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?

Our school requires lfts twice a week plus masks on in classrooms. The dcs have got used to it, and the school is covid free.

I guess we'll keep going until covid is less prevalent. I don't see the issue except all the waste plastic.

There’s been talk that regular testing will stop in spring. Hopefully this will happen!

I think some people have become so conditioned into talking tests now that they will find it difficult to stop.

@Timescale

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.

I think that's pretty much what was said last autumn as well.

We need to stop testing now unless you are being admitted to hospital, either sick or well. For most people the illness is no worse than a severe cold. It’s not going away. It’s here to stay.
Most people I know aren’t doing lateral flows, even those with children. It’s advisory not compulsory.
We need to stop living in fear now.

@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?

Wow, this is astonishingly ignorant.

Where have you been for the last 18 months?

Honestly, this thread must be a joke because this is so foolish.

@Knownbyanothername

We need to stop testing now unless you are being admitted to hospital, either sick or well. For most people the illness is no worse than a severe cold. It’s not going away. It’s here to stay. Most people I know aren’t doing lateral flows, even those with children. It’s advisory not compulsory. We need to stop living in fear now.

The only thing I'm living in fear of is what happens if this sort of madcap thinking catches on.

We have 9000 hospital beds occupied with covid patients currently, surgery cancelled, A&E pressures are so bad people are dying of heart attacks in ambulances.

Please tell me how the country looks when you take away any attempt to limit spread? Explain what happens to a car crash victim who needs ICU when all the beds are full.

Honestly, this view is worthy of a Darwin Award.

Why is it foolish? What we are doing now isn’t stopping the transmission of this virus so why are we continuing with testing?

@ChalfontPark

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.

If people aren't getting ill, why are we in such a bad place?

@Knownbyanothername

Why is it foolish? What we are doing now isn’t stopping the transmission of this virus so why are we continuing with testing?

Do you understand the mathematical concepts of 'less' and 'more'?

Do you think A&E waits of 12 hours are ok?
Do you think having elective surgeries cancelled is ok?
Do you think asymptomatic children visiting immunocompromised elderly relatives is a good idea?

I used 'foolish' but really I meant stupid.

Wish covid deniers and COVID minimizers would fuck off.

Don’t you see that most people are not living in fear of it now? They are just trying to get on with life.
The NHS was on its knees anyway, this is possibly the straw that breaks the camel’s back but it’s not the main cause. Covid is just highlighting the major failure of it.
People are fed up of being told to be afraid

@Knownbyanothername

Don’t you see that most people are not living in fear of it now? They are just trying to get on with life. The NHS was on its knees anyway, this is possibly the straw that breaks the camel’s back but it’s not the main cause. Covid is just highlighting the major failure of it. People are fed up of being told to be afraid

for the 'living in fear' bullshit line.

People are fed up of being told to be afraid should read stupid people are fed up of dealing with a complicated problem

After about 20 months, you ask if we will have to do them ‘forever’.

We certainly have to do them at times like now when there is a significant wave of cases, hospital admissions and deaths.

The progress we have made in 12 months is phenomenal. And now two significant antivirals have been rolled out.

I would guess that, by summer, tests won’t be necessary any more. But, if you call taking a couple of swabs twice a week ‘living in fear’, I would far rather live in fear than ignorance.

I’m not a covid denier. I’m fed up of the mixed messages we’re being fed. It’s fully acceptable to dance around in a night club shouting and sweating with no distancing, yet in other circumstances it’s full mask and keep apart. Can you not see the issue most people gave with that?
By the time you do your testing with you LFT which misses a big percentage of positive cases anyway, the transmission has already occurred. It’s pointless.

@Knownbyanothername

I’m not a covid denier. I’m fed up of the mixed messages we’re being fed. It’s fully acceptable to dance around in a night club shouting and sweating with no distancing, yet in other circumstances it’s full mask and keep apart. Can you not see the issue most people gave with that? By the time you do your testing with you LFT which misses a big percentage of positive cases anyway, the transmission has already occurred. It’s pointless.

If you're not a covid denier/minimiser, stop using the 'living in fear' attack.

It is not pointless to take asymptomatic cases out of circulation - especially stopping kids visiting vulnerable grandparents.

I think the UK should be doing more to control covid, but it makes zero sense to me to say you want to stop doing what you can to protect your own contacts/family because other people are in nightclubs.

And since it’s a corona virus, it’s probably going to mutate again soon , and mutate again, and again and again. How will you deal with that?

@Knownbyanothername

And since it’s a corona virus, it’s probably going to mutate again soon , and mutate again, and again and again. How will you deal with that?

Everyone knows it will mutate, yes.

We will have to see what the mutations are to know how to deal with them. At a guess I would say we will deal with them through:

• vaccines
• drugs
• non-pharmaceutical interventions

As we are now.

@Knownbyanothername,

‘And since it’s a corona virus, it’s probably going to mutate again soon , and mutate again, and again and again. How will you deal with that?’

I am sorry but this is a totally ignorant comment.

Most virologists think the delta strain is about the limit for successful mutation of Corona. It is not like Influenza in that it can swap genes with other Corona viruses, and it is probably as well adapted to us as it can get.

Of course, there will be genomic drift, and we can counter this with adapting vaccines.

The tale of despair that those who tell others that we are ‘living in fear’ like to tell is far from the truth, where we are slowly but surely beating Covid-19 using Science and knowledge.

In a couple of years (tops), I suspect we won’t be thinking about Corona much, in the present tense.

Rrhuth I'm so with you. Sick to my back teeth of the 'we have to live with it, it's just a cold, no more living in fear' troup. They are ignorant and stupid and have zero idea of the reality inside hospitals and the personal tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people who have lost loved ones or have been disabled by this disease. In any case 'learning to live with it' means living our lives a little altered and with some measures in place. If what you actually mean is 'live and ignore it' then just say that. Stupid.

@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?

Not all vaccinated people develop a full immune response to the vaccine. Fine if it’s not your loved one I guess.

And I’m fully for that. Fully for vaccination, fully for them continuing to develop vaccines. We are all vaccinated in our house
I do think however we should now be getting on with life safe in the knowledge that the vaccine is working.
The reason we have so many cases in the uk is that we are testing about 10x more than other countries. If you look at the figures, the ratio of positive tests:tests carried out is comparable to other countries who are testing less often.
We need to stop with the obsessive testing. It’s not stopping the transmission.
Asymptomatic cases are not a bad thing. It’s a sign that the vaccine , and our immune systems are working properly.

Many thousands die of flu every year despite a national vaccine programme. It’s become an acceptable risk. It doesn’t stop people going about their daily business. Those with elderly relatives will take more care around them.
Surely this is how we should be starting to view covid?

@Knownbyanothername

And I’m fully for that. Fully for vaccination, fully for them continuing to develop vaccines. We are all vaccinated in our house I do think however we should now be getting on with life safe in the knowledge that the vaccine is working. The reason we have so many cases in the uk is that we are testing about 10x more than other countries. If you look at the figures, the ratio of positive tests:tests carried out is comparable to other countries who are testing less often. We need to stop with the obsessive testing. It’s not stopping the transmission. Asymptomatic cases are not a bad thing. It’s a sign that the vaccine , and our immune systems are working properly.

There is so much that is false/wrong in this post. It is covid denial.

Just for starters though, if you 'think' UK cases are so high only because we test '10x' more, what is your explanation for our correspondingly high hospitalisations and deaths??

Covid is not flu. I thought we'd established that, ooh, in Jan 2020?