UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced an ambitious “moonshot” plan to roll out mass population testing for COVID-19. He stated that, under the plan, the UK would process millions of tests a day, allowing those who test negative to resume their normal lives.
The programme will cost around £100 billion, equivalent to two-thirds of the annual budget of the National Health Service.
The new target is more than 12 times larger than the UK’s current testing capacity of 326,000 a day. Amid concerns over how the scale-up can be achieved in time, a senior government planner reportedly said, sarcastically: ‘Capacity is somehow solved by reducing the accuracy of the test.’ This suggests Mr Hancock may not have had the backing of civil servants.
The Health Secretary insisted it will become the ‘norm’ for the public to get tested regularly for Covid-19, allowing ministers to further ease restrictions (or ramp them up as we are starting to see with local lockdowns).
Unfortunately, mass population testing is a flawed idea in search of science to back it up.
Even the BBC previously reported that the main test used to diagnose coronavirus is so sensitive it could be picking up fragments of dead virus from old infections.
And according to Kary Mullis the award winning Inventor of the PCR Test, the test should never be used as a tool in “the diagnosis of infectious diseases.”
Most people are infectious only for about a week but could test positive weeks afterwards.
Researchers say this could be leading to an over-estimate of the current scale of the pandemic.
Professor Carl Heneghan, Director for the Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine stated instead of giving a “yes/no” result based on whether any virus is detected, tests should have a cut-off point so that very small amounts of virus do not trigger a positive result.
He believes the detection of traces of old virus could partly explain why the number of cases is rising while hospital admissions remain stable.
The flurry of information about testing and the R number creates confusion
Why the Switch From Deaths to Cases?
Time to rewind to May 2020 when The Sunday Telegraph and Sky News headlines stated:-
Virus ‘disappearing’ so fast vaccine has ‘only 50% chance of working’
“There is only a 50% chance of the Oxford coronavirus vaccine working because cases in the UK are declining so fast, one of the scientists behind it has warned.
The University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group began developing a Covid-19 vaccine in January using a virus taken from chimpanzees.
But with the number of UK cases dropping every day, there may not be enough people to test it on, according to the institute’s director Professor Adrian Hill.
He told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time. We’re in the bizarre position of wanting COVID to stay, at least for a little while.”
Analysis
We were originally told lockdowns were put in place to “flatten the curve” to protect the NHS from a surge – the Nightingale Hospitals – built at speed now lie dormant – the expected surge didn’t arrive and death rates are currently below the 5-year average.
When drastic (costly) measures are introduced they should always be based upon clear evidence and in the case of Covid-19 it is not.
In the words of the vaccine makers “we’re in the bizarre position of wanting COVID to stay, at least for a little while.”
Now factor in the casual deceit of the Government and mainstream media reporting every positive test as a “case” combined with the wearing of face masks as a constant reminder and hey presto the “vaccine industry” get their wish.
Welcome to the “New Abnormal”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54000629
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-54083725
I wrote my first article for Unity News Network on 30th December 2019, and I have been writing ever since – my library is now well in excess of 200 articles.
Alternative media is essential in these times of unprecedented censorship and mainstream bias, which has ramped up exponentially during the past 2 years. The overton window of “acceptable opinion” is growing every narrower.
Having a citizen’s log, cataloguing the twists and turns of life during these turbulent times is essential.
Thank you Unity News Network for allowing me a voice on your platform.
