Maybe we need a scratching chin emoji?

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741?

"But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

Many scientists have criticised gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in a lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release"

🤔🤔

The reports of people being stopped from travelling to tourism spots all said they were sent home and I'm sure the same applies - but how could the police enforce it, short of escorting said car back home?

Johnson needs to be careful the strategy isn't dubbed "all work and no play" instead because that's what it sounds like. The ST also has a comment from a Cabinet Minister saying pressure to get people back to work is coming from big money and not the general public. I understand the need to get the economy moving again but things need handling with kid gloves.

In what is being dubbed a “whack-a-mole” strategy in Whitehall, Johnson’s team will announce plans to “very gradually” ease the lockdown across the whole country and then “hit hard” any Covid-19 hotspots that erupt after that, imposing even tougher lockdown rules on individual care homes, prisons or whole towns.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/our-future-after-coronavirus-lockdown-begins-to-take-shape-a-marathon-game-of-whack-a-mole-pw3vc8pmm

A reborn Grant Shapps may be doing the most honest day of work in his life:

Shapps: 'Greater testing capacity would have led to fewer deaths'

Fewer people would have died from coronavirus in the UK if the country had greater testing capacity sooner, transport secretary Grant Shapps said.

Asked whether fewer people would have died if testing capacity had been greater sooner, he told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “Yes. If we had had 100,000 test capacity before this thing started and the knowledge that we now have retrospectively I’m sure many things could be different.

“The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had - although we’re very big in pharmaceuticals as a country - we’re not a country that had very large test capacity.”

Shapps added the UK may have had a high death rate compared to some other countries because of “density of population”. He said Britain has “denser cities” compared to other countries and the number of deaths are high because the figures are a “product of excellent statisticians counting in a way that other countries don’t”. On the issue of infection rates in care homes, he said: “Infections in care homes are now falling, not rising.” He added that patients and residents of care homes can now be tested.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/may/03/uk-coronavirus-live-doctors-had-prepared-to-announce-boris-johnsons-death

Let me get this straight, the Trump Administration defunded the Pandemic Control Centres and then tipped cash into this? Or was it privately funded?

Unless drivers are travelling to meet other people there is little risk of spreading the virus on driving, unless they're concerned about increase in road accidents, which makes sense.

I can see the need to stop people from travelling popular spots, but would police/public interaction risk spreading of the virus? Presumably the police will be wearing mask? 

Similar to what Italy did but unfortunately it was too late 

I saw Shapps on the AMS this morning and he was asked about people entering this country taking a 14 day isolation period 

But I haven't heard anything with regards European lorry drivers who enter the UK on a daily basis and aren't the most hygienic at the best of times - what controls are on these ?

Maybe because they are mostly self isolated perhaps Marcus. All the more perhaps as well if visiting service stations where these frequent you should be even more cautious by self cleaning. 

If you did that you disrupt supply chains and lorry drivers are travelling largely alone, not in the potentially disease ridden aircraft housing

Very true Phil but when there is a language barrier they jump out of their cabs and  try and explain visually rather than verbally , you also have to go and completely disinfect the toilets if they have used them . Yes , I said NO WAY Pedro the week before last and got into a right row , not that I could understand a word he said 

Yes Dave , agreed but the euro drivers are a law unto themselves they can leave Denmark Friday and be in Oxfordshire on Monday , plenty of time to pass anything on .

Appreciate its a logistical nightmare but they are more than capable of passing something on to a warehouse full of hundreds  

Ah, OK.

But, a few idiots aside, you'd think that most people would get the message.

It occurs to me that there could be an interesting conversation or two if they were stopped by the police again on the way home...

It has become difficult to say anything on here about China without being accused of "having a go at someone" or defending China, when in fact I am not. But there is another midway viewpoint. It seems that they looked after themselves, in a way that Russia and the USA would have if it had started there. There is a refusal when accusing China of being slow to act  to accept that many democratic Western Countries were slower and with more information. I accept that this virus started in China and they had the responsibility first for trying to contain it. We know they failed but we also know it had spread to Europe before they were aware of it.  But do you honestly think the USA  or Russia would have been more open and acted more quickly if it had originated there? Their track record on it so far doesn't imply they would have. The overall consensus seems to be that China should have done more in the first couple of weeks, and i think they should with their international borders. They tried to play it down because they didn't want to get the publicity they are now getting. But there is also a mainstream opinion that what they did after that was very strong and very effective and they shared a lot of useful information quickly. So whilst I agree that it is a repressive regime and as we know critics are likely to be silenced it hasn't been totally irresponsible. 

It is difficult to know the truth at the moment and I am trying to keep an open mind. It is very difficult when you read this, somebody who has lived through a lockdown here and in China to not see both sides:-

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/wuhan-evacuee-wishes-had-never-014558330.html

Very odd. Morning run was, again, very quiet. And can't blame it on a bad weather forecast this time.

Usual 5am 'hardcores' (two groups, 3 people, not including me).

No one at 6am.

Again the period from 5:40 to 6:00 I was the only person there.

6am used to be much busier than 5am and now its the other way round. How strange.

I'm assuming the 6amers are 'lightweights' who have now decided to revert to more sociable hours.