Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
|
He is still being wise after the event though, and saying different things.
The fact that Mad Nads was able (though she was a health minister at the time) to shoot down his rewritten hindsight a couple of weeks back shows a lot about the transparency of his argument.
OK, so what he said there is totally true. By test and trace you can (provided you don't start when the outbreak is already out of control) minimise infections by testing people promptly and isolating them and their contacts until they are negative testing.
What he is failing to remember successfully, is that back in March 2020 when covid cases were low enough to do this, we didn't have anywhere near the testing capacity to do mass testing on the population, so only hospital admissions were being tested. For sure, we could do it now, but that is because 2 years down the line we have proper supply lines and manufacture of LFTs and PCR testing kits is scaled up to ensure that the world in general can test who they choose to.
But i'm pretty sure Johnson, Hancock etc would have setup test and trace in 2020 - in its later form - had they access.
I seem to remember even in late 2020 we didn't have testing readily available. Liverpool were trialing going into a car park or whatever and this was used to help them get from tier 3 to 2 at one stage. Notts asked for the same and didn't get it, it was hard to get a PCR test then, that only really came later on.
Not sure how you could run an effective test and trace without the testing part.