Operation Moonshot - mass testing plan

[turnitonagain]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/09/boris-johnson-pinning-hopes-on-covid-testing-moonshot-leaked-papers-show?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

£100bn on mass testing. Where’s the money and resources coming from for this? I don’t believe even in Wuhan they were testing 6 million people daily.

It’s certainly appropriately named.

Ministerial response quoted on R4 this morning is that "we will have the capacity to do 500,000 tests a day". Right - so we will have the capacity to test everyone once every 6 months.

Its coming from where all gov funding comes from, future borrowing.

It's total bullshit, of course it won't happen. They must think we are absolutely stupid to even put it out there. It's insulting.

They can't even adequately test the people who have it now and who are being told to travel hundreds of miles for tests which get lost/take days for kits to arrive and be processed...

It's like someone with one lung and two broken ankles telling you they're not only going to run the London Marathon but they're going to come first.

Kay Burley said 'less moonshot, more pie in the sky'

@Beccatheboo, in all honesty every single one of the questions you pose has an answer if you have the inclination to take the time to look it up.

This though:

how can we possibly know how many people would have died, unless we have developed god-like powers to ultimately predict others’ fates. How can we predict the reaction of 66 million individual immune systems?

The key is in the wording, the best we have are estimates (not certain fact) which are based on survival rates of known patients. That formula is scaled up to the entire population since we know no one has any immunity to covid because it’s a brand new virus.

Yes they will almost certainly be wrong but by how much and which way no one knows, there’s simply no way to look into a crystal ball. Now imagine yourself in number 10, do you take a gamble that it’s not as bad as predicted or do you react to the worse case scenario?

Earlier on at the beginning of this pandemic I read an interview with the American infectious diseases expert, Dr Fauci. He clearly stated that any successful measures that are taken will look like an overreaction in hindsight. It’s bizarre watching him proven right already. People are quoting recent figures (that are the result of the measures taken) to argue that this proves we’re over reacting without any hint of irony.

Feel free to come up with some projections of your own but don’t minimise the potential of covid using data that reflects a period of measures being implemented.

If you don’t understand why things aren’t being opposed in Parliament have you considered the possibility it’s because no one actually opposes the measures because they believe they’re needed? I mean you might be on to something and maybe there’s a hidden agenda but on the other hand maybe you just don’t grasp the situation and they’re right.

I hope anyone who voted this absolute farce of a government into power is not complaining how they have fucked everything up. This 'moonshot' nonsense is really scraping the barrel. Are there no decent members of the conservative party who will get the ball rolling to remove Boris and Dom from power?

Are there no decent members of the conservative party who will get the ball rolling to remove Boris and Dom from power

Lol - no there isn’t! No one knows how to deal with this shit storm and the public are clearly hostile to any attempts at curtailing it because they want results now and it’s just not possible.

That’s before we even get on to the car crash that’s brexit.

Nope, all the loudmouths who are happy backseat driving have enough sense to avoid putting themselves in a position where they’re going to have to make unpopular decisions.

I've been clinging to the assumption that Boris, while incompetent, is still marginally better than Trump. This bullshit is about as credible as Trump's suggestion that people drink disinfectant to get rid of the virus - fortunately it will do less lasting harm but it will channel millions of pounds into the hands of the companies that are awarded the contracts to try and achieve the impossible (Deloitte has been mentioned but no doubt Serco and a bunch of Boris's mates are in on the act as well).

I agree its made Boris look like Trump and whilst incompetent and ridiculous he'd previously managed to have moments where seemed vaguely human. Are all world leaders on a trajectory to Putin and Kim Jong just telling their citizens 2+2 is 5? Orwell was right it seems just 36 years early.