Test and Trace cost £37bn and made no measurable difference – and its ineffectiveness was clear from the start. Lessons must be learned from such a colossal waste of resources.
PCR testing has been abused during the pandemic with high cycle thresholds routinely used to inflate the 'case' count with meaningless positives. Nonetheless, it should not be doubted that PCR detects SARS-CoV-2 RNA.
Oxford's Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson on three ways the "psychotic" Covid panic narrative was created, including the mis-use of PCR tests and the misattribution of Covid deaths.
Here we go again. It's the middle of summer and the leading opinion piece in the Guardian calls for the return of masks, mass-testing and quarantine in response to rising infections and hospitalisations.
It is unforgivable what society has inflicted on children over the past two years in the name of combating a virus from which they are not at risk – and all as the evidence piled up of how much it was harming them.
Children were subjected to all manner of unevidenced and harmful interventions during the pandemic, not least of which was frequent testing. We must now prioritise their recovery and ensure it never happens again.
Boris Johnson will address MPs about the lifting of restrictions at 4:30pm. However, there was a glitch this morning owing to a reported standoff between Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid over the end of free testing.
Free PCR and possibly also lateral flow tests will be axed within weeks as part of the PM's plan to live with Covid, though tests are likely to stay free for vulnerable people and within hospitals and high-risk settings.
The UKHSA has announced that confirmatory PCR tests will no longer be available for those who test positive on an LFT test without symptoms, raising fears of staff shortages being exacerbated by false positives.
Covid testing rules are to be relaxed as part of efforts to shorten isolation periods and ease staffing shortages. But given mass testing has clearly failed to contain the virus why continue it at all?
