https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58917096

At the same time common sense prevails about new technological solutions to Covid

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54923641

We find out decisions have been made based upon inaccurate information

Would you trust a Covid "passport" based upon negative test?

In the first case, using ozone as a disinfectant it was quite clearly driven by a desire to be seen doing something support by a sales pitch from various snake oil sellers. It is quite clear to anyone who knows anything about infection control that a) spraying ozone will have no effect on the virus  and b) in sufficient concentration it would be harmful.

The second story is about what happens if you hire cowboys. The science is proven but it is not  straightforward. If you try to scale up what is essentially an experimental procedure and convert it into a routine mass testing method things like this will happen.   As far as respiratory diseases go, we do not have any real idea of how prevalent they are or how they spread. This because most diseases like this eg the “common cold” are self-limiting and  its just not worth testing to see what viruses is actually involved. With covid for the first time ever we were trying to distinguish this disease from all of the other infections.

Flying planes? Are pilots the answer? <insert link to plane crash involving a pilot>

In both cases, what was the alternative? Ask the local cabbies what we should do? By definition those testing the samples are scientists, therefore when a mistake is made it will be by a scientist, same as flying planes with a pilot. I would imagine those that advised against the ozone treatment were also using information gathered by scienctists, science self corrects. It is the same as all fields of expertise. We are only as good as those experts in the field, but the answer is not to replace experts with "Joe Public" when something goes wrong.

Taking pot shots at experts gives leads to the uprise of populists, who govern on what will keep them in power the longest. Trump made it a mission to try to paint himself as the only true expert on any subject, allowing himself to decide the "facts" as he saw fit. (Nobody knows more about stuff than me!). Without scientists we wouldn't have vaccines, facemasks or treatments. We wouldn't have been able to isolate the virus, model it's trajectory or plan for our counter attack. Without scientists many more millions of people would be dead!

So in summary, yes they are the answer, as long as the peer review process works.

Overall, science was the answer.

However (overwhelmingly in my view), politicians* were not.  Unfortunatelly politicians made all the crucial decisions and should hang their heads in shame rather than come out with "we did the best we could" soundbites.

* Jacinta Arden et al excluded who made political decisions based on the science until science could give a solution.

I don’ t think that this is true, ” By definition those testing the samples are scientists, therefore when a mistake is made it will be by a scientist, same as flying planes with a pilot.”  At best the people doing the testing in the labs are qualified technical staff. At worse they are muppets blindly following the protocols which were written by the scientists but as everybody who has read James Reason knows there are “holes” in any protocol. Hopefully real scientists would spot these and correct them but many of the people doing this testing have never done anything like this before. As I said these  methods have never been used on such a large scale before. Last year requests where going out to labs to donate them DNA analysers to do the testing since there were not enough of them in the “shops”. Trained staff especially  virologists  are in short supply and you can’t just whip them up out of thin air anymore than you can create lorry drivers by offering 3 month visas.

A colleague of mine went back to the NHS to help out for a bit and she said it was murder, especially since she insisted that they follow all of the protocols especially the QA ones.  She jacked it in after 3 months: too much pressure.      

A few years ago a bridge collapsed on a motorway “down south”-M2 I think. The BBC man on the ground reported that the bridge was now safe and the motorway could now reopen because the Engineer said so. But the man in the studio looked doubtful: why would you trust an engineer- that’s the bloke that fixes dishwashers.   

Edited by user 15 October 2021 15:08:52(UTC)  | Reason: spellings

Originally Posted by: pseudonym

I've always been amazed that my genuine Engineer friends don't seem to mind people usurping their title

Well, speaking as a genuine engineer (CEng MICE, if you're interested) it has never really bothered me - I think probably engineers are in general more interested in function than labels, so inclined to be more interested in whether someone can walk the walk than whether they appropriate the label.  I care more about the quality of your engineering than whether you've paid your subs to some institite / academy / whatever.

However, some do get very exercised about it - normally ranting about how architects get their label protected.  That kind of reinforces my assumption I think - civil / structural engineers care about what it does and how/whether it works, architects care about the look and the label.

Peter - could this not also apply to some deciding on who to use for health and safety?

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Would you trust a Covid "passport" based upon negative test?

Seventeen responses and not one reply addressing the above.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Would you trust a Covid "passport" based upon negative test?

Seventeen responses and not one reply addressing the above.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, i.e. obvious symptoms, yes I would. Whilst it may not be perfect, it is better than nothing. The issues with the private testing company may have reduced confidence in the procedure, but given that over 8.5m (by the end of today) will have tested positive, and this issue effects around 50,000 test results then I would say the accuracy still seems to be quite high.

The period of false testing was a total of 35 days (8 sep - 12 oct) during that time there were very roughly

35*30000 = 1.05m positive cases, so around 4.5% of cases were missed (through testing). This would still place the accuracy of the tests at around 95%.

As an aside,  assume you had a random sample of 10,000 people attending an event with COVID passports. Assuming 1 in 60 were positive at the time (source) then we would expect

10,000 / 60 =  167 people to be infected.

Currently the number of assymptomatic cases is really hard to measure, with estimates between 1.74% and 78.3%, but an average of around 25%. We would hope those with symptoms would stay at home, leaving 

167 * 0.25 = 41 people without symptoms attending the event,

Without the passport those people are free to infect people during the event. We can argue about the efficacy of PCR/LFT tests, but every person we can knock off those 41 people can only be a good thing. Let's be conservative and suggest 80% efficacy. This would mean we reduce that number of positive cases attending the event to 8 people.

The Delta variant has an R0 number of somewhere between 5 and 8. Let's call it 5 to be fair. Those 41 people would infect 205 people (I know it won't be just in the event, but just to get the point accross). With passports it would be 40 people. So the passports would mean that in this round the total number of people with the virus falls from 167 to 40. Without passports the number rises from 167 to 205.

If we repeat this process going forward, with passports the virus would cease to be very soon, without it will soon infect the whole world again.

This is why I trust a test that has a few flaws over no test at all.