LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS - 3
So, Monday night (16 Mar 2020, UK time) the Prime Minister fumblingly dropped the news big changes were on the card for all Britons. We were all advised to not travel outside the UK unless essential, we're all to 'social distance' and stop going to pubs, theatre and cinema, mass gatherings would 'no longer be supported' (by law enforcement, and why do I know that's just given jihadi madmen and Extreme Rebellion nutters permission to run amuck unperturbed by those fun-spoiler coppers?) and ominously, 'Vulnerable' and 'elderly over 70' were told we would be 'shielded' from coronavirus by 'self-isolating' for at least three months beginning 'at the weekend' (the delay in implementation never explained but presumed to give us old sickies time to pandemic buy).

WTF does 'shielded' mean??!! Does this mean (as some think) if we step off our personal home property boundaries we'll be arrested and detained 'for our own good'? (and don't laugh because at one point in the session the PM used those very words - this was for our own good)

Then (here's why I call it fumblingly) later in the press conference the PM used the phrase 'social distancing' for the vulnerable and elderly group, and 'self-isolating' for those of any age/condition with symptoms. The symptomatic living alone could self-isolate for seven days but the symptomatic living with others puts everyone in the house on 14 day self-isolation.  We knew less after the scene closed than we'd known watching the empty podium waiting for the session to begin.

All three men on the podium droned like way past their sell by date university lecturers - they lost the audience in the first five sentences as we struggled to glean some intelligible information from the droning (eye-ball glazing, that was!) dithering attempt to 'not panic the public'. 

Even before the statement and press question session was over, people were hitting the Internet to find real answers - was this a bona fide 'lock-down', what does 'beginning at the weekend' mean, were the vulnerable and elderly group to completely self-isolate or could we keep six foot apart as we go for milk, walk the dog, have the family in for Sunday Lunch as acts of social distancing? What exactly are the symptoms, again? Why exactly are pregnant women now in the 'vulnerable' group if Professor Whitty (Chief Medical Officer) is so sure coronavirus isn't passed in-utero or at delivery (despite the news that day a British newborn and his mum had tested positive and were in separate treatment facilities)? How and where do we get tested?

There is no nice way to put this - Monday night we the public needed real guidance and advice from all three men on the podium (Chief Medical Officer, Director Public Health England, and the Prime Minister) but what we got was an hour+long exercise of dithering display of how to try (and fail) to not come right out and say what needed to be said.

In particular, the 'guidance' as to who exactly is vulnerable was so confusing it took a SkyNews presenter five hours later to come up with a simple phrase - anyone normally advised by their GP or consultant to have the annual flu jab should be considered in the vulnerable group. For the record, Professor Whitty said it but it was as an aside, not stressed, and missed completely in the hysteria the 'big changes' announcement.

Also alarmingly confusing (as the news of real symptoms had already been circulating) was the repeat of the so-called symptoms (dry cough, fever, shortness of breath) as being the key factors for thinking one might have the virus.

This morning (18 Mar 2020) the main news feeds (and a few of the trash outlets) tried to make some sense of it all but couldn't. 'Things' are no more clarified today than were Monday evening although the Daily Telegraph 'live' blog does finally show a graph with the more informative list of symptoms.

The biggest 'breaking news' of this morning is Neil Ferguson OBE had a cough all day yesterday and at 0400 woke gripped by a high fever.

Neil Ferguson is the epidemiologist who quietly informed the PM and Cabinet Monday afternoon the death toll could go as high as 260K if the PM didn't take immediate steps to stop the transmission rather than continue on in the frankly insane goal of creating 'herd immunity' by letting the fecking virus run at will through the population of Britain. He made it clear the NHS would collapse under the critical patient load, and those 260K patients who died would do so in one of the most painful, gruesomely awful ways.

Oh. Also on Monday WHO held a press conference with the main takeaway being 'Test-test-test' as the most sensible way of stopping the transmission so we have more time to work out how to treat and maybe even cure this thing. Countries (er, like the UK) who have switched to only testing those presenting at hospital with 'pneumonia like' symptoms were told 'yer doin' it wrong'.

But the UK official stance is still to only test those presenting to hospital with pneumonia symptoms.

Current UK toll: confirmed cases 1950. Deaths 71. Recovered 65. Meaning 'out there' somewhere 'in a hospital near you', 1814 (one thousand eight hundred fourteen) people are still 'fighting for their life'. 

It is now Wednesday 18 Mar 2020 1020hrs GMT. What will today bring?