If you’re in Liverpool, why on earth would you get tested?

[guitarstringseadgbe]

I just don’t understand why healthy people would get tested and encourage more lockdowns?

Anyone in Liverpool? What are people’s thoughts on this mass testing?

@torquewench

Yes, *@becomestronger* - I was in a queue earlier today. For about 30 minutes. It was well managed and socially distanced, everyone wearing masks, some (mostly elderly) people prepared for a wait with camping chairs. No problems at all unless people turned up not expecting a queue on the first day of mass testing, and I didnt hear any complaints about having to queue.

I've just seen footage on the news. One of the centres seemed to have very well spaced queues, the other didn't, at all.

I personally would not get tested, but if they were offering antibody tests I would just out of interest really.

@Nannewnannew

I’m concerned about whether the way the tests are done are effective. 2 people have told me that pre hospital Covid tests were very painful as the swabs went right to the back of their throat and very high up in their nose. When watching tv news last evening a man was doing a test on himself with somebody watching and he was literally swabbing the inside of his cheeks, like they do with DNA tests. Are there 2 different tests or is the self test ineffective if not performed properly? I would be interested to hear from any testers.

They are doind 2 differrnt types of test. I've had the traditional test and it was not painful. They do not stick it up to the back of your nose either as it's not necessary to get the sample.

@Maldivesdream
I think what would shed more light would be for a person to have a Covid test and an antibody test at the SAME time!!
It would prove weather the Covid test is reliable and it would show weather the antibody test is accurate.

Apart from the obvious illogicality that you can’t use two partially unreliable tests to prove that one is reliable, I read that it can take from a few days up to three weeks after infection to produce antibodies - so doing the tests at the same time wouldn’t prove anything.

My understanding from the news was that people testing positive with the cheek test would be retested using the swab test to confirm.

How does this make sense? Surely the cheek test is more likely to be negative than the throat/nose swab, so positives might be missed rather than over-diagnosed?

@MrsFezziwig I agree the tests are unreliable. That’s the only thing available if they can rule out that the tests are not showing the results correctly perhaps they will look into something else. It was just a suggestion and I think it makes sense to do them both at the same time.

I know what your saying but unfortunately they are using the tests still that was my whole point! Or should we not test anybody because they aren’t always accurate?

I suppose not everyone thinks like you OP. My mum would get tested everyday if she could. She's absolutely terrified of getting it (victim of the media!!!) and that reassurance would do her so much good. I know that's not what the intention of the tests are, but that's why she would get tested and I'm sure many more are the same.

@TheHoneyBadger

There is money for isolating people and a benefits system. If people are on low incomes they are likely already getting universal credit and it would reflect the lost income as well.

There isn't an excuse and teachers, nhs workers, supermarket staff etc shouldn't be being put at risk because people won't get tested.

The payments for those self isolating is only for those on means tested benefits. Even if you do get the £500, it's worth noting that it's noticeably less than minimum wage (£610.40 for 35 hrs pw). The discretionary payments don't exist outside England, and where they do and the criteria are published, the criteria are very narrow.

Many people on low incomes aren't eligible for benefits - for instance, someone who works full time on minimum wage, but who doesn't have kids, is deemed to earn too much for UC.

There's a built in 5 week wait for UC, so it simply won't kick in for two weeks of self isolation.

The result is that you get people in my situation - I'm self employed, so there's no such thing as sick pay, and I won't earn a penny if I self isolate. My income has been clobbered by lockdown, but I'm one of the 2.9 million people who have fallen through all the cracks of government support (see the #ExcludedUK campaign if you want to know more). I'm not eligible for any means tested benefits, so I wouldn't get the £500 payment.

So, the brutal reality is that I can't afford to self isolate, because it would mean losing two weeks of income in a year when I've already lost a five-figure sum in income, been totally abandoned by government, and have no idea when I might be allowed to work properly again - I work across several sectors, one of which is weddings.

No fucking way would I be queuing up for a test if I lived in Liverpool.

@november90

I suppose not everyone thinks like you OP. My mum would get tested everyday if she could. She's absolutely terrified of getting it (victim of the media!!!) and that reassurance would do her so much good. I know that's not what the intention of the tests are, but that's why she would get tested and I'm sure many more are the same.

Weather you get tested or not your likely to get it at some point anyway. How does your mum know she hasn’t had it already but she could have had no symptoms.

What a way to live.

It's not the amount of 'tests' that are causing lockdowns! As a PP said, it's the amount of positive cases. People can say, they're testing more so the amount of positive cases is going up, yes, but the ratio of positive tests to tests carried out is also going up. You have to remember that cases were massively undiagnosed at the start of the pandemic, so the numbers for then are far lower. They didn't have the testing capacity then, they were only testing very sick people in hospital and staff. I think we had it around then but we'll never know because we couldn't get a test. The government advisors even stated that they were abandoning testing because it was 'out there spreading' now. Big mistake I feel.
Many people are asymptomatic so it spreads around the population until more vulnerable people are affected and then the hospitals start filling up. As is the case in Liverpool! You can't fight a pandemic if you don't know where it 'is'. Which is why we've had to have lockdowns, that everyone moans about! They are more of a blunt instrument, last resort measure, to curb transmission rates because it's got out of control and they don't have a handle on where the outbreaks are. In some places, in other countries, they managed, through mass testing, to narrow an outbreak down to an area, block or street. And have very localised lockdowns, so the whole community and economy isn't affected.
I'm not sure I'm buying this 'false positive/unreliable' testing argument, because in countries where they actually have a grip on it, like Taiwan and NZ, they've gone days, weeks, even months without. A. Single. Case. They quarantine all travellers and test and isolate every single case that does arise. Unless our tests are different and more unreliable than whatever they use. Which I wouldn't put past this government, to have messed up on the reliability of our tests. But I haven't heard that that's been a problem. What's been the problem in this country, is lack of awareness, messaging and testing in the early stages which enabled widespread community transmission. They lockdown so the R rate goes down, but then when they start easing up, the R goes up because it's still out there. Test results are useless aswell if you don't get the results back quickly. People need testing frequently and more than once so they know when they're over it and can go back to normal life.

