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The govt's plans for pre-Christmas mass asymptomatic testing of HE students appear to be continuing despite the fact that there is nothing to point students to in order to interpret their test result. This is a total and utter disgrace and potentially actively dangerous.
I'm really sick of going on about this but it's still true and still there is apparently no interest whatsoever in acknowledging that this is a problem.
The testing protocol appears to be that students who test negative first time around are then offered a second test a few days later. This protocol is - as far as I can see - completely unvalidated. We do not know how many positives, let alone infectious positives, it will miss.
If a student asks "what is the probability that I am infected/infectious if I test negative?" there is literally nothing useful whatsoever to point them to. I have no idea how this can be considered a remotely acceptable state of affairs. It's outrageous.
So just to be clear: if you get a negative result - even though you're not able to interpret what it means - you're going to be told you're fine, but if you have two siblings away from home it is illegal for you to all go back. This is Very Scientific. https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1331296616846909441
Very important and clear thread on this https://twitter.com/mgtmccartney/status/1331591779242680323
Anyway, assuming protocol is that two tests are done three days apart & students leave 24 hours later & window for leaving is 3-9 December, we are now potentially four days away from students beginning to take tests they have no guidance on interpreting. Seems bad, to me.
Three days to go now! Still no way to interpret the results of a test that literally millions of people are about to do. Not sure this is particularly good but it seems like nobody cares! Never mind.
It is now two days until the window opens for the start of the first tests on students to be carried out. We still have no way at all to interpret the test result. Students are about to be advised to travel on the basis of completely uninterpretable information.
I am legit angry about this. We had weeks of moral panic about students travelling to university like they were bringing the plague to an unaffected region. We are now about to do something an order of magnitude more risky and absolute silence from everyone previously up in arms.
