Thank you for this opinion Ms. Thatcher
Uh, you're welcome Uncle Joe?
But it isn't so much an opinion as an informed fact. "They give tests away for free in the UK, why can't we do that?" isn't really a very well thought out question. "They give tests away for free in the UK, how has that helped with things?" is much more pertinent, and the answer is that it hasn't. In fact it has been counterproductive in a number of ways:
- it has helped justify vaccine avoidance ("I'll just do a test every day instead")
- it has been used as a tool to help people and employers skirt regulations ("I can't afford you not to come into work and if you end up taking time off because you catch covid I'll probably have to bring someone else in to do your work instead, so make sure you bring proof of a negative test result in once a week to show you don't have it and that way we're all covered if HSE come asking me")
- some authorities allow a negative test result instead of a vaccine certificate for entry to things like sporting events, resulting in plague rats just opening a test, punching the number in online, reporting it as negative and downloading the official certificate of a negative test result
I'm a little surprised that our resident champion of workers rights hasn't figured out the extensive issues with this, TBH. "Huuuuuur government give free stuff now" doesn't really help if you haven't bothered to think through why, and what the likely outcomes of it are.