What would happen if they stopped testing?

[LucyGrey]

Imagine no more PCR or lateral flow tests. What do you think would happen if they were stopped tomorrow?

Disclaimer:
Only asking out of curiosity.

Not a popular concept then!

How far are you taking it? I can't see PCR tests ever being completely got rid of as if you are admitted to hospital with respiratory problems they are going to want to know what's wrong so they can provide the best treatment...

So assuming you just mean in the community. They'd be an uptick in hospital admissions with COVID as it spreads faster around the population. Then once enough people are immune the numbers would go down.

'They' will stop widescale testing soon, I suspect in the spring. The emphasis will probably turn to not going into work if you have a cough or a cold, possibly limited mask wearing eg when visiting a carehome, perhaps offering boosters every year to the vulnerable. Similar to how flu is handled at the moment.

It should all be scrapped. Absolutely bonkers.
Vast majority of kids have a mild or very mild illness. Most adults double jabbed and vast majority of those have a mild illness not dissimilar to a cold.
Vast majority of unvaccinated are younger so will also have a mild illness.
Main disruption now is from testing and isolating.

To stop as we head into what maybe the worst ever winter ever due to the fears of resp illness and flu exploding, no petrol shortages on shelves... People already waiting hours to get through to 111 and ambulances taking hours I'd say.. To remove testing right now would be a crime agaisnt the UK.

I disagree. Testing tells us about something that is fundamentally no longer very useful.

If hospitalisations start to climb sky high again, then time to rethink. But for now, time to get a bit of confidence back. Keep calm, don’t be stupid, but essentially just carry on as per the old normal.

We just might have a whisper of a chance that this madness will end.

@TinaYouFatLard

We just might have a whisper of a chance that this madness will end.

The pandemic won't end just because people pretend it's not happening.

What do you think would happen if they were stopped tomorrow?

No more testing would mean no idea on what was happening with case numbers, the mutation rate, or emergence of new variants. This would be problematic as:

• infectious people would have no idea they were infectious, and could therefore enter places like care homes/hospitals/GP surgeries without realising
• we'd have no idea about where we were in terms of peaking
• no ability to plan accordingly in terms of healthcare provision
• no chance to put in suppression measures before the situation escalated to a disaster medicine type scenario (hopefully unlikely)

-no idea about how well the vaccines were faring through winter

• no ability to advise and change policies for those at risk (i.e., shielding/mitigations) if cases got extremely high.
• no idea if we'd generated a new variant of concern, and therefore taking away the chance of other countries to minimise the risk of it entering their population.

Then people would go out and about with covid as you generally only stay home when ill , so little cough you carryon pre covid
You have a cold you carry on maybe a day or so off if feeling rough
You wouldn't know what virus you have is it a cold , flu, covid etc

Basically lots of people will die.

Testing is an important way of keeping an eye on what variants are here.

I think it would be madness to cease that before we are through this winter.

But perhaps at some point it could become more like sentinel testing - because yes, we do test for flu, to establish prevalence and which strains. What level of testing, and what is then done with the information collected, will vary by prevalence and how well the NHS is holding up

@Silverswirl

It should all be scrapped. Absolutely bonkers. Vast majority of kids have a mild or very mild illness. Most adults double jabbed and vast majority of those have a mild illness not dissimilar to a cold. Vast majority of unvaccinated are younger so will also have a mild illness. Main disruption now is from testing and isolating.

I completely agree

@ImNotDancing

Basically lots of people will die.

Lots? What % of our population do you think?

@ImNotDancing

Basically lots of people will die.

Doubtful, given the rates of vaccination.

Most adults double jabbed and vast majority of those have a mild illness not dissimilar to a cold.
Is this some kind of joke?

There would be a lot of 'heart attacks', 'strokes', 'pneumonia', 'sepsis', and 'flu' deaths.

And in about 20 years time, there would (in fact, will, regardless of testing or not) be a scandal akin to the contaminated blood transfusions issue. People suffering from Long Covid organ damage, Covid triggered diabetes, and other issues.

