Strictly speaking that’s not incorrect. Wearing the face mask reduces the chance of transmissibility. The chance of catching it, not so much.
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It’s two separate issues.
I disagree with testing school kids, especially the way it has been implemented.
It’s just a crap shortcut that is unlikely to make the school environment safer for anyone.
My wife, who is younger than me and not ill, has just been invited for her vaccination. Not sure why she’s group 6, but we’re not complaining.
I called the GP and apparently I’ve been demoted to group 9, despite clearly fitting into the requirements for group 6 and they confirmed to me a couple of weeks ago that I was group 6. Ho hum.
My wife is volunteering to help do the testing at the kid’s school. It seems pretty well orgainised. I’m less impressed with the use of LF tests though as this report in the BMJ argues:
The quality and processing of the specimen are determined to a large extent by who carries out the tests. Public Health England’s evaluation of the Innova test showed that its sensitivity was 79.2% when used by trained laboratory scientists, 73% when used by trained healthcare staff, but only 57.5% when used by track and trace centre staff employed by the pharmacy chain Boots
I honestly can’t see how the two-three week period of testing proposed will actually make things safer if the accuracy of the test is only 7.5% better than tossing a coin with volunteer staff.
Having said this, the opportunity for the kids to go back to school is really important. My eldest is really struggling this week, so getting back to studying for the A-Level replacement assessments with her peer group rather than at home may be a big help.
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Are you not having chemotherapy? That outcome just seems like a mistake to me.
Not on chemo, but I am on steroids.
You might also think that the latter that my consultant sent last year saying I was vulnerable might be a hint.
No it’s not
Another phone call to the GP would be my reaction at the minimum given the letter from your consultant, particularly with kids going back to school…
Good luck with it.
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Done, and email sent.
I’ll be changing GP as well. They’re fucking useless.
I think tossing a coin can give false positives. Isn’t that supposed to be a lot less of a problem with LF ?
When it was first rolled out for the mass tests on the street they were arguing that even getting half the otherwise untested cases would be worth doing. So if they can manage that in the schools then they will be ‘safer’. But I agree it’s never going to make schools ‘safe’.
FWIW I’ve done a few lateral flow tests on myself and I’m convinced that having anyone else at all do it would be a lot better, not least because they wouldn’t be trying to steer a swab onto my tonsils while simultaneously distracted by eye-watering gagging.
VB
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If the accuracy of the LFT were 50% it would give a similar average false positive rate to tossing a coint. The point is that the efficacy of the test appears to depend materially on how the test is administered, unlike tossing the coin.
About 10 days ago Gill thought she’d potentially been exposed to someone who subsequently tested positive. She’s met him in a car park to discuss some work and they talked to one another from their car windows. A friend of ours (former nurse) has been administering LF tests at the local school and had some she could bring round. Her advice, and it made it much easier, was to do it facing a mirror if you could. That way you can clearly see where you are putting the swab (next to & behind each tonsil) and then up the nose. You also need to avoid dragging it through any saliva but having the mirror to look at was the key. It wouldn’t have been so easy without.
The swab then goes in a small bottle of liquid & then the liquid is put into a plastic slide and gradually moves along presumably by capillary action. Where a line appears across the slide determines positive or negative (we were both negative) but it seemed a good system provided the swab was put where it needed to get to.
I’m sure kids could easily be shown how to do it but certainly it’d be better if they had a mirror in front of them when they did.
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Oh, OK. I thought the sensitivity was only around 75% at best, but the false positive rate was a smallish fraction of a percent
VB
I did link to a BMJ article and quote from it. I didn’t mention false positives as the consequence there is simply unnecessary isolation. I am rather more bothered about false negatives with their potential for further infections which is why the accuracy of the test depending on it’s application was mentioned. Obviously I wasn’t clear enough; apologies.
I’ve been self swabbing twice a week to go on to campus.
Hmmmm 
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I completely agree on that and I think it would have been far less stressful for a lot of children and families if they hadn’t had to deal with testing beforehand. I just see testing as another unfortunate consequence of a bizarre and poorly thought out vaccination roll out.
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Yes. I’ve done it with a mirror, and a light shining into the mouth too. I think you’d stand very little chance of finding the right part of the throat, and only the right part, without a mirror. But the effectiveness falls more and more as the person doing the swabbing becomes less and less expert, and I think you’ve hit on the reason why.
VB
We have kids at primary and secondary.
Primary: you can go pick up some lateral flow tests if you want, test yourselves whenever you like and basically take personal responsibility.
Secondary: yeah we’re teaching the kids that deep throating isn’t much fun. Especially useful to help manage the boys’ expectations in later life.
Makes sense to me.
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56 plus now booking on the Webby. Quickest I could get was Blackpool, about seventy miles away. Also booked the second shot, closer to home for that one.