To think Test and Trace is now utterly obscene?

[LiquidSodaCrystal]

I’ve not put this under Coronavirus topic, because it’s not. It’s politics. It’s a vast system designed by the government to siphon off money to make rich people richer.

The government has decided to allow Covid to be endemic. Fine. At that point, test and trace is irrelevant. What are they now doing every day that requires a continual workforce of consultants that is being paid an average daily rate of over £1,000?

Today, over 1,000 people will be paid over £1,000 a day to do the sun total of fuck all, as far as I can see. This is such a bonanza. I assume some MNers are among these people - or spouses - how can you justify this? Or is it a case of “I’ll have it if it’s available thanks.”

This is one of the biggest scandals of the pandemic and it’s continuing, and people don’t seem to care. AIBU to think this is utterly obscene?

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/21/england-covid-test-and-trace-spending-over-1m-a-day-on-consultants

They asked me if my covid positive ds had been in contact with someone with covid? Well obviously!!

@PowerhouseOfTheCell

When I tested positive they spent 20 minutes telling me it was a legal requirement to give them my landline number. I don’t have one, so they suggested I order one for click and collect!

youre kidding what did you say to that

They are an absolute joke. I got a text this morning to say I’ve been in contact with someone positive. Came off a flight home where I had my mask on the entire time. Thought fair enough. I’ve done 2 negative lft and I’m double vaccinated etc so don’t need to do anything. Well since then I’ve had 4 emails, 3 text messages and 6 phone calls. I’ve blocked everything now .

I worked for T+T as one of these outbound call handlers last year for about 9 months. Was paid £9 and hour. Worse job I've ever had - abosulte shambles behind the scenes and a disgusting waste of tax payers money. If they called me now, I'd just block them. 🚫

My friend works for test and protect and earns £23K.

She says most people are reasonably polite.

@PowerhouseOfTheCell

When I tested positive they spent 20 minutes telling me it was a legal requirement to give them my landline number. I don’t have one, so they suggested I order one for click and collect!

Oh my yes I had completely forgot about this little nugget. I was told I had broadband so I have a landline, preaching to the choir here as I work for my isp. I have to plug a phone in and allow them to contact me that way to prove I'm at home. Erm ok then, bring a phone round and plug it in, I won't stop you. You half witted moron

They should mothball it until a bad variant crops up. Then again how do the unvaccinated get to know when to isolate?

I blocked them and told them I was going to after they rang eight times in one day. They said they could send the police round. I said fine, go ahead
They didn't.

It was a total waste of time for us. School said T&T were taking over telling who to isolate. My son tested positive and they asked me where he had been. I said school, laser zone and McDonald's. They didn't ask who he was with or had been near. They made me give a number for each person who lives in our house. I gave my number for all of them.... the same number they had called me on that was on record for my son. They then texted my phone a message for each family member. It was so pointless.

The first time I spoke to test and trace it was brilliant, lovely lady really took her time to make sure it was all explained, this was when my DS was positive. Sadly that was the only good experience I had with them. When they called to speak to me about my result, the line was awful and she yelled at me cause I didn’t know the postcode of the local church. Then implied I was lying as said I hadn’t been anywhere the week before i turned positive. I was already pretty isolating as the kid had it.

Its absolutely insane. 2 of my children and i tested positive and i was harassed with phone calls for each of us so in all they probably called me over 20 times in a few days. When i did answer i could hear background noises like their children speaking/screaming and one of them couldnt speak English properly. If they are getting that much money then what an absolute shit show. I also did not feel comfortable with the amount of info i had to "legally" provide like kids DOB and their school/nursery. They also kept getting us mixed up and spoke to me as if i was my daughter. Really quite worrying...
we also received a call from the council who then REPEATED all the bullshit questions.

they also sent me texts saying i was a close contact when i already had told them i had tested positive

I was sitting next to my friend when she had a call the other day. They said,
"We need you to do a PCR on day 2 of your isolation."
She replied, "Ok, so is today day 1, so tomorrow?"
"No, day one was last Monday when your contact reported positive, so day two would have been last Tuesday."
"But it's now Saturday?"
"Yes."
"So....you want to go back in time to last Tuesday, four days ago and test myself then?"
That stumped them.

Followed by "So your isolation ends after ten days, so Wednesday."
"So I have to isolate until then?"
"No, because you've had both jabs you don't have to isolate at all unless you get symptoms. But next Wednesday is when your isolation period ends."
"That's when my isolation period ends, but I don't actually have to isolate?"
"Yes that's right."

