Confused...Help!!!

The media seem to have got bored with lack of PPE and who did and who didn't do this and playing blame games and now are 'upping the anti' on claims lack of testing in the UK is a major cause of the rise in new cases and deaths and pointing to various promises re testing numbers made and broken.
This in spite of the fact that the same accusations are being made in many countries with large populations e.g. Italy, U.S. etc. People constantly 'trot out' the claim that evidence in the form of statistics shows that mass testing is the answer in reducing the virus spread !! Statistics have been bandied about regarding many aspects of the Pandemic -medical and financial- and the same data has often led to differing conclusions by 'experts' in their fields.
Now here is why I am confused ......

If the testing referred to is to see who is immune/has antibodies with the potential to allow them back into the wide World to go back to work etc. (not withstanding the the fact that there is increasing evidence you can still catch it or even worse still be contagious) that is one thing.
However my understanding is that the testing is to see who has and who has not contracted the virus. In any event, in the time from the swab test to the result giving an all-clear, a person could have been in contact with someone and contracted the virus. It is ike testing prostitutes in a legalised brothel, you don't know if the first 'customer' after they get an 'all clear' result has not infected them .
I therefore fail to understand how mass testing, with the inevitable natural delay between test and result can significantly reduce the spread of the virus. They could easily have come into contact with one or more carriers
Social distancing, hygiene rules and lockdown are surely more effective - Oh!and a vaccine!!. On a simple cost benefit analysis the money is far better spent on treatment, PPE etc. not to mention the numbers of medical staff and resources diverted away from treating people to carry out millions of tests.
Can anyone enlighten me as to the flaw in my logic without resorting to questionable statistics?

 

I think testing gives a truer picture of the virus and how it has spread. The govt was very silly to pluck numbers out of the air regarding how many tests they were going to do and then fall so short!

 

Surely anyone waiting for a test result, should self isolate to reduce the risk of infection at that time.

 

According to trump the answer is injecting disinfectant simples job sorted

 

But that still does not answer my point that testing is not a cure. You could still catch it after being tested (all clear) unless you simultaneously test everyone at the same time (which is obviously impossible) and everyone is tested regularly (again impossible). It is not watertight...even the smallest 'leak' could result in a rapid spread again.

 

Sunlight! .... Don't forget the "concentrated sunlight entering the body thorugh the skin" or ...ahem..." administered internally"!!. He is a total muppet!!!

 

Re-open tanning salons, that should sort things.

 

There's a business opportunity there for the first company to make a sun bed the size of a suppository.

 

50 000 deaths in USA and he's running the country and waffling on about getting sobe aun.. I feel for them.!

 

The point of the tests is to identify those who are positive, track their movements and trace those they've been in contact with. Following WHO advice and a number of countries that are already looking to coming out of the first wave. We stopped trying to trace people in early March even though an army of 750000 people volunteered to help the NHS and at least some could be involved in this.

The government were only testing those in hospital, weren't testing NHS and other front line staff who had been exposed unless symptoms were so bad they were admitted to hospital and last I heard (earlier this week) were finally offering tests for key workers - but they had to travel to the test centres, which in many cases were a 2-3 hours journey each way.

Given that Germany was testing significantly more people, earlier in the curve, they have a better idea of how many were infected and how many have since died and recovered (3.6% and 69.7% respectively) and the UK doesn't so has an official mortality rate of 13.5% and a recovery rate of 0.5%. These comparisons don't look good.

 

Problem is, we're not proposing to do that. We're (attempting) to administer more tests, but we're not going to track and trace, there has been no resources put into that, we'll just have a (slightly) larger sample of who has and hasn't got it.

 

Of course it’s not perfect - if it was perfect it’d wipe out the virus.

so let’s be sensible and accept that ‘the more data the better’ and that to back that up, most of the countries performing ‘better’ are doing more testing than those doing worse.

just because something doesn’t produce ‘perfect’ results it doesn’t mean that achieving ‘better’ results isn’t worth the effort.

we all understand that buying better players and having better tactics will improve a league position - and we’re also sensible enough to know that buying the best can’t guarantee absolute success.

 

That's a lovely bit of pre-emptive deflection and straw-clutching now it's apparent that the government has no chance of reaching its own commitments on testing. You should have gone into politics.

 

Who's had it, who's got it and who's not got it? I can't think of anything else a Government (or individual) would want to know more at this moment. Should be ramping up testing of everyone as fast as we can and then repeating as soon as possible. You can chase the virus down then, so long as you haven't got untested people coming into the country and milling around.

 

No blame game being played it’s where it should be .

 

I was looking on the site to see whether to book a test but it is currently only for those who think they have CV not if you have had it.

 

We have a friend who is a nurse at Addenbrooke's in Cambridge. Spoke to her last week.

She had just finished a bank of shifts on a Covid ward. All staff staying in a hotel when between shifts for isolation. I think it was for 10 days and she was just starting 5 days off.

All the staff had to have a test to show they didn't have Covid before being allowed to go home (she was clear).

They also had a test to see if they had had it (also clear). She said that the Hospital science department had invented the second test, that's why they had it, so one does exist. Whether they were using staff to test its accuracy I don't know but she definitely had the test.