Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

My aunt was a nurse. Slipped off a set of steps while changing the light bulb in her bathroom and got a toothbrush stuck in her aye. Bristles first.

To use another apt Apocalypse Now analogy:

I'm not saying it's hard data but it goes to show accidents can happen anywhere anytime so there is no point pointing the finger at one specific group saying they are going to suck up NHS resources.

( base jumpers sigh with relief )

Indeed, but the point is that the rate of accidents is roughly proportional to the duration (or number of iterations) of an activity. The more you do something, or the longer you do something, the greater the risk.

If anyone thinks that a 160km ride carries the same (or lower) risk than a 20km ride then they're deluding themselves. The risk may be low but the number of cycle related KSIs each year is real statistic - how it will be affected by lower traffic counts (but seemingly more possibility of speeding motorists and closer passes) will come out in the stats at a later date.

Climbing your stairs 5 times in the course of a day represents a risk, but it's a necessary risk if that's what you generally do in a day.

Climbing your stairs an extra 200 times a day as part of a fitness regime represents a significant unnecessary increase in risk, there are safer ways to get a similar amount of exercise. But ultimately it's the choice of the individual concerned.

An everyday activity has risk but that alone doesn't provide justification for doing that same activity far more frequently (and beyond the point of necessity) without understanding the possible consequences.

This translates to outdoor exercise too. No-one is saying don't go out for a daily cycle ride, or whatever form of exercise you want, but the longer the daily ride the greater the risk and, at some point, the less likely that a journey is likely to pass as "reasonable". Doing 400km a day would be hard to justify as "reasonable" or "necessary" for pretty much anyone in the country.

In this current situation outdoor exercise is a luxury not a necessity. Maddening as it may be, it's perfectly possible to maintain some form of fitness without going outside, and you never know this may become the situation here if the number of cases does not start to fall soon.

Yes an increase in DIY will represent an increase in A&E admissions, there's no great surprise. No-one has said no to doing DIY but the guidance to police recently issued on what constitutes a "necessary" trip to the shops suggests a trip to buy DIY equipment for renovation or improvements alone would be unlikely to be reasonable: https://www.college.police.uk/What-we-do/COVID-19/Documents/What-constitutes-a-reasonable-excuse.pdf but allows trips to buy tools for "maintenance and upkeep". I guess that if you happen to be going in order to buy items for "maintenance and upkeep" then you can buy the other items while you are there (much as you can buy non-essential items when food shopping).

If the Police would rather people weren't going out to buy items purely for renovation or improvements then it could be implied that "they" don't want those kinds of activities to increase (this is not the same as them wanting those kinds of activities to stop completely.) Again, the idea is not increase the burden on the NHS and, ideally, to reduce it, but not reduce it to zero by somehow banning it.

The tl;dr is that a small proportion cyclists (and runners to an extent) are certainly pushing the bounds of "reasonableness" and the "necessity" of their exercise regimes. As Chris Boardman said in a recent tweet, people should be thinking about getting out to maintain a healthy minimum level of fitness (and mental health), but not "entrainment". It's not about maintaining relatively extreme levels of fitness (in comparison to the general population). Social responsibility should have you indoors (or in private outdoors) as much as you can but, at the end of the day Jeff, it's an individuals choice.