And finally.
"Where do you work?"
"In a bank"
"Okay that's fine you can go into work but if you work in a school or social care environment you have to make your manager aware that you are a close contact in an isolation period."
"But I've just told you I work in a bank."

It was hard work! Reminded me of 'computer says no.'

It's absolutely daft!
I don't know about the rest of the UK but in NI if you're double jabbed (greater majority of the public) you don't need to isolate, so it really is redundant now.

I spent hours on the phone with them when DS13 tested positive because for reason I couldn't fill in the online forms for a child. His grasp of English was poor so he asked me to spell everything and kept asking about my sons employer and colleagues. I had to keep saying he's at school and he said he had to ask all the questions. I refused to give names of who he sat with at school because I couldn't face having to spell all the names and I'd let school line already plus his class WhatsApp group. I tested positive 10 days later and I filled in all my details on line. They then called me 13 times in 9 days. The worst was at 7.30am on a Sunday because that's when ill people love to talk to strangers about help they don't need.

consultancies are having abonanza on this— charge your desk bound call agents st £128 an hour- pay em £15 kind of thing— but no different to what insolvency practices/management consultants have been doing for years. It’s all one huge scam with some people doing very nicely off the efforts of others

I blocked them too and the council called who were a million times better .
I was shocked how bad t&t were

They asked me if my dd lived with me

Yes

Does your dd live in a care home

@Blueeyedgirl21

I blocked them and deleted the covid app

After they told a friend they had to legally speak with her 3 month old baby to tell him not to leave the house after testing positive to covid I couldn’t take them seriously

That's amazing. I hope she put him on the line.

@Suzi888

TTP staff get paid a grand a day?

Not the staff that phone people up no. The consultants/ contractors who won the work to set up, implement and manage the back end service yes. I am sure call handlers wish they were on £1k a day!

T&T were horrendous when I’d already had Covid, but a hospital made me do a new test within 2 weeks of having it, as I was going in for a procedure. Unsurprisingly, the test came back positive, cue T&T calling me saying I had to isolate. I’d just done a total of 20 days, due to being at home with DD when she had it, then another 10 when I had it.
No way was I doing another 10 days!
It was computer says no time.
The caller was actually really nice, and said she’d check with management to see if they could make an exception, but they said no, and had to record it as refusal to self isolate.
It was then passed to the council, who saw that it an anomaly straight away, applied some logic to the situation, and said it was all fine.

Well, I hope the people I spoke to weren't getting a grand a day. Though probably not as we're in Wales. We had 2 phone calls, during the course of which they contradicted themselves more than once.

They also told DH about who I'd been in contact with and when (not the name but enough info for him to know who it was) before they ever spoke to me. There's a clear danger there to people in abusive relationships (imagine someone who's been meeting up with someone their controlling partner doesn't like). There were also other issues - frankly they were very amateurish, which would be forgivable in March 2020, but is not in November 2021.

We all had it one after the other and had multiple calls, all of which were totally pointless and some of which were downright misleading. I got one call as a close contact of one of the family on the same day that my own test came back positive but the guy making the "close contact" call kept insisting that I didn't need to self isolate because I'd been double jabbed.No matter how many times I told him that yes I did, because I had Covid, he stuck doggedly to his script. And another one told me I needed to get a PCR for my son because he was a close contact of mine. He'd tested positive first- that's how we all caught it - and was still isolating! It seemed to be beyond them that you could be a close contact and be positive and that people living in the same household would all be close contacts of each other! The system doesn't seem to be joined up at all.
I had other calls from people who seemed much brighter and would at least say things like "I know this is a stupid question but I'm afraid I'm legally obliged to ask" which made it all more tolerable.
The idea was good, the execution has been appalling and the cost is a national scandal.

This is the Conservative party thinking the private sector is automatically better than anything the NHS could do.

I can not begin to tell you how many people I know who work in mgt consultancies & accounting firms who have been drafted into to staff these departments. At great expense.

Here is a nice link (from the FT: known as a reasonably balanced newspaper) to give you a flavour about general chaos, private companies ripping off the state.

Hope the easy free link still works:

www.ft.com/content/68c9bd78-0537-4b6f-9fdb-47f04fa2c30e : : the FINANCIAL TMES (FT)

I have no idea what their purpose is now.

When we had covid recently I dreaded them ringing me, the line was always awful quality, they seemed a bit thick most of the time (sorry if that's mean) and were literally reading off a sheet of paper and not listening to anything I said.