Armed with my collect code reference, I made another pointless trip to a pharmacist this morning to obtain a box of lateral flow tests. As soon as I arrived, the signs weren’t promising. ‘Don’t be in idiot,” it said on the door. “We haven’t got any LFTs so don’t come in and waste our time.” So, I went in.
As ever, the staff were perfectly polite and I didn’t get a whiff of “Oh not another one.” Instead, she informed me that they might be getting some new kits tomorrow but be quick because they go very quickly. I asked whether there was any point in having a collect code reference and she said that there was. It enabled the pharmacist to claim their money back. A queue was forming behind me so I thanked her for her time and left. It seems like stores order their LTFs, presumably from private providers, and claim the money back from the government, hence the need for collect code references. It was what the assistant said next that interested me, as a throwaway kind of comment. Soon, we will have to pay for test kits. “That’s what we’ve been told,” she added.
I know not by whom they have been told that LFTs will no longer be free and I can find no indication on the internet that this is true. It could be just a rumour or there could be substance to it. One thing is for sure: make people pay for kits and there will be no shortages because people won’t buy them.
I have long suspected that whilst there is a huge amount of testing going on, much if not most of it is being carried out on a regular basis to the same people, which is those in the health and care sectors. I know people, many of them actually, who have never been tested since the virus came along nearly two years ago and many others who have been tested on a very occasional basis. I also know of people who may well have had Covid but carried on working and living life as ‘normal’. I don’t have numbers but I’d guess a lot of people come under that category. If LFTs attract a charge, we all know that, in general, those lower down the income scale will not pay because they can’t afford to. And once it becomes obvious that many people are not bothering, you know what happens next.
I’m going to visit the pharmacist tomorrow to see if I can get another kit, but I’m not going to waste time every day hoping for the best and getting nothing. I wonder if that’s what Boris Johnson and his government really want, to get us out of the habit of testing and isolating and getting on with life, or dying if we can’t manage the life bit. Who knows? It feels like we’re on the home straight now, with much of the population of the opinion that Omicron is nothing worse than a minor cold. Whether that’s right, who knows, but once we all but end regular testing, which to all intents and purposes we already have, then Covid is all over, even if it isn’t.
