone’s time and return to normal.
Dear Mr Longrider
Mr *hitty, Sir Vallance Bedspread and those awfully nice people at sage who have spent the last year well and truly stuffing the public, are almost certainly on huge retainers, plus lots of publicity for those who want it (and none for those who don’t), so they won’t be in any hurry to end the emergency.
Just for fun I have plotted the graphs for all-cause mortality and excess mortality for the period covering the peaks in the first and second waves.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189200946@N04/51105305111/in/dateposted-public/
First wave: no vaccines, second wave: no difference.
Doubtless they will scrape some metric together which will allow them to proclaim “we are saved by vaccination! Hallelujah! But …”.
Or words to that effect.
DP
If they are made compulsory, people have three options:
a) Comply like good little subjects of the state.
b) Test the swab without sticking it up your nose and report a negative result.
c) Refuse to comply and accept the consequences.
At some point, those who believe in freedom need to be prepared to take option (c), but it’s easy for me to say that when I don’t live in England.
The option I take is just to ignore it. No response at all and then they have to send a jobsworth round. For the census I first had a very nice young lady talk to me for 5 mins about life in general for the second visit I had a Karen of about the same age who asked me ‘Could I wear a mask.’ I said ‘Yes’. We both waited she then said ‘Was I going to put a mask on?’ I said ‘No’ She spluttered a bit then moved away and started talking. I said ‘I couldn’t hear her through the mask’. She slid it down over her chin to protect her chin from Covid I assume. Then I said ‘Woah’. 2m please. you haven’t a mask on.’ If looks could have killed a medium would be typing this. She then asked her questions from about 2m away. Nowhere near as pleasant as the other one. But I had fun regardless.
I did the census, but left most of the questions unanswered. This was interesting as it allowed you to click “send” without completing it. Someone cocked up there. Of those I did answer, my name and age were the only things that were accurate. So if someone in the family wants to look back in a hundred years, what they need will be there.
As to the substantive point – yes, I will simply ignore any and all attempts to get me to do tests. Most of the time, I simply won’t be in as I can see who is at the door without going anywhere near it. If it’s not someone I’m expecting or the postie, then I ignore it.
You do the tests on your own, the interaction with the government is logging onto a website and recording the results.
Which I will ignore. The next steps are likely letters (as with the vaccination) or people calling round (as with the census).
“We were supposed to be out of this by Easter…”
We were supposed to be out of this by Easter 2020. Remember “three weeks to flatten the curve”? Easter Sunday 2020 was the last day of those three weeks.
Maybe Easter 2022 will be our return to normal (if anybody remembers what normal is by then).