Companies like Push Doctor and Babylon health have had video consultations for a while. The problem with doing it across the NHS is that the infrastructure was never there. Even now, we’re all supposedly signed up to a newer network that is supposed to be faster and support video consultations. But it’s still slow.

Where I work, even telephone consultations ordinarily are far and few between. I might do one a week. I’m now doing as many telephone consultations as I used to see in person. You miss the nonverbal cues. The subtleties. The hand wringing. The lack of eye contact. Sometimes it’s just something about the demeanour that means there’s something more going on.

I tried a video consultation last week for the first time. Quite a few companies are giving “free trials” but a bit like those dodgy trials you see, you have to remember to cancel. Anyhoo it involved using my phone and the patient using theirs through an intermediary website. It was a bit clunky and I used it to see a rash. The problem with rashes is that I like to touch them - feel temperature, texture and sometimes use magnification. Can’t do that through video. I think video consultations offer very little over telephone calls but that’s based on very limited experience under testing times.

Yeah, got more DIY done than ever. B&M are good for smaller stuff.

I love how quiet it is, it's like when I was a kid because over here, even now, has reduced weekend trading hours and there's so few cars on the road. I'll be annoyed at how noisy everything will seem afterwards.

Speaking of... My part of Belfast is [LIFTED] permanently being dug up so I'll have to get used to that again!

I see Hancock is falsely threatening to remove exercise like a sad wee [LIFTED]. He'd have to put caveats on that like everything else... My dogs get walked whatever.

Re. cannon fodder. Yup, a friend of mine was army years ago and the lack of kit was shocking then. Same with any of our services I've been told down the years. And let's not forget the 'herd immunity' that involved survival of the fittest and not a vaccine... That's true Tory mantra right there. Unfortunately that shower of scum have so far survived their own idiocy as ever. I'm sorry, but I got a little annoyed at being a killer virus roadblock for evil politicians.

https://www.cbr.com/batmobile-patrols-s ... reets/amp/

You'd think CBR might recognise what film series it's from, but anyway, the machine guns are a nice touch...

On the whole for me it has made very little difference. I mostly work from home (the two companies who used to insist on me going to their offices to work for them have down-scaled to the extent that they no longer need my services), and while a few clients have shut down until the end of April, several others have had an explosion in on-line sales and are requiring new packaging artwork for larger quantities of the products they sell.

I don't like waiting for stuff (I'm the person who faced with a wait of longer than 5 minutes for a bus will walk to the next stop - and further if possible) so I thought the supermarket queues were going to freak me out, but all the ones I've been in move along in a brisk fashion so I've not had a problem so far.

What is causing a problem is the fact that before all this started I had the builders in and they were about half-way through a complete renovation of the property. Currently I have only one habitable room, no kitchen, no bathroom and no heating or hot water (other than what I can boil in a kettle) and cold water is from a hose on the end of a stop-cock pipe. My builder recently had pneumonia and not surprisingly has retreated back to his home until the current situation is less life-threatening. I'm hoping it won't be too much longer...

Ouch, hope you get sorted soon!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52180783


Oh yeah, just 2-4% of the dead, get those school gates open!

These [LIFTED] could play Weyland-Yutani roles in the next Alien movie, no problem. And that's what we're up against with these so-called scientists, many of them clearly only believe in the bottom lines of their reports and spreadsheets. That's been obvious from the start when we could have stopped hundreds of people in the UK from catching the virus and thus spreading it further across the country. We had all the international data, but we were aiming for 'herd immunity' and making out the public wouldn't accept strict social measures. All until the threat of 250'000 dead popped up. But there's the thing, it's still the same shower of sh1te informing the wider decisions!

Imagine needing to be noticed so much that you'd see people needlessly dead. Imagine actually finding like-minded people around you to back that up and plenty of others in your field failing to criticise you because it's obviously not the done thing. If people didn't trust scientists before, this crisis certainly won't help.

I think that is the problem. It can be used for common colds and to see whether the person needs to come in / you need to make a house visit. But a real, in-depth diagnosis is not possible, at least not with just a video link.

If somebody has regular hayfever, you can see if they are showing the symptoms and write them a prescription.

If they say they have a lump somewhere, is it just swollen? Is it cancer? Is it an infection? Or something else entirely?

DIY and garden centres were the first things to close here! Only registered builders, carpenters etc. could still buy from the DIY stores - they had to send in an order and then drive up and collect.

The DIY stores opened for the first time since February at the weekend. There were queues across the whole carpark!



The building opposite me at work is still being rennovated - we have offices in a residential street. They have knocked out the first layer of bricks and are putting in insulation blocks on the walls and then bricking them in (a fairly standard "modernisation" over here). There are about half a dozen builders on site every day. They are not covered by the stay-at-home rules. The same for my neighbour, he is a heating and santitation engineer and his guys go out every day for finish the installations they had started or for servicing and repairs.

There are another 3 renovations going on in my street. There's been no work on any of them for about 4 weeks now.

Top tip - p1ss before you leave the house.

BBC News - Coronavirus: Passport Office staff told to go back to work
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52219930



Where do you start with that? Pressure obviously came from the top for the deputy scientific officer to specifically call the passport office? That he's advocating a dangerous and denied (by the government no less) system of virus management as leverage?

Can we fire the [LIFTED] and then get him and his bosses in front of an oversight committee please?

I'm sorry but this is all genuinely evil at this point.

BBC News - Coronavirus: Significant social distancing needed 'until vaccine found'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52308201

Make sure you click that ONS 9 in 10 link too... I'm sorry, but I don't buy those 'underlying health condition' stats for one second. That's the BS we were presented with right at the beginning before it became obvious the virus seemed to just kill whoever at it's worst. The line about multiple conditions especially doesn't sit right with me when I know perfectly healthy people whose bodies just fighting back left them trashed! Most people just aren't running around with the multiple conditions you'd even assume would be problematic.

I mean there's the obvious candidates, but what exactly are we counting as an underlying condition here? Acne?

ive been on furlough for the last 3 weeks so ive had plenty of time to read, especially about corona.
there seems to be a theory that blood type maybe, maybe, involved as corona seems to be hitting different people in different ways.
also the types of vaccinations that someone had in the past ie. TB vaccine (which ive had about 3 years ago) may also be involved.

but on the most part one thing that is crystal clear is that no one really knows ...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52330531

I'd call him a lunatic but he knows exactly what he's doing, the [LIFTED] sociopath.

Yeah. It makes me glad to be in Germany at the moment, when I look at the blame shifting and grandstanding by USA and UK politicians. Merkel's sit down and explain things clearly and calmly is a total contrast to the orange one. I think the German word "Affentheater" (monkey theatre, German for a complete farce, charade or craziness) sums up the situation in American politics at the moment.

Here, nearly all of the parties are pulling together to make a single way forward, they have put aside their petty squabbles, until this is over. Trump seems to be using it as a chance to improve his re-election potential by brushing all his mistakes off on others...