Lighthouse Labs – showing the way?

An investigation funded by The Independent has uncovered widespread concern over the “Lighthouse Lab” system for processing coronavirus tests.

UPDATE: …and now wow! https://apple.news/AXZekJbGoRaOgzansq5kQ5w

Experts including Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel laureate and director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, have branded the decision to commission the ‘Lighthouse’ laboratories – funnelling millions to private companies – a tactical mistake that was made too late, without consultation and remains shrouded in mystery

It was decided that a centralised approach would be more efficient and give greater control, rather than mobilising NHS or academic labs, and funding them to expand operations. This may have been a mistake, freezing out existing public sector laboratories in order to create private businesses.

Sir Paul Nurse, told The Independent he believed it had been a mistake for the government not to mobilise local laboratories across the country.

“I reached out to Downing Street early on but it seems that the local route was not even considered,” he said. “That was a tactical error in my view, because it was self-evident from the beginning that a locally managed solution would have been effective.

It was needed until the big labs got going, which was going to take time given the lack of preparation.

What we did at The Crick could have been done and activated at university and medical school labs across the country, which were dormant because of lockdown.

“Our local Crick lab can turn around tests in 24 hours, even under 12 hours. In these big labs it’s been as long as five days – that is next to useless. There was a failure to think creatively about how to deal with testing and the decision to set up these labs has been shrouded in mystery, at least to me. Who made the decision? Why was it made? Who advised on it? What did it cost?”

What is clear is that it was expensive, accused of contracting irregularities and not as reliable as promised. Perhaps unsurprising since it was overseen by accountancy giant Deloitte, fined for Serco tagging scandal and improperly awarded contracts in South Africa.

See the full article here.

Another Point of View

Watch this if you will… opinion you may change.

Chris McGlade – The Right to Hate

Oh well, Citius, Altius, Fortius

Bugger! They’ve cottoned on to Dom’s idea of getting everybody infected and then harvesting the blood of the survivors for a spiffing vaccine to protect our friends. Have to change modus operandi and find some other way to kill off the old and sick and improve my cash flow. I know they’re a lot of dozey cows but ‘herd immunity’ was a daft name. Ah well, non cogito ergo sum.

Tell you what, how about we stop all testing so nobody knows who has got it or not. If people start complaining that other countries are testing more than we are then we can pretend that we can’t get the essential chemical di-hydrogen oxide which is only manufactured on the slopes of a mountain in Outer Mongolia. As Hippocrates would have said, ars longa vita brevis

If we keep the shops and bars open, panem et circenses, and pack the trains full of workers we can encourage people to move around. We could double the number of carriers and speed up the process. Let’s ask our construction company donors (anybody in Bullingdon?) if they can threaten the sack if employees don’t turn up every day. Tell Tim W that he can do something similar with his pubs. He will understand that bibere humanum est, ergo bibamus.

Dom tells me that if we slow down the distribution of protective equipment then we can decimate the health professionals and that will speed up the kill rate of the elderly and those who are a drain on our resources. I know we have been offered help from other countries but we could just say we missed that email. They can’t prove otherwise can they? As daddy says, ‘De minimis non curat praetor‘.

Dom tells me that Rees-Mogg has buggered off to his safe house. Dom’s off to somewhere quiet until all of this blows over and I’m thinking of doing the same. Would a claim that I’m suffering symptoms get me a few popularity points? So braccas meas vescimini then.

Note to self: we can pretend we are arranging to make more ventilators if we give the contract to someone who can’t make them – thanks Chris G for that spiffing wheeze and victor numquam usque