I agree I was shocked at the BBC interviewing an NHS worker where they where complaining about lack of safety equipment.

According to the BBC the NHS workers only had the standard face mask and a paper apron instead of a full hazmat suit...!!!

there is no such thing as a paper apron for a start as they are clearly plastic and disposable. and that was the picture they showed on the news..

so why should we believe anything they churn out if they are trying to panic us into believing that vital NHS staff are wearing paper uniforms...

still some left over BBC bull from Brexit I guess

Well said, DSM.
A sense of perspective is needed from the media. Any death from this is tragic, yet, compared with 1989's figures, it's a "drop in the ocean", and despite me being a 20 year old news watcher, at the time, I'm at a loss to recall THAT tragedy, if it EVER made national headlines, in the year of Tianamon Sq, Hillsborough, Berlin Wall/Communism's decrease, etc.

I've said for years, this country isn't ruled by the Queen (ceremonially) and the Houses of Parliament. It's ruled by the heads of the BBC, Sky News, ITN, the tabloids/broadsheets and their collective minions. They make and break this country. Winkers.

Sadly, we live in a 24/7 world news goldfish bowl. Whenever anything noteworthy happens we have endless experts, footage and analysis all day every day regurgitating the same stories and pummeling us with shock and awe statistics.

It feeds paranoia, fear, insecurity and panic and the media are to blame.

Oh for the days wben you'd be watching Coronation Street, they'd be a brief interruption to tell you of some nuclear disaster then it would be back to Stan Ogden post-haste.

Exactly. If you go on Facebook or Twitter, you would think its the end of days.

We really have become the lemmings being led to the cliff's edge...

For anybody of a certain age, surely the TV highlight of the 20th century was the news flash that was the SAS raid on the Iranian embassy??...

Yup, interrupted the snooker final. Higgins lost, too. Booo

Thorburn v Higgins... 2 extremes of snooker around one table

At the gym tonight speaking to a regular who is 80yrs old + fitter than most people half his age.Said it’s the only pleasure he gets + it gets him out of his house for few hours but the words he said to me struck a chord.This virus might see him off but he won’t let loneliness kill him either.

I suppose back in '89 we were rather more accepting of lifes' little tripwires. Nowadays parents take their kids 30 yards down the road in a Humbee in case a terrorist attempts to kidnap them. Expectations are now very high on the quality of life and people feel a sense of entitlement. The Daily Mail headline would have probably been ' Scandal as supply of spades dries up'. The Telegraph would have been 'Buy Spear and Jackson shares as sales rocket'. The Sun ? " See our flu-tit of the month on page 3' . Just a word of caution on the numbers though; there is no test for the flu and deaths by flu are not recorded so those will be estimated numbers.

It will be interesting to see the beneficial effects the reported lack of air pollution, brought about by home working ,will have on on the severity of overall infections.

Quite a bit like the "grabbing numbers out of thin air" for this virus. Three weeks ago, "experts" predicted a daily exponential rise in deaths. It simply hasn't happened (thankfully). Figures banded about, only go to scare not only our public, but the whole planet.
We don't need to be told how many they think will die, it's immaterial. All we need to know, is how to (sensibly/practically) go about our lives.

These "experts" AND media scaremongerers, are little better than the Grim Reaper.