Weston Super Saint

And if you live in a city and don't drive / take public transport, how do you get tested? I'd hazard a guess that the logistics of testing Boris, Charlie and a few others is way more manageable than the logistics of testing ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND people scattered across the entire UK....

How do they get tested? If you are showing symptoms, you have to self isolate, which means do not leave the house, do not receive visitors. How do you get tested if you can't go anywhere and no-one can visit you - magic testing pixies?

Clearly it's a struggle for you, so let me spell it out.... 125,000 are SHOWING SYMPTOMS. Can you see they key words there? If you are SHOWING SYMPTOMS you HAVE TO SELF ISOLATE FOR SEVEN DAYS. What's more, your family members / house mates (who may also work for the NHS) have to self isolate for 14 days.... https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isolation-advice/

I'm struggling to understand how testing 125,000 NHS staff who are 'showing symptoms' is going to get them back to work any quicker. If they are 'showing symptoms' then the advice - from the NHS - is to self isolate for 7 days. Testing them is not going to get them back to work any sooner than 7 days. Frankly, testing 125,000 who are showing symptoms is likely to do more harm than good as they will have to leave their self isolation to go for the test - unless you're suggesting home visits which would put thousands more people at risk!

Doctors should know better! Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives! That goes for NHS workers too - which is why they have asked retired workers to come back to work to increase the numbers. Or are you suggesting the advice is invalid if you work for the NHS? The absent staff (self isolating) are presumably doing so because they either have the symptoms or have been in close contact (presumably unprotected as you would hope precautions would be in place whilst at work) with someone who has the symptoms. In which case they would have an incubation period of up to seven days, or are you suggesting they can ignore that and carry on working as normal potentially infecting many people even after a negative test result?

Are you saying that NHS staff who are showing symptoms are not being tested? Should they be tested or should they be self isolating like everyone else who has the symptoms to stop it spreading? Should we be wasting money on people (NHS or otherwise) who have the symptoms by testing them, when the prescribed course of action - self isolation - will be the same whatever the outcome of the test?

Exactly what is testing going to achieve if a person has no symptoms? Will it merely confirm that they don't have the virus? What is to stop them from opening a door two minutes after they have been tested and picking the virus up? Testing people who have no symptoms would appear to be a bit of a waste of time, resources and money. Shouldn't the testing be focussed on antibodies - i.e. determining who has already had the virus and thus developed an immunity(?) to it and will therefore be 'safe' to continue their work? Although I'm not sure an antibody test has been developed yet?

Nope. If anything, my weekly mileage has increased but that is because the gym is closed so using the cycling as a substitute. But, I only ever ride solo anyway and apart from the odd wave at other cyclists (and swearing at motorists), I don't have any interaction with another human being which I'm very happy with! There was a big issue last week with an ironman competitor who completed a 200 mile training ride. Not sure what all the fuss was about to be fair, people were complaining that he risked having an accident and thus 'tying up vital NHS resources'. The reality is, you can ride 200 yards from your house and still have exactly the same risks of having an accident. Besides, someone who can ride 200 miles in one go probably has a reasonable set of lungs on them so is unlikely to take up a valuable ICU bed if they did catch the virus....

They are looking at ordering 10,000 of them so someone, somewhere clearly thinks we don't have enough. Meanwhile, other technology companies are looking at fast tracking their inventions for ventilators to solve that shortage problem - although it is unlikely that the number of beds and trained personnel to manage those beds will be able to keep up once the production of ventilators gets under way but that's another battle....

Can we not just take a little bit of good news or does everything has to be a battle? From the same article : That's got to be a good thing, right?

Amazing how technology can solve problems and we're lucky to have some of the best minds in the world on our doorstep. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52087002

Doesn't seem that bad

Didn't Germany state that if someone dies with underlying conditions even if they test positive for Covid, then they would record the death as being caused by the underlying conditions?

A 'Darwin' government surely?

Mike Ashley - for the second time in a week! https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52040579

What about alcohol and lifestyle? Is it really 'essential' and the country can't live without it for a few weeks or is it a question of tax income? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52033260

Has that previous 'resilience' been replaced by the private sector - wards, ventilators, hospitals, trained staff - that has been seconded by the NHS or was it considerably more than that?

Are there really people in existence that still think that this is all Boris's doing? Are there really people who are so stupid that they think one person can be able to make every decision, alone?

Haven't you come full circle back to pro-choice?

Which clowns seriously believe this is a weapon?

To be fair, in the real world, those things happen to people around the world all the time. Does that mean that people's beliefs should never be challenged?

WTF is an 'essential' sexual activity involving 3 or more people if only the 'non-essential' ones are banned

Not convinced death rates are particularly revealing either, given that they don't discern between people dying from underlying causes and those dying specifically from the virus. Also, how is it possible to determine the percentage of 'serious' cases when no-one is being tested - just seen an advert on TV from Prof. Whitty stating that if you have symptoms, DON'T go to your GP, DON'T call 111, just log on the NHS website to check whether you've forgotten what the symptoms are to remind yourself! You can call 111 if the symptoms get worse, so presumably millions of people will get the symptoms but no-one will know!

Probably not accurate at all, given that those figures state 6300 people died on Wednesday and Thursday, so given the current trajectory would estimate around 4300 on Saturday using those figures, which would be more than the reported figures of actual deaths to date! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51989183 Again, the biggest issue is with how the deaths are reported - in most cases it looks like they are reported as having died from Covid 19 if they test positive for the virus post mortem. In Germany they have been reporting (not sure if they still are), the 'underlying causes' as the reason whether they test positive or not which has kept their figures low. Given that there is a natural mortality rate this would seem sensible as clearly the more people who get infected and spread the virus, the more people will test positive post mortem....

For the overwhelming majority of the population it is. Doesn't change the fact that it can be deadly for a small percentage of the population and we are now in a process of protecting those people....