Get Boosted Now & ignore the last week.

On LFTs

No test is perfect. End of. PCRs give false results as well - although less often

Without labouring the point and boring everyone with the technical details LFTs do report a proportion of false results. False negatives far more than false positives. Yes, they may be better than first thought - but they are far from perfect (otherwise they would be used for symptomatic testing and there would be no need for a confirmatory PCR (other than for sequencing for variants)). How likely they are to predict whether you are actually positive or actually negative depends on the prevalence of the disease in the population. The more there is around the more chance a positive test really means you are positive.

Worth noting that a test in itself does not prevent transmission - ever. A test may change behaviour or restrict what you can do - that's the intervention - that's what may affect transmission.

Hospitals use them with staff - because they stop someone who is likely to be infected from working - there are other mitigations in place to protect against false results, e.g. routine testing, PPE, cleaning, infection control practices, ventilation etc. This is a different scenario than using them for entry to events or nightclubs. Getting a negative result allows you to go - and you perceive that you are not a risk to anyone else - party time. A false result working as a nurse would be less likely to result in infections than a false result going to a nightclub and dancing, singing and trying to cop off with anyone.

The government advice is to get vaccinated and boostered and test before events. That's good advice at the minute. That's what I'm doing irrespective of the mandate.

 

That would be good if the vaccine made it almost impossible to transmit covid to others, but we know that not to be the case. So whilst I accept what you say about reliability to a degree, a test will always provide more reassurance than blindly assuming someone doesn't have covid or can spread it because they were double vaccinated 5-6 months ago.

 

Someone mentioned Brad Potts, so I had to post my picture

 

https://talksport.com/football/1002...n-villa-transfers-vaccine-status-coronavirus/

I bet most clubs will only look to sign players who have been jabbed in January and going forward like next summer.

 

I'm broadly in favour of some measures just not the vaccine passport. Polls can often have very leading questions so it's not always that clear on specifics.
Putting aside the issues themselves I think Labour voting with the government on policy that includes vaccine passports will do nothing to win back the votes that they lost in the election.
Personally I now won't be voting for either of the two main parties going forward.

 

Party politics shouldn't come into it.

 

Aye. Alreight, Donald..,

 

There's a faction within the tory party that looks enviously at Trump and the Republican party and Baker's one of the worst.

 

They do though, Labour are saying they aren't going to play politics with peoples lives so that they cmat be accused of doing so. I don't blame them for that, that's how politics work.
I mean fair play to Labour if they genuinely don't want to win those votes back they are doing a good job.

 

Plans D and E being thought about

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/covid-plan-d-plan-e-22451754

 

Anyone who uses "headed" for "heading" has instantly lost the arguement in my opinion.

 

So here's someone who's had all 3 jabs and caught Covid, which somehow means she feels this justify’s a policy where somebody having had their jabs (like her) means they don’t have to prove negative to enter certain events but others do?

Interesting logic, as ever.

 

I think everyone has the purpose of the vaccine passport the wrong way around. A vaccine doesn’t do lots to reduce the likelihood of someone passing Covid on, but I don’t think that’s why you need a passport to attend crowded events - it’s so that loads of people don’t get really ill after attending and overwhelm the NHS. In theory, it shouldn’t matter if vaccinated people catch Covid from attending as the vaccine means they should be fine. Isolating should mean they don’t pass it on to anyone who doesn’t have the vaccine (although this obviously won’t happen perfectly as people will spread it without knowing but then that’s what extra measures such as masks, WFH etc. are trying to help prevent).

However, the problem they’ve got is that making everyone have to have the vaccine to do things isn’t ethical. Therefore, they’ve felt obligated to do something to not exclude people who have not had the vaccine and the obvious sounding thing is to say they have to have a test. The problem is that this really, really doesn’t make sense as you’d need everyone to do a test (including vaccinated people) to keep the unvaccinated from getting ill (and overwhelming the NHS). I can only guess that they are hoping that most people will have had a vaccine and therefore the numbers of people taking tests only and catching Covid at the mass events will be a small enough number to not cause too much of a problem. They won’t say everyone has to do a test as it’s a logistical nightmare and it’s easier to protect everyone from getting seriously ill than it is to stop them catching it.

The reason BDGH requires an LFT and not a passport is because, as said above, the vaccine doesn’t massively reduce transmission and there’ll be lots of really vulnerable people in the hospital. The purpose of the test is to protect others from you, not you from them.

 

That's a really good point and I hadn't considered it from that perspective. It does make sense from that side of things I guess but the option for a test should always remain.

 

I agree with you however as you say it isn't ethical. If someone has Covid then they may not be able to provide a negative test for some time. That's why you can trust have tests alone I suppose. Which takes us back round to unethical.

 

Well done this man

 

True for PCRs not so for LFTs. They only detect active infections.

 

Really? Our work told us not to do the LFT tests if we had Covid in the last e months, not surprised theyvwoukd be confused though

 

https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1182#noes

Lots of decent MPs there. They tried

 

Labour have acted disgustingly here. They've just thrown the next election