Fishnut wrote: ↑Thu Dec 16, 2021 11:01 pm
Why aren't positive LFTs enough to make people self-isolate? Or am I misunderstanding when you get a PCR test? I've become a very good hermit over the last couple of years and haven't had the need to find out how it all works.
I assume it's because you take LFTs at home, input the result to the government website, and get an email back that confirms what you told them. It's all self-reported, therefore fakeable, and not to be relied upon when it gives you access to governement money like that £500 you get if you're on a rock-bottom wage & can't afford to take time off otherwise.
Because the little people always lie when money is a motivation, the scroungers, or so Tory thinking goes.
Never mind that what actually happens is people don't bother testing at all if they can't afford to isolate, and that throwing all that furlough money at businesses without any checks was far more open to fraud.
ETA: It is possible, albeit unlikely, to get a false-positive on an LFT. Someone MrRaven knows had three positive LFTs at various points in the last year, and their PCRs came back negative every time.