Will people be asked to do lateral flows forever? Or is there a point at which we stop?

[Motherdare]

At my child’s school, they are requested to do lateral flows regularly. Some do, some don’t. What this means is that there are regularly children off school for two weeks, with no symptoms of Covid.

Will our children be asked to do this forever? Will teachers and healthcare workers be asked to test forever?

Are we not planning to reach a point of acceptance? Ever?

I mean to be fair we are still in quite a bad place in the pandemic. I think it’s a bit of an overstatement to say it’ll be like this forever.

I’m sure we will be in a better place by summer next year.

Why does it mean that children are off school for two weeks? Do you mean that they get a positive LFT followed by a PCR? Picking up asymptomatic cases is a good thing.

I'm also wondering what the long term strategy is. Forced vaccinations for life also? I can't see how this sustainable for people who get covid or financially by the health care system.

We have really high cases tipping though schools in many parts of the country right now. We won't do it forever, but at the moment the pandemic is in a pretty bad place (in case you didn't realise). People aren't getting so ill, but there are still a heck of a lot of cases so if we can break some chains of transmission then that's a good thing.

Picking up asymptomatic cases is a good thing

Is it? If the majority of people are either asymptomatic or only mildly affected, why are we still testing? Is it to protect unvaccinated adults?

Yes there has been talk of stopping testing. I thought I'd heard it related to the autumn but obviously not, but for sure there's been talk regarding the ongoing strategy and that testing will cease at some point in the future

Think of all the plastic waste you're generating. I stopped doing these tests about a week after I started them.

@Motherdare “unvaccinated adults” meaning people who have chosen not to get the vaccine; or those who can’t, or those who have but need to be careful anyway? Pregnant people? People who have conditions that mean the vaccines don’t last? Older people?

For some people, it causes minor inconvenience. For others, it doesn’t. For unborn babies, it seems to have the potential to be bad, even if the mother is vaccinated…

And as someone else said; we’re still at an pretty bad point in the pandemic. I don’t think it’ll be a “forever” thing, but it does still seem necessary now.

@Hotcuppatea

Think of all the plastic waste you're generating. I stopped doing these tests about a week after I started them.

Think how much plastic waste each person who goes into hospital with Covid generates.

I agree with you @Motherdare. Sick of all this testing now. Its disruptive and pointless. Covid is here to stay. Time we learn to live with it.

I will be very happy when the LFT expectation stops.

@Macaroni46

I agree with you *@Motherdare*. Sick of all this testing now. Its disruptive and pointless. Covid is here to stay. Time we learn to live with it.

Why does “learning to live with it” almost always seem to mean “pretend Covid doesn’t exist any more”?

Fed up of doing them. Have to do them twice a week and then record the results online with organisation, really getting to the cba but now.

Is it an expectation though? Yes the government go on about how we "should" all be testing, but that's not a requirement. They tell us we "should" be eating 5 a day, getting regular exercise, keep our alcohol intake under 14 units a week and plenty of us ignore that.

Nobody checks whether or not my kids are doing LFTs before going into school. Nobody's checking which kids are picking up kits weekly in the school hall. It's completely pointless.

PCR if you have symptoms is all that's needed, and there'll come a point when even that stops being required.

Half our school was off with it last week, we have pregnant women and people who are vulnerable in the mix too. Even the double vaccinated are quite unwell and needing a fair bit of time off to recover it’s absolutely flooring people. Still hearing loads of stories of negative LFTs but positive PCR .

@Hotcuppatea

Think of all the plastic waste you're generating. I stopped doing these tests about a week after I started them.

I saw a very good piece about you would use far more disposable plastic in hospital with covid than if someone had checked and found out they had covid and not gone out and about and passed it onto you.

Are we all supposed to be doing LFTs?

I predict that once we get to spring we will have moved to testing only if you are actually unwell. Fingers crossed anyway!

@MLMshouldbeillegal it is a requirement at my job. We have to record results twice weekly on two websites, one for the government and one for the organisation. If you miss one, you get pulled up on it

@PurpleDaisies 'learning to live with it' doesn't mean pretending it doesn't exist. It means accepting that it exists and will continue to do so, just as flu, the common cold, gastric flu etc exist. We cannot continue to (try to) mitigate forever. We have to accept that Covid is now an illness that people catch sometimes.

It's one of the very few requests left. Lateral flow twice a week and get PCR test if positive
Hardly a big deal
Picked up the covid case in our house hopefully before spreading and thankfully before seeing grandparents

[quote Macaroni46]@PurpleDaisies 'learning to live with it' doesn't mean pretending it doesn't exist. It means accepting that it exists and will continue to do so, just as flu, the common cold, gastric flu etc exist. We cannot continue to (try to) mitigate forever. We have to accept that Covid is now an illness that people catch sometimes. [/quote]

Perhaps when the double vaccination rates have risen across the globe and Covid stops killing (and disabling) quite so many?

Last week over 1000 people died of Covid. It is disingenuous to talk about people who have Covid as having a bit of a sniffle. Ok, you or your kids may be asymptomatic or may not suffer from too many bad symptoms, but imagine if one of those thousand people who died just last week was one of your loved ones. Imagine if your child ends up with Long Covid.

Given the shoddy behaviour of our Government around this, the very least we can do is do lateral flow tests a couple of times a week, or more if your school/ workplace requests it. It's just being considerate to other people and takes five minutes of your time, if that.

@Motherdare

Picking up asymptomatic cases is a good thing

Is it? If the majority of people are either asymptomatic or only mildly affected, why are we still testing? Is it to protect unvaccinated adults?

I’m a double vaccinated adult Who got extremely ill after child brought it home. Still very breathless exhausted, insomnia, aches, sickness, gastric trouble etc and recovering two months later. Dh still recovering to a lesser degree but still severely fatigued too. One child also still fatigued

So no I don’t think it’s to protect the unvaccinated.

@Motherdare

Picking up asymptomatic cases is a good thing

Is it? If the majority of people are either asymptomatic or only mildly affected, why are we still testing? Is it to protect unvaccinated adults?

Covid cases are still rife and people are still being hospitalised and getting seriously ill. Just because it has been a while doesn't mean we are over the hurdle of risk of transmission growth yet (mainly due to negligent decisions of the government and people being complacent) the testing needs to remain until we are at that point which we will eventually be.