Why are the Tories refusing to tell us how many people they are testing for Covid-19?
Matt Hancock: incomprehensible and incompetent.
You know it has to be a big fail when the Tories have spent more than a month adding to it, every day.
This story goes back to April 5, when Boris Johnson promised that 100,000 people would be tested for Covid-19 every day by the end of the month.
On April 30, the Tories duly lied to the nation – and their claim was instantly debunked by, among others, This Site. The claim was that nearly 130,000 tests were carried out; in fact the total was only slightly more than 70,000, if I recall correctly.
The rest were tests that had been sent out – but the government had no idea whether they had actually been used.
And of course there is a huge difference between the number of tests that were carried – and/or sent – out, and the number of people who have been tested.
The Tories continued failing to meet their target for a further fortnight, then gave up completely and simply resorted to saying the figures were “unavailable” – every day for a month.
Then today – June 30 – Matt Hancock appeared on the BBC’s Breakfast News, where he gave the following incomprehensible explanation for failing to provide the facts:
Probably the most incomprehensibly bonkers explanation yet given by Health Secretary Matt Hancock for his refusal to disclose data on the number of people being tested for coronavirus in the UK
Cc @piersmorgan @GMB pic.twitter.com/LWiIsD4T6q
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) June 30, 2020
Gobbledygook!
And he was called out on it by Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, a show that has been boycotted by Tory politicians for many weeks now, because they are afraid they will be asked awkward questions.
That’s an attitude that opens them up to awkward criticisms instead, viz.:
“What are you talking about Health Secretary? What could be a more important bit of data than how many people are being tested?' @piersmorgan
This is the response we should have seen on #BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/1Ossx2HbBD
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) June 30, 2020
At the end of the day, we’re no wiser about the number of tests being carried out or what the results may mean.
We can be sure of one thing, though:
The UK’s Conservative government is utterly incompetent.
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It’s quite obvious that figures are being manipulated, as ever to make the Government look favourable.
Also lazy recording may lead to poor quality results – eg: Asking for a test does not mean they have it or more than one request from the same person recorded as multiple tests.
People fed up waiting for results may be anxious enough to return on multiple occassions – this is what I think may have happened in Leicester.
I’ve listened to that Hancock video segment (more than once), and I STILL can’t make head nor tail of what he’s saying! Makes absolutely no sense at all!
They are all clueless unpleasant morons. Maybe the majority went to private schools and university but it just reveals their education does not bring with it any common sense or common decency in fact most are useless, objectionable incompetents which industry would not want in their ranks as waffling is their main attribute. This testing info is not rocket science and should be easy to obtain but as you say would lead to very awkward criticism when the truth is revealed. I guess they are just waiting for the numbers to increase to a more acceptable level before recommencing their lies. Thank god they are not in charge of launching Brexit if this is the best evidence of their professional abilities.