Covid-19

Proof, were proof needed, that many of the pillar 2 community covid-19 tests done recently were carried out on asymptomatic people came yesterday morning from Absolutely Mancock. Absolutely doing the morning’s media interview round, he confirmed that as many as a quarter of the tests were done on people who absolutely were not eligible because they absolutely did not have either symptoms, or what he sinisterly called a direction from an official, to have a test. The rest of us have absolutely known about this problem for a while (in Dr No’s case, for weeks, if not months), and the problem it causes, which is once again to pour mud on the question of when is a case not a case. True false positives (positive result when no viral fragments are present) aside, much of the problem has to do with fact that the PCR (swab, antigen) test checks not for the presence of disease, or even entire infectious virus, but instead looks for tiny fragments of genetic material from the virus.

The title of this post is part of a quote from the CEO of a high tech company, thrilled by the opportunities covid–19 will provide for companies like hers to advance their prospects. The full quote, in this excellent article by Naomi Klein, is “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology. Humans are biohazards, machines are not.” Klein’s core point is that high tech has been waiting in the wings for a global event that will tip the scales in favour of mass adoption of human-less contactless technology across the board, and what better to bring about the tipping of the scales than a viral pandemic, which through its doctrines of social distancing, shelter-in-place (so American a phrase) and mandatory mask wearing constantly tells us that humans are biohazards. How perfect an opportunity for high tech to step forward, human-less, contactless technology at the ready.

Is wearing a facemask against covid-19 a curious, curious in that the intent is to keep the danger in rather than out, variant of the tin foil hat? Both are designed to keep an invisible peril at bay, and although neither has one jot of direct evidence that they work, wearers of both can point to studies done in physics labs that support their use, at least indirectly, though not without blowback. Advocates of both are fanatic in their zeal, brook no counter-argument, and fervently deny they patently look silly. The more Dr No considers it, the harder he finds it to distinguish between what now increasingly looks like two variations on a common theme, with the possible exception that by and large tin foil hat wearers don’t beat up non-wearers. Perhaps there are other novel tin foil hats that have emerged for the novel coronavirus? Well yes, there are. But we are only going to consider one, because it is a tin foil hat large enough to be a flying saucer. It is of course the lockdown. Unlike normal tin foil hats, this one isn’t just useless, it’s downright dangerous.

Disclaimer: Dr No wishes it to be known that in no way does he condone calling the well intentioned but flawed Darzi tests Stasi tests. Any attempt to do so is very clearly a mendacious attempt to discredit a Noble Lord and his well intentioned but flawed  tests, and cannot be permitted under any circumstances. Should any such typo appear in this post, having escaped rigorous proof reading, Dr No makes his fullest apologies, begs forgiveness, and wishes it to be abundantly clear that any instance of Stasi test should of course always be read to mean Darzi test. No such reservations, however, apply to any suggestion that the tests are only fit to be disposed of, preferably with the aid of several litres of fast running water (hereinafter ‘the Khazi tests’).

For some time, Dr No has been moving, or perhaps driven, to a determination — he uses the word with at least two of its meanings — that the only sensible considered response to covid–19 is to treat it as just another seasonal flu like illness. He knows full well that some will be of like mind, but that many — they know who they are — will react violently, in some cases with extreme violence, to any such suggestion. Dr No is a heretic! Burning at the stake is too lenient a punishment for heresy! Let him be hung, drawn and quartered, and his eviscerated staked body be displayed as a grim reminder to those who contemplate such heinous heresy! So it behoves Dr No to explain how he came to this determination.

So incensed was Dr No on coming across a nonsense paper in the BMJ yesterday that he uncharacteristically dashed off a tweet denouncing the paper as ‘more nonsense from the milk curdler‘. The trouble with twitter — and the reason Dr No generally avoids it for primary communications — is that a tweet is limited, to 280 characters to be precise, and one image, and so almost always bars reasoned argument. If reasoned argument is akin to steady breathing, then a tweet is akin to a multiphase turbulent gas cloud, as sneezes are now known among the cognoscenti. Such esoteric language leaves one wondering whether the humble naked fart is also a multiphase turbulent gas cloud among the cognoscenti — it seems entirely possible, along with the silent but deadly multiphase turbulent gas cloud — but for today’s purposes we shall adopt the Yorshire way, and call a sneeze a sneeze, for it is the study of sneezes that is the bedrock — or rather quicksand — that underlies the nonsense paper.

If listening to Martha Kearney on the Today programme is like watching the mould grow on your breakfast yoghurt, then hearing Hatt Mancock’s hosannas for mass covid testing on an industrial scale on the same programme last week was enough to cause Dr No’s yoghurt pot to explode, with deleterious consequences for the immediate environment. Maybe, but only maybe because there are significant  unanswered conduct, consent and compulsion questions, the epidemiologist (lower case e) in Dr No can see the attraction, but the Individual (upper case I) in Dr No countered and then drowned the appeal by screaming privacy, Privacy, PRIVACY! Why? Because, while the surveillance programme might have a faint blue NHS logo tacked loosely somewhere on the threshold, the machinery inside is almost entirely privatised.

Once upon a time, in a country not so far away, a new terror seized the land. Invisible and undetected, a new respiratory virus had entered the country, and spread silently. It was wintertime, and at first no one noticed anything out of the ordinary, because in winter the people expected coughs and colds, and for the unlucky few, ‘flu and even untimely death. Then the rumours started, of a novel mutant oriental virus escaping (the conspiracy theorists went further, and said it was deliberately released, most likely by Bill Gates) into the wild, of health services in other counties collapsing, and, in time, of excess deaths at home. Behind the scenes, the ministers in the high majority low wit government started bed wetting on an industrial scale, but in public they  maintained it was business as normal.

In the same old very flogged very dead horse language, we now have yet another game changer in the fight against covid–19. Quite how a fight against a pandemic came to be a game passed Dr No by, unless it has something to do with the MP for  Newmarket, Hatt Mancock, being partial to a flutter on the horses, and the chief pongo for the time being at NHS Test and TitsUp, Dido Make-me-a-Cherry Harding, also having a bit of thing for the horses. In any event, according to a DHSC press release, millions of oven ready DIY swab-to-smartphone 90 minute covid–19 tests are to be made available over the next few months, allowing widespread community covid–19 testing on an unprecedented scale. As the modern idiom has it, what’s not to like?