Back to the present, hospitals will have to cancel even more operations and more staff will be off sick and/or leave due to burn out or PTSD.

In fact, do we even know if the tests we're using are still accurately picking up current strains of Covid infections?

We apparently have an 'unexplained' high excess death rate at the moment. Then there's the 'worst ever cold'...

I work with several double jabbed people who would currently disagree with Covid being just like a mild cold, they are very poorly, admittedly not hospitalised but far more ill than a 'mild cold'. Some have Covid for the second time since being jabbed.

Tbh I think this is happening quite a bit actually already. Ive spoken to two colleagues who have ‘really bad colds’ including a cough who say they don’t need to be tested because it doesn’t feel like covid. Whatever the heck that means. So I suspect there’s quite a lot of people wandering around with a ‘cold’ untested.

@LucyGrey

Imagine no more PCR or lateral flow tests. What do you think would happen if they were stopped tomorrow?

Disclaimer:
Only asking out of curiosity.

Not much I would imagine.

Lots of people aren't ever doing lateral flows anyway. We aren't, waste of plastic and waste of money if you ask me.

We're getting to the stage of Covid as something everyone is panicking about and terrified of as just one of those other illnesses that you consider in the same way as you consider dozens of other conditions.

Well, back in March, April 2020, testing was only for those unwell enough to require hospital admission. Although there was still relatively low levels of the virus in the community, it spread and worsened.

The more the virus is left to spread, unchecked, the more likelihood there is of mutation, as far as I understand. There is a chance that a mutation will arise that evades current vaccines.

@raspberryrippleicecream

I work with several double jabbed people who would currently disagree with Covid being just like a mild cold, they are very poorly, admittedly not hospitalised but far more ill than a 'mild cold'. Some have Covid for the second time since being jabbed.

Yeah, but come on — there are lots of bad illnesses out there.

So we run this regime next time a bad flu goes around?

Actually it’s not a dumb idea. Bears thinking about for sure.

But the days of COVID being a national emergency are behind us: just keep calm, and carry on as normal.

I'm glad that we seemed to have turned a corner. We need to stop all the mass testing imho.

I can only assume that what is happening now would happen on a much larger scale.
I know some parents who refuse to test their children, and some which do it sporadically.
In our town, our children have been back at school for 3 weeks, first week we had a small jump in cases in the town, second slightly bigger jump. 3rd week we have about 200 cases more in a 7 day period than we did 3 weeks ago. This is with over 90,000 tests being completed in our town within a week. If those tests weren't being completed, we wouldn't know, no one would self isolate, and it would spread like wildfire. Its spreading now, but some people having the knowledge they have it is meaning they're isolating and not continuing to be around the wider community.

My concern is keeping the level of normality where it is and trying to move forward to look forward to other things we haven't enjoyed. I think testing is an integral part of that.

If there wasn't a focus on testing, I can only imagine how many people with less severe symptoms would write it off, how many employers would lose understanding of their employees? I bet there would be a few saying, you don't know its covid, it's probably just a cold. You have to come in.

Before we know it, it would be essential masks, lockdowns, school closures and no chance of foreign travel on the horizon again.

I personally don't mind wearing a mask, I find it helps me feel safer, but I certainly don't want to see these restrictions imposed on people who don't want them. Surely testing is a decent compromise?

It’s an interesting point, sunshinealigaror, that testing is a happy compromise.

It makes me realise that it’s not testing that I object to. (Data is good, right?) But rather the imposition of isolation following it.

I don’t know if you could really keep testing up if you didn’t need to isolate following a positive result? I guess that is what the ONS is for…

To end testing now would be the right thing to do in my mind.

I get your point about it keeping it in check, in order to keep restrictions away. But that presumes people are still routinely testing. And while I know some are, I also know a huge cohort that will shun any kind of test, precisely because a minor illness could be transformed for them into something that is hugely inconvenient. I doubt what testing remains is sufficient to prevent any kind of escape.

To turn that around, and change attributes on testing back to what they were, we really do need a large increase in hospitalisation or massive increase in cases. if that doesn’t happen, people as basically happy to let covid pass now.