Hub signed us up after being contacted by letter looking for volunteers for the monitoring programme run by Oxford University (and sharing the results with the Office of National Statistics) for checking randomised households in order to monitor the spread of Covid-19 in the community as opposed to the targeted testing.
Anyway, we didn't expect to be selected and especially not to be contacted so soon but they wanted to turn up with a do it yourself swab test within 2 hours. As hub didn't wake me up after another bad night until half an hour before they were due, there was quite a lot of hectic last minute scrambling and then a rather longer wait for somebody to turn up; but they eventually did.
The swabbing wasn't especially pleasant but not as bad as it is made out by some people. Anyway, we are in for three more tests in the coming 4 weeks. We will hear back in case a test comes back positive, which we don't expect.
But since all hub and I can practically do is staying out of harm's way as much as possible, this is something we can contribute to and help with the data that will influence the pandemic management decisions the government makes and any scientific research into the pandemic and the lessons to learn in later years.
When you are over 100 times more likely to catch Covid-19 than a fourteen year old (or in the case of my hub around 500 times with the attendant higher risk of a having a bad ride and a higher fatality rate), you do have a rather vested interest in helping to create a as good a database as possible in order to get us through the pandemic while your government has to walk the thankless and extremely difficult to master tightrope between controlling the spread of the infection and limiting the resulting economic damage/record lending. The UK is very much on the back foot already.
Anyway, we didn't expect to be selected and especially not to be contacted so soon but they wanted to turn up with a do it yourself swab test within 2 hours. As hub didn't wake me up after another bad night until half an hour before they were due, there was quite a lot of hectic last minute scrambling and then a rather longer wait for somebody to turn up; but they eventually did.
The swabbing wasn't especially pleasant but not as bad as it is made out by some people. Anyway, we are in for three more tests in the coming 4 weeks. We will hear back in case a test comes back positive, which we don't expect.
But since all hub and I can practically do is staying out of harm's way as much as possible, this is something we can contribute to and help with the data that will influence the pandemic management decisions the government makes and any scientific research into the pandemic and the lessons to learn in later years.
When you are over 100 times more likely to catch Covid-19 than a fourteen year old (or in the case of my hub around 500 times with the attendant higher risk of a having a bad ride and a higher fatality rate), you do have a rather vested interest in helping to create a as good a database as possible in order to get us through the pandemic while your government has to walk the thankless and extremely difficult to master tightrope between controlling the spread of the infection and limiting the resulting economic damage/record lending. The UK is very much on the back foot already.