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My word

England’s test and trace service is being sub-contracted to a myriad of private companies employing inexperienced contact tracers under pressure to meet targets, a Guardian investigation has found.

The UK’s supply of experienced contact tracers being how large?

11 thoughts on “My word”

  1. Headlines next month:

    “HMRC recruits thousands of inexperienced customs agents with barely two weeks of training”

    “Border Force recruits thousands of inexperienced immigration enforcement officers”

    “Navy recruits inexperienced French translators to handle surge in boats caught fishing in UK waters”

    etc etc.

  2. Well, there are zero. Because the WHO pandemic guidelines in force since the establishment of the WHO until April this year* were essentially “don’t bother tracing except for contacts of symptomatic people right at the beginning of the epidemic”. It’s not possible to trace all the contacts of all asymptomatic “PCR positive” because that is pretty much the whole country.

    Putting the tin foil hat on, perhaps this is the point – to demonstrate that the current system can’t react, so we need mandatory tracking devices on everyone forever.

    *: They also said masks are a wash, social distancing overvalued, and lockdowns do far more harm than good. Amazing what wondrous science we got from the CCP, so quickly!

  3. Q. Who have you met in the last fortnight?
    Q. None of your business.

    Incidentally, non compliance is even higher in the USA, up to 74% in some places.

  4. ‘private companies employing inexperienced contact tracers’

    Government employing inexperienced contact tracers is okay. Being employed by government gives you special abilities beyond mortal men. And you can carry a gun.

  5. @gamecock – they’d never let junior civil servants carry a gun, because the first thing they’d shoot would be their useless managers.

  6. I’m one of those private contractors installing IT kit in covid clinics, and I freely admit that in my ten years of mostly NHS IT field support I have never equipped a covid clinic before.

    Before last year I’d never done a Windows 10 rollout before.

    Before 2013 I’d never done a Windows 7 rollout before.

    Before 2004 I’d never done a Windows XP rollout before.

  7. “Navy recruits inexperienced French translators to handle surge in boats caught fishing in UK waters”

    The British military has thousands of basic albeit probably slightly out of date Arabic, Dari and Pashto speakers who may be of more use. Okay, the phrases learned wouldn’t survive contact with a sub-ballistic inbound human rights lawyer but what would?

  8. Bloke in North Dorset

    jgh,

    That reminds me that when I joined the company that was to become Orange in 1991 they were advertising for GSM engineers with 5 years experience – the standard had even been completed in 1991 and no manufacturer was close to building the first production equipement.

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