Tuesday 31 March 2020

The solution is SO obvious: test everyone!!

Pretty well everyone with any knowledge has been saying it, so I might as well add my non-scientific voice: why isn't EVERYONE being tested? Then those with the right antibodies to be immune from coronavirus can go back to work, and those who don't can be told to continue self-isolating. Two strict divisions in society. It might of course lead to a strange imbalance in the way the country works: ie some restaurants able to open for business and not others, some schools returning to normal teaching, others not. But somehow this country has to get back to normal but in stages and the only way to do that is to test test test. It is beyond me that this was not the policy from the very beginning, especially when other countries, notably South Korea and Germany, did just that and proved it was the right course to take. Every day the UK government says more testing will take place although the focus understandably is on health workers. But it seems the UK can't lay its hands on enough testing kit. Again, why the hell not? Like in the Second World War when factories sprouted everywhere to keep the munitions production lines working 24 hours a day, there should be companies in every county designing and producing test equipment with government money backing them. Everyone in this country should get a chance to know if they are positive, negative or imumune. By everyone of course I mean those who have a job to go back to or who can be trained to fulfill a useful purpose to get this country back on its feet soon. When this is all over, the biggest question will be: did the government do enough and early enough to save the country from financial ruin and to help the NHS to survive under such immense pressures? I don't know what the annswer is right now, other than to observe that it seeems to have taken the powers-that-be an inordinately long time to get round to the realisation that testing is the answer. There are fewer deaths in Germany. Why? Because of mass testng. South Korea is now over the worst. Why? Because of mass testing. It's the way forward for every country. Then we can all start to dismisss any notion that the virus is going to go on destroying every nation on the planet for another six months or so. The whole world needs a huge injection of positive news, not positive coronavirus results.

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