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 know it's painful, and repetitive, but thank you to the posters on this thread debunking all the bullshit Covid myths!

I had Covid in August and haven't done one since then as I'm not supposed to. I probably won't go back to doing them to be honest. They were negative when I actually had Covid so I don't trust their reliability anyway. I'll test if I get symptoms but that's it.

It’ll probably stop once everyone is forced against their will to have the vaccine every six months and there’s 100% vaccine uptake.

They’ll stop in January if the Government start charging for the tests as leaked plans reveal they are considering doing.

They want to pass the cost to individuals and businesses. No word yet whether Health or Education staff who have been doing them at least twice a week every week for 20 months will have to pay as well. Schools do not have the budget to purchase the tests!

Do you have stats for “most people”. My job involves covid reporting at our works place and “most people” who have had it are double jabbed but still very ill. All age ranges. My son (age 7) was very poorly with headaches, fever and gastric distress. My husband (40) double jabbed, athletic was off work past the 10 day period. I shudder to think how he would have been if not vaxxed. I have a heart condition which means fever can cause an increased risk of arrhythmia, normal flu is not a problem. I can get it down with paracetamol. With covid, I had to have it managed in A&e such was my heart rate. It’s a genetic condition, largely asymptomatic but covid triggered it. I am 36. It’s not just a cold. It might be for some people but not everyone. Also testing reduces transmission if people stay at home and therefore prevents mutations. The ignorance on this thread is astonishing. What’s the big deal about lateral flow testing. If this is the worst thing you have to deal with in a pandemic then you are very very lucky. Hospitals are all ready rammed packed ahead of winter. I hope you or your loved ones don’t get sick or need treatment. And if you do, don’t complain about waiting times.

Stopped doing them ages ago tbh

Exactly.

My DC's school still asks for them.

I think it would be unwise to stop whilst cases are high, and ditto numbers in hospital, and when it's only the very start of the winter respiratory virus season.

Maybe spring? If both flu and covid have seasonably ebbed.

I think we'd still need some sort of testing regime though, as hospitals may still need green/red areas in order to safely tackle the backlog

They’ll stop in January if the Government start charging for the tests as leaked plans reveal they are considering doing

Link?

Because I thought that was nailed as a lie - firmly denied and no evidence whatsoever to show it had ever happened.

@HelenaJustina

They’ll stop in January if the Government start charging for the tests as leaked plans reveal they are considering doing.

They want to pass the cost to individuals and businesses. No word yet whether Health or Education staff who have been doing them at least twice a week every week for 20 months will have to pay as well. Schools do not have the budget to purchase the tests!

Yes that’ll do it. There’s no way I’ll be paying for a test.

Have never done a LFT

@Knownbyanothername

I have an issue of the “positive covid test within 28 days” . How many of those deaths were actually down to co- morbidity? If I have covid then recover, but have an unrelated stroke or heart attack or die of cancer within 28 days, my death cause is listed as covid.

I agree my sister MIL is down as a covid death, but she died od vascular dementia and only tested positive the day she died.

We need to start by recording Covid death properly.

[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]
Are 200+ people a day dying of the common cold or gastric flu?

[quote Macaroni46]@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 [/quote]
Me too. We're down to once a week now. Pcr only as lft so useless. Care work - and the amount of plastic waste is unreal. But in health care it's obviously non negotiable.
I only test because I have to. Hate doing it for all the reasons, but I love my (very necessary) job.

@UnmentionedElephantDildo charging was in the draft Winter Plan. The current plan says ‘The Government will continue to provide the public with access to free lateral flow tests in the coming months‘ (my italics) that doesn’t read to me like they will be free forever…

The next paragraph reads ‘At a later stage, as the Government’s response to the virus changes, universal free provision of LFDs will end, and individuals and businesses using the tests will bear the cost.’

I've never actually taken an LFT or a PCR. Not specifically avoiding them, just never had any symptoms (so far!).

It always surprises me when some posters on these threads appear to be so proud of never having done a LFT. Do you not realise they are first and foremost done to protect people you are in close contact with, i.e. your relatives, friends, anyone you spend time with in a professional contact and so on? I can kind of understand people might not care about strangers but would you want to unknowingly pass covid onto your dad for example if a quick test before meeting could prevent that? I'm going to meet a group of friends that includes some older people next week and we've all agreed to take a LFT that morning - it just seems like the decent thing to do and makes everyone feel a bit safer.

I agree @nordica. Doing tests is all about other people’s safety. Dh and I wouldn’t have known we had Covid if we hadn’t been doing lfts.

I hardly ever do LFTs because they are so unreliable. I do them if requested, but I also always wear a mask in public, wash my hands thoroughly and try to maintain social distancing.

Chances of getting a false positive with LFT is almost 0
Chances of getting a false negative is about 25%