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An Open Letter to Test and Trace

How many 11 year olds maintain an address book of their friends?

By Ian VincePublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 3 min read
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An Open Letter to Test and Trace
Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

Dear Multinational Corporation Test and Trace Contractors,

This is a general procedural complaint about Test and Trace, but it relates to the contact tracing that occurred after my two daughters — aged 14 and 11 received a positive PCR test result.

My daughters were told they were positive on the morning of 4th October 2021.

They were then telephoned by contact tracers later that day. The 1st tracer was for my 11 year old. He wanted to know the names, surnames and phone numbers of her contacts. She does not have this information — she, like many 11 year olds, knows her friends by their first names only and does not maintain an adult-style contact book. But you know who does have a lot of this information? Her school.

When the initial stages of contact tracing was in the hands of the school, they knew very well who most of her contacts were. Who sat next to her in class for several hours a day. Who she played with, possibly even who she sat next to for lunch. A little bit of school staff deduction on the thinnest of details would reveal more contacts. Phoning a preteen child up to ask for detailed information on her friends is ridiculous. What next? Their precise Ordnance Survey grid reference or complete sequenced genome?

The second part of my complaint relates to the contact tracer who phoned my 14 year old daughter. That tracer did not even ask for names of close contacts. They were plainly in a hurry and could not wait to get off the phone. What is ridiculous is that a 14 year old is more aware of her friends’ details and may even have their phone numbers, yet she was not asked. What the hell is going on?

None of these issues will help address the spread of Covid 19.

The incompetence of your organisation, the private company tasked to deal with Test and Trace, is breathtaking. My 14 year old soon found it difficult to breathe and was booked in for an emergency appointment at the ‘hot site’ of our GP’s surgery. Perhaps one of her friends could not precisely name her or perhaps she was not even asked. You see where this is going?

This whole pandemic has seen our Government hand out lucrative contracts on advantageous terms to a cabal of businesses all somehow related to the party in power. A lot of the UK Government's preferred business partnerships during the pandemic have been set-up with companies that are connected to ministers of state. Unscrupulous practices forged in the chaos of Covid-19 will add-up to a more general trend of sleaze.

Some of those companies appear to have been set-up in the recent past and many of them seem to betray their age by showing an enhanced, juvenile incompetence. Of the other companies, many have no expertise in manufacturing or sourcing clinical products and a millions appear to have been spent on the wrong items. To everyone and their dog, this looks like high corruption. How did you think it would look?

If these complaints are not addressed in a timely and productive way, I fear that many more children will become seriously ill. Taking away Test and Trace from school staff — the very people who are often there when contacts are made — is not only counterproductive, but counterintuitive and irredeemably foolish. Because I accept that this may be an issue of policy rather than procedure, I will be taking this matter further, but since, whatever the policy is, your hands are dug into a deep bag of public money and you don't seem to be able to discharge your duties, I feel I have a right to know.

Yours sincerely

Ian Vince

PS: for non UK readers — the Test and Trace service, though called NHS Test and Trace, is run by private companies for profit.

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About the Creator

Ian Vince

Erstwhile non-fiction author, ghost & freelance writer for others, finally submitting work that floats my own boat, does my own thing. I'll deal with it if you can.

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