The news agenda has moved on but the PPE disgrace in the UK continues. This tucked away in The Times today: 

Fifth of frontline doctors complain of unusable coronavirus PPE

A fifth of doctors say they have been given unusable personal protective equipment amid concerns that faulty facemasks and surgical gowns are being delivered to hospitals.

A senior nurse’s FFP3 respirator mask failed while intubating and was later discovered to be out of date, and doctors have complained of PPE smelling of mould and being visibly degraded, according to a survey of almost 900 frontline medical staff.

Rebecca Lewis, of the Doctors’ Association UK, which carried out the survey, said that doctors were concerned about the equipment. “This includes mouldy masks sometimes many years out of date, gowns with holes in and PPE that has failed during high-risk procedures,” she said. “Doctors are having to attempt to repair these items themselves, or work without PPE.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fifth-of-frontline-doctors-complain-of-unusable-coronavirus-ppe-wxf09qbb3

Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

If a slot was created for incompetence in the Guinness Book of Records, these incumbents would walk it!

That's what it seemed like even without the benefit of inside knowledge. Throw in some wishful thinking on the part of Fleet Street and you get total confusion. 

Whatever possessed Downing Street that it supposed that the media would run a restrained version of any leaks?

I’m a cynic, but I’d considered that the leak surrounding the lockdown was designed to divert attention away from this : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/all-400000-gowns-flown-from-turkey-for-nhs-fail-uk-standards

We were talking about IT yesterday. Following on from that, the Guardian mentions this about the free laptops coming for disadvantaged children:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/07/families-sue-government-over-little-or-no-education-for-their-children

"The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, told MPs that 200,000 laptops would be distributed at a cost of £85m."

That's £425 per laptop, presumably ex-VAT.

Now, I buy laptops as part of my job at the school. That's more than we spend on teacher laptops, so in theory we should be getting i5s with 256GB SSDs and 8 GB RAM. (eBuyer has a Lenovo meeting those specs right now for £392 ex VAT).

Anything less - especially bearing in mind the bulk purchasing power the gov't has - would mean the government's been ripped-off.

Let's see what we end up with next month...

This virus really is an evil beast - now a chance it can be added to the list of STDs

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/covid-19-found-in-semen-of-infected-men-say-chinese-doctors

No. Not any more. They were briefed by one of the Downing St advisors. The usual unnamed source.

I agree. Unbelievably inept and dangerous.

Further, almost anything Johnson says in Sunday will now feel negative because I cannot believe there will more than a token easing.

But, for balance, the media must shoulder some responsibility for several weeks of growing clamour for answers on the way out of the restrictions when it should have been blatantly obvious that the focus needs to be on crushing Covid-19 first.

Please keep us updated. 

 Agree with all of that. A number of people have raised questions around the science of lockdown and those deserve to be discussed. However, I suspect the clarion calls from some sections of the "right wing media" (perhaps not the sort of Tories you or I would be more likely to support) have more to do with money and less to do with science. Some of those shouting the loudest that things "must get back to normal" appear to be squirrelled away in their country mansions or even out of the UK completely. 

Second coronavirus wave feared as lockdowns ease: Live updates

Europe, US loosen lockdowns amid reports of continuing rise in deaths worldwide including 75,000 in the US.

As Europe and the US loosen their lockdowns against the coronavirus, health experts express growing dread over what they say is an all-but-certain second wave of deaths and infections.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/deaths-hit-75000-covid-19-wave-feared-live-updates-200507231219399.html

I agree with all of your comments.  It’s depressing that the UK should be essentially in the same place as the USA and Brazil: all with incompetent, reckless, populist leadership.

I’m convinced that the USA will be plunged into a larger scale pandemic and, as the basic characteristics of the SARS-Cov2 virus haven’t changed all I can see is a growing policy battle about how to proceed.

Here, given the R value is barely below the critical threshold of one, I worry that anything more than a token gesture will be followed by the car being thrown into reverse.

I still expect some easing - garden centres for example. It was always going to be a minimal easing though.

​

Rail services to be increased as travel restrictions ease

Quote

 

There are plans to increase train services from Monday 18 May across Britain, in preparation for the eventual easing of travel restrictions. The move will ensure the railways are able to cope with a rise in passengers when some people return to work. Rail bosses and government sources told the BBC that services will be increased to about 70% of the normal timetable.

At the moment, only half of normal rail services are running due to the coronavirus lockdown. Adopting a new timetable and reintroducing more trains requires a lot of planning, so preparations are being made for an increase to - on average - around 70% of the full timetable. Rail bosses say staff shortages within the industry due to illness or people self-isolating means the new timetable is the maximum level of service they can provide.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52584983

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I completely agree, Peter.

For all that the government has handled this crisis really, really badly from the outset, many sections of the media, including some BBC journalists IMO, have hardly helped matters either with their repeated questions recently regarding the easing of the lockdown.

Like everyone, I fully realise that there will come a point when we will have to try to restart the economy in some way. At the moment though, the situation in terms of the battle against the virus is still far too precarious for any of the restrictions to be lifted at this time, in my opinion.

If we have made some more meaningful progress against the virus by the time we reach the end of this month and the early part of June, then maybe things might change. It is too early at the moment though.

The media seem to be accountable to no one, that's the problem. It seems the only time this happens is if someone has challenged them in court over a story, but in the meantime they can destroy that person. How often they report things for days on end which aren't true, but when they should be holding their hands up apologising, they just move on.
While freedom of speech is good on the most part, I feel the media have too freer role. In the updates they hang on every word. Peston was like a vulture when the guy mentioned green shoots. Others alongside knew that wasn't words you should be feeding the gutter press and tried to focus on our current precarious position. Didn't stop them using them words though. Absolute vultures and they cannot be trusted.

Someone should be calling the press out. They should not be exempt from scrutiny. Perhaps it would clean up their act somewhat. Write factual things instead of maybe's and could's.

I thought the idea of the daily briefings was to provide the media with the facts but it seems that’s not enough.  Furthermore, some of the journalists have shown their lack of understanding and common sense when asking stupid questions repeatedly.  I guess we’ll know what the next stage is when the PM announces it!