Projective simplicity and Bergman's property for unit groups of continuous rings

We prove that the projective unit group $\mathrm{PGL}(R)$, i.e., the quotient of the unit group $\mathrm{GL}(R)$ modulo its center, of any non-discrete irreducible, continuous ring $R$ is simple. Moreover, we show that $\mathrm{GL}(R)$ has uncountable strong cofinality, that is, it is not the union