To drive 35 miles for a covid 19 test

[Yellowskies1988]

Had an email from work that I should seek a test if I'm self ilsolatong, which I am due to wife having a temp and being unwell for the last week or so. I've done 1 week and due 1 more self isolation. Wife is high risk and has had a letter to state this and must remain at home for 12 weeks (she's done 4 weeks)

My HR department have email to state I should take a test if I've had to self isolate. No home delivery slots are available for testing and the closest is 35 miles away. That's me taking my wife who has been instructed not to leave the house and also my 2 boys aged 7 and 5, my 7 YO is autistic too.

"Why would someone not want to take a test if they have symptoms?

I know the work can't make the wife take the test but I can't think why she wouldn't want to for her and the family's sake."

To ill to travel? Too far to go? Plus it wont help her recover from whatever she has?

@PotholeParadise it doesn't sound like the wife is actually shielding if she's in the house with someone who's going out every day to work.

"The test won’t be accurate if you aren’t symptomatic."

"WHAT?! If you have coronavirus you will test positive. Even if you don't have symptoms."

You have to be on days 1 to 3 (5 at a push) for it to work. I think that's what they mean. Ie if your symptoms have died down because you are after day 5 for example, it wont work.

"It doesn't sound like the wife is actually shielding if she's in the house with someone who's going out every day to work."
You can shield with someone who has to go out to work, you just do your best to keep separate and use different towels etc.

it doesn't sound like the wife is actually shielding if she's in the house with someone who's going out every day to work.

Not sure I follow your point. Are you saying that if they're not managing to isolate her perfectly from her husband, there's no point her bothering to protect herself and stay inside the house?

This feels like adding 2+2 together and getting 99. If my husband was especially at risk, and I had to go out to work, we'd have to make the best of it and we'd avoid taking additional risks on top of that.

If you're going out to work and bringing the virus home she may as well go out.

Question. If I've gone overbudget by £5, should I just give up on the budget and spluge £500 on tat at ASOS?

If I was at risk and my husband had to work at workplace (where they likely have social distancing in place), should I really say 'fuck it' and leave the house to mix with other people directly?

Are you saying that if they're not managing to isolate her perfectly from her husband, there's no point her bothering to protect herself and stay inside the house?

Well, frankly, no. If they are making a huge effort and not doing it perfectly - then yes - and in that case the husband could with hand on heart say "I cannot have caught CV from my wife anyway".

But we've not got an answer except that he thinks he's susceptible to catching it from her which suggests she is not shielding within the home.

If I had to shield, then I'd either be separating my household into two or all shielding. We actually discussed this (I have borderline severe asthma) and options included me and DD moving to an empty house down the street, or me asking a neighbour if I could shield in their spare room, or all of us shielding. I couldn't shield on my own within our house because my DCs (one of whom has SEN) wouldn't be able to stay away from me for 12 weeks.

I'm afraid I can't possibly agree with you there.

That is a defining example of the 'perfection is the enemy of good' mindset, and I don't do that if I'm sober.

You see it on action every day and the logical absurdities it produces sabotages our live. To take some RL examples, a young woman reads that organic veg she can't afford are best for health, and then feels it's pointless to bother buying and eating the conventionally grown vegetables she can afford. So she continues to focus on taste and continues the unhealthy diet that she enjoys without adding in five portions of vegetables a day.

For another one, that really happens, see grades. For example, a teenage boy realises he won't get the 9s/A*s he wants on his GCSEs after a bereavement in year 10 and feels that 7/8 are worthless. He ends up with 5s instead.

"f you're going out to work and bringing the virus home she may as well go out"

Not entirely true. Husband may be very good at social distancing and not be bringing virus home at all. Her going out, increases that risk. There are lots and lots of people shielding who have family who have to go to work. It's not the case that if you live with someone who is shielding that you absolutely cant go out. It doesnt give lots more people the excuse to not go to work for another 12 weeks.

Neither of those are examples of a disease state where you catch something or you don't.
You don't catch CV "a little" or " a lot". If you catch it, your reaction may be great or little but that's from one incidence of catching it.

The advice about shielding has been clear - either you all shield, or one person in the household shields from the others.

^Neither of those are examples of a disease state where you catch something or you don't.
You don't catch CV "a little" or " a lot". If you catch it, your reaction may be great or little but that's from one incidence of catching it.^

Wait, what?

Viral exposure is definitely a case where you catch a "little" or "a lot". That is why in chicken pox, the last child to develop it in a household often has it worst than anyone else, because their cumulative exposure was greatest. Have you not seen anything about how HCPs are dying because they are exposed to multiple people with coronavirus and so it's too much? The words 'viral load' ring a bell?

I absolutely would not want my high risk partner hanging around somewhere where they could come into direct contact with multiple people with coronavirus in quick succession.

"The advice about shielding has been clear - either you all shield, or one person in the household shields from the others."

But..if you are required to work outside the house, them that's what you've got to do. Imagine a couple living in a one bedroom flat, one has to shield and one has to work. They just have to do their best.

^cumulative is kind of the wrong word, because it's not like the immune system keeps a tallly chart. But the idea of the difference between massive exposure and minor exposure is what I'm trying to get across here.

In fact, just remembered there was at least one case where someone was found to have caught two different strains of coronavirus at once...

Suffice it to say, the NHS shielding letters do not say, 'if you can't isolate either yourself or your entire household 100%, don't bother trying. Come down to a testing centre full of sick people for a picnic, why don't you?"

It must be wonderful suffering symptoms & feeling like crap but having to drive 35 miles there & back & maybe waiting 2-3 hours in a queue is the worst planning ever. We have a testing station in my city but I have heard of people living here having to drive up & down the M1 to other towns to be tested. Why arent there being more postal tests being produced? Why aren't people directed to their nearest testing station? It has been suggested that closed libraries & schools be opened as testing stations so that testing is done as close to home as possible, maybe one testing station per postcode. We are being expected to obey the rules of lockdown, if people are expected to travel 35 miles to be tested, chances are some of them will need petrol, which increases chances of spreading the virus & obviously some people may not be able to afford fuel for a 70 mile round trip.