Another good reason not to get tested is that it might discourage the government from literally throwing all our cash at private companies to carry out unproven testing. We need to improve the NHS to save lives now and in the future and pay sick pay to people to stay at home when they are ill.

The test they are using in Liverpool hasn't even been evaluated on those without symptoms. We are wasting so much money.

twitter.com/DrMQureshi/status/1324857889161433090?s=20

Also I can't find any evidence the asymptomatic carriers transmit covid (as opposed to pre symptomatic carriers) so maybe we need more research before spending all this money.

Slovakia has already made testing in effect compulsory. I keep reading a lot of things that make me think we are moving towards system of covid passports dependent on compulsory vaccination and rapid test results.

I'm not a Libertarian conspiracy theorist. Some govts will struggle to implement these ideas is main reason they can't work. But these control plans are going to get a lot of sincere promotion. Mark my words.

@GrapefruitsAreNotTheOnlyFruit Dr John Campbell has covered this in a few of his videos. There's quite a lot of evidence and studies about asymptomatic transmission. In the comments of this video, he lists evidence of individual studies carried out that you can go and read for yourself. He also talks through the studies.

Pp mentioned our scheme in Birmingham where tests have been handed out door to door

Some people were given tests that had already been used/opened

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/health-chief-apologises-selly-oak-19101382

Could this give people a false sense of security?

Example, get a test on Friday and comes back clear Friday afternoon. Spend the weekend mixing with family and friends because toungot the all clear.

I see OP's kind of thinking on Youtube. It looks less out of place on there alongside anti-vaxer and "covid was faked" claims.

@annabel85

Could this give people a false sense of security?

Example, get a test on Friday and comes back clear Friday afternoon. Spend the weekend mixing with family and friends because toungot the all clear.

Liverpool is still under the English restrictions, if they do that they will be breaking those - the testing is in addition to not instead of those restrictions.

[quote AlphaJura]@GrapefruitsAreNotTheOnlyFruit Dr John Campbell has covered this in a few of his videos. There's quite a lot of evidence and studies about asymptomatic transmission. In the comments of this video, he lists evidence of individual studies carried out that you can go and read for yourself. He also talks through the studies.

[/quote] Thank you. I just listened to the whole thing whilst eating my breakfast!

He doesn't provide much / any evidence or really make any conclusions about whether asymptomatic infections are spreading the illness to other people. One study suggests asymptomatic patients still have a high viral load another suggests symptomatic patients are more likely to spread it. No one quoted in that video seems really to have researched whether asymptomatic patients are actually spreading it to others and how frequently they do so.

Most of the video is looking at how many people can be asymptomatic but still get a positive test about which there isn't much consensus. He estimates 30 to 40 % but says there needs to be more research. I actually have no idea how in the absence of any symptoms you even know that this isn't a false positive result.

I think there is a lot of evidence that pre symptomatic patients can be infectious in the days before developing symptoms. That's why track and trace needs to look at who you have been in contact with for the previous few days.

I think we are wasting a lot of money here on a very shaky evidence base that asymptomatic cases are an important part of transmission.

There is evidence for asymptomatic transmission if you look for it, especially from children who may not have the conventional symptoms, but there have been asymptomatic superspreaders.

There is a lot more evidence for presymptomatic transmission and the people in Liverpool without symptoms currently cant know if they are presymptomatic.

Essentially more people are community minded than mumsnet would have you believe because mumsnet is over-run by bored students and spadbots. We even had a russian spadbot outed on one thread, mumsnet had to close another thread I commented on for sock puppetry.

I just went to the website of the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based medicine which was quoted in the video. I can find nothing about asymptomatic spread.

I found the below www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/

But it seems to be looking at how accurately testing predicts infectiousness in the case of those with symptoms.

Please note I am not trying to say that it's impossible at all that asymptomatic spread is important in transmission. I don't know. I just think we should be doing more research before spending £££££ on mass testing of asymptomatic cases.

@alreadyTaken I think lots of children are not asymptomatic at all but we have the wrong symptom list for children and we ought to change it.

Ps I am not a bored student or a Russian bot and I care about the community. I am just worried we are going to spend a lot of money on things that aren't going to work very well when it could better be deployed else where.

Essentially more people are community minded than mumsnet would have you believe because mumsnet is over-run by bored students and spadbots. We even had a russian spadbot outed on one thread, mumsnet had to close another thread I commented on for sock puppetry

I think you're right.

MN has been a very good indicator of the opposite of the results in national polls, and I have taken to thinking that the prevailing view here is usually non-representative

@guitarstringseadgbe er.. Because it's the right thing to do? Honestly I dont understand people who only think of themselves and not the greater good. Lockdown isn't a game or something to try to get round or avoided, it's a strategy to bring infections under controls. Mad testing is one way to do this. Avoiding testing will mean that covid is still circulating and might lead to a further lockdown if this lockdown is released too early.