One for the Enquiry: Test and Trace to bankruptcy

How the Test and Trace policy based on shaky science has helped bankrupt the UK

We plan to write up a series of short notes on topics that, in our view, should be addressed by the Covid enquiry. So, we are calling these One, Two, Three etc., for the enquiry. But, as always, we rely on our readers to suggest other topics.

Here’s the first one.

In public health, identifying symptomatic subjects and their subsequent isolation is proposed and used for infectious diseases to slow outbreaks and, in some instances, stop them.

The conceptual nub of the issue is that in the vast majority of cases, an infectious disease is contagious for a short time. During that period, the source of infection (known as the index case) may infect other people (contacts). Therefore, if you stop contact from the index case and/or their secondary cases (family, acquaintances, colleagues), you will interrupt or disrupt the chain of transmission of the agent. 

Cases are only of interest if they are contagious, i.e. producing so-called replication-competent viruses that can be passed on from A to B…