Troubling (Covid 19 related)

[Red Herring]

We seem to be making a far bigger deal of this testing argument than we need to. Testing everyone in the Uk on the same day, and getting results back quickly enough for you to be able to isolate those with away from those without before anybody changed groups, would be great but neither is likely, or even possible.

The only other useful piece of information that would come from widespread testing is it might reassure us if far more people have caught it than we currently think and survived, but that in itself can't change the way we are currently acting.

The bottom line is 800+ people a day are dying from this virus in the UK and no amount of testing is going to stop that. The only thing that will bring the numbers down is if we stop passing it around, or we eventually run out of new people to infect and kill.

We have proved we are incapable of the first so all that remains now is to keep the kill rate low enough that we can manage it, but that does mean we have to carry on being smart about infection.

Don't look to the government to keep you safe, they have plenty of other things they have to consider, like our economy and civil order for starters. Just ask yourself this, knowing what you do about this virus how would you be living your life if the government just said get on with it?

[DJ123]

TBH, I would be getting on with my life with the necessary basic protection in place. My office is closed, so I work from home - so work is no different to me. My hobbies/social activities are ones that are most impacted, the freedom you could say, of not being able to go out on my motorbike for a pleasure ride, or my MTB, or for a walk in a National Truest/English Heritage . . . . .
The day to day I can sort of get by on, because I'd be at work anyway. It is the evenings and weekends where I would use that time to go and enjoy a hobby or clear my head that is being restricted, and what is usually a 'reward' and the free time I give myself to do what I want. I work to live, not live to work. And right now all I am doing (and those who are also in the same boat) is working but not living.

IMO you need to keep the vulnerable people in isolation, as they need the most protection, and we need to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. Society should be able to operate reasonably well with Social Distancing guidelines in place, for those who feel like it is safe enough to do so. Where this will struggle is in the entertainment & leisure industry where there are usually lots of people in close proximity to others; so that will be a more difficult task to manage. But it has to start somewhere. Even if there is a vaccine, everything will not be open and running like usual and people embracing missed love ones with hugs & kisses. The slow start to taking the plaster off needs to begin to allow people to start trusting the statistics, feeling safe and begin to start getting back to as much of a normal life as possible. Without mass testing you will not know how many more people have it, and without a vaccine you have no way of curing the majority of people. There now has to be a balance struck between protecting the healthy people by allowing life to start to return to normal, and protecting the vulnerable by asking them to stay in isolation.