Listen Very Carefully

Apparently the EU have banned common sense along with bent bananas british bangers!!!!!! That is according to Johnson B currently Acting Chief Clown

Helen1964

Likewise here in Strasbourg. People are behaving like cretins. Pushing past each other. Huddling together even outside labs where they’ve gone to get tested because they’re “symptomatique”.
I was in N Ireland a couple of weeks ago and the difference in behaviour was marked. People standing aside on narrow sections of footpath to let others past. Lots of smiles and thank you’s.

G-J-B

I had a good friend (in the UK) hospitalised with Covid - doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, was perfectly healthy, early 40's. Once it affects your breathing it sounds like hell; I wouldn't wish anyone to go through with that. Thankfully they released him, although they still struggled with the breathing at home for several more days, and now a few weeks later they're slowly getting back their health.
In supermarkets social distancing goes out of the windows, but everyone wears the masks, the hand gels are made available in all the shops. I don't know what it's like in other parts of France, but people here seem very respectful of the rules.
My wife was ill with something altogether different, but at the doctor's you're then obliged to have the test. The same day a nurse pops over to our house after tea, does the test, takes it back into town (20 mins away) to the lab, which is still open until 9pm, and then she got the results the next day, nothing to pay of course. The nurse said of everybody she's tested, everyone so far has come back negative.

EuroTrash

Glad your friend is on the mend G-J-B.

G-J-B

Thanks EuroTrash, they gave us quite the scare. Like some others have reported, they were starting to feel better after a week, and that's the moment the virus really hit hard.

EuroTrash

It does bring it home to you when it happens to someone you know.
A work colleague/good friend of mine in the UK caught it very early on, in April, before we knew much about it. She lives alone and she didn't want to go into hospital unless it became absolutely necessary. She thought she was over the worst, then as you say it came back and she realised she needed to be in hospital but by that time she was no state to do anything about it because it was all she could do to keep breathing, no way could she start making phone calls. Thankfully she got through it on her own Everybody at work was furloughed or working from home and nobody knew the state she'd been in until afterwards. It doesn't bear thinking about how it could have ended up.

G-J-B

Terrifying when you live alone and don't know whether to make that difficult call. There was something about a young guy (London I think) who didn't want to burden the use of hospital beds, so never called in, but ended up dying at home alone.
Thankfully my friend's partner was able to call on their behalf, but she came down with it pretty bad too, but just about avoided hospital. I was a little bit complacent about the whole thing until then. There's so much misinformation, scare mongering and exploitation that I find it very hard to conceptualise the whole situation. Clearly it's not something you want to get, it's akin to playing Russian roulette.