£37,000,000,000 for still failing test and trace

[Tilltheend99]

Am I being UR to think that £37,000,000,000 for a system that doesn’t work is unreasonable? Test and trace have just been given top up funds by the government to “…the equivalent of 20% of the entire NHS budget.” Plus ‘consultants’ still being paid £1000 a day.

Just to be clear I think we should have test and trace but that it should work, help to reduce the rate of infections, and cost a hell of a lot less!
metro.co.uk/2021/10/27/test-and-trace-failed-its-main-objective-despite-37-billion-cost-15492287/

Its beyond awful. It makes me eo angry i need to step away from the news. Which will suit them.

And people still defend them.

Would you like to start paying for LFT and PCR tests?
Where do you think the money for them comes from?

YANBU. It's an astonishing amount of money for a system which barely functions. Let's face it, most of it has gone straight into tory party donor pockets.

Capitalists doing capitalism. Nepotism too.
This is what our Gov stand for so why are we expecting anything else?

@poshme According to the report people who have symptoms who take a test are still in the minority so I doubt simply the cost of tests which will have been bulk bought through procurement will be the main drain here. Also, the NHS is processing many of the tests not just private labs. I would expect everything to be done to a basic level of cost effectiveness at any rate.

Whole country is billions in debt, people choosing heating or food, thousands a day loosing their homes, taxed to the eyeballs...but the government think it's fine to bleed millions of tax payers money into a broken system because it's their "mates".

There needs to be a petition to abolish trace and track and make them pay the millions of pounds wasted back. They have done nothing to help the covid effort, absolutely fuck all.

Have we tried paying healthcare workers less to help fund it?

What even is that number? My brain can't comprehend it.

I think the test centers, LFT roll out, booking system, result notifications, vaccinations, are good in the main.

The endless phone calls and form filling for test and trace is woefully pointless.

It doesn't matter surely who processes the tests- that still has to be paid for.

Our testing rate is over 13 per thousand people (5th highest in the world) which works out about 875,000 a day (if my maths is right- which it might not be)

This is what the majority of the country wanted

@TrickOrTreat21x

Whole country is billions in debt, people choosing heating or food, thousands a day loosing their homes, taxed to the eyeballs...but the government think it's fine to bleed millions of tax payers money into a broken system because it's their "mates".

There needs to be a petition to abolish trace and track and make them pay the millions of pounds wasted back. They have done nothing to help the covid effort, absolutely fuck all.

I agree that when they have this mysterious (presumably judge led) inquiry into the handling of the pandemic it will be hard to prove that test and trace has contributed to the Covid effort.

If it was just about buying, handing out, and processing tests I presume NHS/GPs/pharmacies could have done it without out the expensive middle man.

I think it’s fair to say the system has failed on the tracing part which is the bit that would help reduce the R rate. I assume persuading the public to get tested/isolate was also their department.

Test and Trace was doomed from the start, because people don't want the govt interfering in their business and Test and Trace is so bloody invasive! I know plenty of people who've had one confirmed case of Covid in their family, then they've done a LTF that's positive and they've just isolated at home, without going for a PCR, simply because they don't want T&T involved.

Hey, if when the inquiry comes around they can prove where all the money went and that it made a substantial difference to reducing infection rates then good on them!

Seems Covid is on the rise again at the moment.

@Calendulaaaaa

Have we tried paying healthcare workers less to help fund it?

Nurses pay is currently below inflation. (Any nurses here who can correct me if I’m wrong?) So in a way it could be argued that they are already doing this.

it is an insane amount of money that seems to have vanished with very little to show for it. i'm sure there are a few friends of the government sunning themselves on private islands on the proceeds of this mess.

@zafferana

Test and Trace was doomed from the start, because people don't want the govt interfering in their business and Test and Trace is so bloody invasive! I know plenty of people who've had one confirmed case of Covid in their family, then they've done a LTF that's positive and they've just isolated at home, without going for a PCR, simply because they don't want T&T involved.

This means that there will never be an accurate picture of the progress of the virus. If so many pet are not cooperating then the numbers will be lower and that gives a false picture.

[quote Tilltheend99]@poshme According to the report people who have symptoms who take a test are still in the minority so I doubt simply the cost of tests which will have been bulk bought through procurement will be the main drain here. Also, the NHS is processing many of the tests not just private labs. I would expect everything to be done to a basic level of cost effectiveness at any rate.[/quote]
You know many thousands of school children are testing multiple times a week?

The report was done by MPs who presumably have information on how many school children are being tested but they still say most people with symptoms aren’t getting tested. A lot of business buy their own tests by DHs does.

*my

I agree @Pottedpalm. The actual numbers that get trotted out every day like gospel are a load of bollocks. We have no idea how many actual cases there are either here or abroad and we never have.

The thing that stuns me is that with that amount of money, they could have literally paid people significant sums to stay at home for 2 weeks.

In an utterly theoretical scenario, you could pay 70 million people £1,000 each to isolate at the same time. Therefore, breaking all chains of transmission and it would still be less than the amount of money spent on test and trace.

Obviously there is no way that would ever work because of essentials workers/not allowing society to grind to a halt etc, and I'm not advocating for that approach but it does show up how much has been wasted here!

One of the main areas of waste by Track and Trace has been the employment of 2,300 management consultants at an average salary of £163,000 a consultant, panning out to between £1000 and £7000 a day. I have never seen any explanation of what these people do. When asked, Dido Harding just vaguely claimed that "they’ve done very important work alongside the public servants, the military, the healthcare professionals and members of the private sector who have come and joined us as well,”

Test and trace works in places like Korea where they literally lock you down if you test positive but it's such a waste of money here. If they'd spent that on improving the NHS then we wouldn't be worrying about case numbers anyway!

Is that 37 gagillion?

The entire NHS and social are budget for 2020 was 212 billion, compare that with37 billion on an app that didn't even work. Looks like corruption to me !