Originally Posted by
homonculus
We could test a random proportion daily, but the government is being devious with its numbers. It is including antibody tests and reference numbers in its capability, sending out batches unasked etc etc, and then includes NHS workers. It is likely they dont have the capacity to do a scientific random survey despite their protestations.
Well ONS claims they've been doing one since April - which is exactly where the 8000-a-day estimates are coming from.
If they'd put more effort into that rather than the pointless pandering to public opinion 100000-a-day target, then we'd have had better data sooner - but public opinion was that "test test test" was most important. Testing of course is useless (actually worse than, as any testing process has risks in itself) unless you are going to
do something with the result, and mostly we've just been doing nothing and testing for the sake of testing. Only very recently (outside the random survey) have we started testing the asymptomatic, where you can do something positive - isolation - with a positive test, testing symptomatic who aren't bad enough to need hospital treatment is pointless - they should be isolating anyway, false -ve rate is too high to un-isolate.