Ok, so having slagged off lateral flow tests yesterday, I thought I’d better take one. For YOU. Because I’m prepared to lay myself on the line in the interests of my people! Ok, not so much lay on a line as shove a stick up my nose. Quite a long stick in my case, obviously.

Mel & I both received ‘lateral flow kits’ from the NHS, to test our staff weekly. Because we are front line… whatever. And today’s photo is of our results. Mel’s is on the right and shows, quite clearly, that the test was negative. Mine’s on the left and shows that I’m pregnant. Unless I read it wrongly. Yes, I’m going to have a baby and I’m going to call it Covid.

There’s been big issues about ‘procurement’ during this crisis. Basically, companies who would normally making, say, beer glasses, which no-one is now allowed to use, so the machinery is modified to bang out PPE instead. Beer glass… sterile, safe, secure masks to British Standards… what difference. A thing is a thing, right? Just make ‘em.

Which is why there are lots of court cases currently underway about government PPE contracts by companies making absolute rubbish and selling it for 14 billion quid to Rishi Sunak. Who, let’s face it, would buy up Halloween masks if nothing else was available.

And so to lateral flow tests. Made by ‘Innova Medical Group Inc.’ And the thing is that they don’t actually claim to be that good. They just claim to be ‘ready in 20 to 30 minutes’ rather than the 2 days for the normal ‘swab test’. In the instructions it actually states that ‘If a positive signal appears, it should not be reported as positive’. Oh. And that ‘negative results are presumptive and do not preclude infection’. Ok, that covers most of it. Other than: then what is the test for, exactly?

But I don’t blame Innova Inc. I wanna know why our government firstly bought zillions of pounds worth of self-confessed fairly useless test kits and worse, is now putting massive stock in the results for using them in their asymptomatic testing. IT WON’T TELL US ANYTHING. I think I’ll revert to the coin toss method. I’ll sell pound coins to the government for a fiver each. 

Happy daze

A xxxx