Government dashboard seems to be struggling. That's okay, I didn't know if I dare look anyway. Probably about 7500...
While everyones not been dying of covid over summer...
10,000 more deaths than usual occurred in UK homes since June
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...in-uk-homes-since-june?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Well, that is indeed troubling.
But:
But a lot of excess deaths happened because normal care was stopped in exchange for covid care/critical care.
Indeed. Do I want a full lockdown, do I heck... I just fear it may be the only way to get things back under control... but it's worth a punt at something more useful in the middle than "shut the pubs at 10" first. But if we did, I'd never advocate for the NHS to just basically shut down and cancel things like cancer treatments like they did last time, that was downright CRIMINAL and if it was a decision made by someone who'd sworn the Hippocratic Oath then they need a word with themselves.
Heck I still never got the ultrasound I was going to get in March for the discomfort I felt (and still get) in the sort of bowel-ish region, luckily it's not painful (just uncomfortable sometimes) and I'm finding it hard enough to lose weight that if it IS anything to worry about then I'm not at death's door yet. But just shows how many people have been affected, potentially in a life threatening way, by that decision to put everything non covid related on hold while the nightingale hospitals sat empty.
It's the way it was done, not that we should've just let rip.
(It's also, while tragic, nowhere near the 40k that died of covid or the half a million that were forecast to if we'd done nothing)
A couple of days ago someone was chucked off a train at one of the stations mine stops at. He was coughing his guts up all the way from London (obviously not wearing a mask) and was coughing blood by the time the ambulance arrived. It turned out he’d had Covid symptoms for a week but still thought he was fine for a maskless journey to Manchester.

What in the world goes through people's minds when they do something like that. Who knows how many on the train ended up infected. Guessing his prognosis is probably rather poor if he got to the point of coughing up blood, but I don't wish death on him... I hope he lives to learn a lesson and teach it to others.
So, has anyone downloaded the magnificent track and trace app yet?
Yep. I'm a bit of a sceptic of it, and think I'd use it more as a tool to help indicate whether I need to isolate than taking any notification as gospel (I think it gives a time and location so you could easily work out if you were dicing with Death in the pub at the time and should isolate, or minding your own business out in a field somewhere and happened to have a good bluetooth signal with someone and can assume it was a false positive). But keeping an open mind.
Me too! I think from an employee perspective it's that you lose a third of the pay for the hours you don't work..?
Currently we're shut on Fridays and making up hours by working overtime, having shorter lunch breaks and/or working a few hours from home. But I can already envisage that come November this will be seen as an opportunity to say you can no longer do that and will have to take a pay cut worth a third of Friday instead. Best brush up on the ol' finances.
So that's what the figures mean when they say "lab tested"
... I'll get my (lab) coat.