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2020/11/17

Apparently the Liverpool testing programme is less than fully formed - this article in the BMJ explores the quick-turn-around test currently piloted in Liverpool and already being rolled out elsewhere in what to some might seem like unthinking haste, given that the pilot scheme has not yet been evaluated.

"This is a screening programme, not opportunistic case finding: people are invited to have a test they would not otherwise have had, or asked for. If judged against the criteria drawn up by the UK’s National Screening Committee for appraisal of a programme’s viability, effectiveness, and appropriateness, it does not do well and has been already roundly criticised"

"The test’s instructions for use state that it should not be used on asymptomatic people . . . . It suggests the test misses between one in two and one in four cases. The false positive rate of 0.6% means that at the current prevalence in Liverpool, for every person found truly positive, at least one other may be wrongly required to self-isolate. As prevalence drops, this will become much worse"

"Spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an unevaluated underdesigned national programme leading to a regressive, insufficiently supported intervention—in many cases for the wrong people—cannot be defended"

Their verdict:

"An Unevaluated, Underdesigned, and Costly Mess"

 

But the BMJ is not finished yet, there is more -

"Covid-19: Politicisation, 'Corruption', and Suppression of Science"

In this article, the BMJ delivers a stunning critique of the current authoritarian approach to the alleged pandemic.

"The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science"

"The UK’s pandemic response provides at least four examples of suppression of science or scientists"

"Politicians often claim to follow the science, but that is a misleading oversimplification. Science is rarely absolute. It rarely applies to every setting or every population. It doesn’t make sense to slavishly follow science or evidence"

This BMJ editorial writer is clearly not a fan of current UK pandemic management strategies, and it is heartening to see such views so clearly expressed in a leading journal.