Onwards..

Well, having seen the list of key workers that schools have to stay open for, I would be surprised if the numbers of children attending school fell very much at all. 

I wonder what delights today will bring 

Once the two girls have gone to school I'm going to try Iceland ( 08:30) then Sainsbury's if I have no joy , just looking for a standard shop , lets see what happens

I should imagine the weekend in these parts will be chaotic 

Indeed, no wonder they asked everyone to come into work as usual on Monday.

It seems rather than try to stop the spread, the plan is instead to slow it down somewhat - it's inevitable it'll still be spreading amongst the hundreds of children I'd expect to turn up!

Meanwhile to answer Brian's point from the other thread, I wouldn't worry too much about high figures in the younger half of the population. It'll be because of the lack of testing - if testing were widely available, we'd doubtless see the percentage affected is several orders of magnitude smaller.

EDIT: The same applies to the overall mortality rate, of course. This stupid lack of testing is massively inflating the death rate figures.

Having said that, bear in mind we should be seeing over 100 deaths each day by this time next week, with several hundreds a day the week after that. Beyond that depends on how much contact actually gets cut... I'm not convinced there'll be a massive flattering of the curve given the mild measures currently in place.

Breathtaking ignorance and arrogance, more concerned about their spring break being ruined. Trump's future voters.....

 "If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I'm not gonna let it stop me from partying”

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1240371160078000128

Police apparently patrolling supermarkets in parts of Australia to prevent panic buying. Seems to be working quite well. Why isn't that happening here?

The government needs to wake up to this as it is starting to become a serious issue. There are only so many drivers, so many delivery trucks and these drivers are restricted by law. They have to have their rest breaks by law.

Too many supermarkets, not enough police?

(I daresay if one of the few policeman was patrolling our local Tesco, the burglars would be out in force!)

Edit: There are around 13,000 supermarkets in the UK (Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Asda, Lidl, Aldi and Co-op - others not included).

Do we have 13,000 (or 26,000 if they double-up) spare policemen? I think not: we have around 123,000 policemen in the UK as of last year.

I suppose the only good news about it is that it'll mean the virus will rip its way around the teachers and other school staff... so they''ll be immune for a few months sooner rather than later. (Just in time for the summer holidays, no doubt!)

EDIT: And when they're available to the general public, I plan to get one of those "have you had it" testing kits as soon as I can. I've had a slight cough for the past couple of days, coupled with that fever and sore throat.

I caught this thing from the head (who's my age, said it was a "chest infection" and not to worry as she coughed all over) and it took just over a week to show symptoms. The head had had meetings with the "executive" head, who works 4 days a week at our school and 1 day a week at a school with confirmed Coronavirus.

I'd dismissed all of that as a coincidence (after all, it felt like a cold coming on and I've had dozens of those), but the cough is unusual and even though my sore throat is easing I haven't become snotty as I would with a cold. Whatever this is, it's not a run-of-the-mill winter cold.

Maybe supermarkets should now have special checkouts reserved just for the elderly and the disabled and just one checkout for selfish b@stards.

The checkout of shame.

I see Apple is doing it's bit to help curb panic buying - limiting customers to just 2 new iPhones at a time .... 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8132815/Apple-limits-number-iPhones-customers-purchase-faces-delays-coronavirus.html 

It's interesting that countries which have more Android phones seem to have far fewer cases of the old Corona. Perhaps Apple is so aspirational even the virus wants to be on it. 

wishing you a speedy recovery Retron, are you self isolating now?

I mentioned this before but the difference between Spain and Portugal is incredible

Spain: 18,077 cases and 833 deaths

Portugal: 785 cases and 4 dead.