Nicola Sturgeon⁩ has recommended wearing face masks in shops and on public transport it is not mandatory though

I think if we are to go down that route, then it should be mandatory for crowded places and with clear instructions on how to make them and then disinfect them daily.

 

Sadly an ambulance has just turned up at the house on our street where the young family who reported having COVID-19 live. On our WhatsApp group they (man, women and child) said symptoms were mild. People on the street have been doing their shopping so I know they have been eating good quality and nutritious food. It was thought they had all got over it. 

When you see this at first hand it makes you think who the hell will want to go to a pub or restaurant even if restrictions are eased. 

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I suppose the ambulance call could also be unrelated to Covid?

Yes of course it could be unrelated. The ambulance driver could have got lost and decided to park and turn the vehicle around on that particular drive. 

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But why do you assume it couldn't possibly be unrelated to CV?

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"As Delia the Norwich owner said, WHERE ARE YOU?"

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Is there a variety of approaches from those countries and how did they balance the economic impact? Did (do) those countries all have lockdowns and if not, how have they managed to keep cases so low?

Assuming that the ambulance has arrived because of COVID-19, this is indicative of the pathology of this novel virus - people are sick for about a week to ten days and then they either recover or get worse. This is very unlike influenza when you are seriously sick for about five days and then recover. There is a report in The Times today about a 51 year old woman who was sick with the virus at home for about ten days before her condition worsened and she was finding it hard to breath - her husband called for an ambulance, but it was too late to save her.

Meanwhile from the BBC website:

More than 2,200 Indonesians who were not recorded as having died with Covid-19 had acute symptoms of the disease, an investigation by Reuters news agency has found. Indonesia has recorded 765 deaths so far, but medical experts believe the figure is much higher

- as we have long suspected, massive under-reporting is occurring in some countries, particularly highly populated poorer nations.

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Yes I felt the same Brian when the contract cleaning manager died at such a young age it has definitely made me feel much more nervous   about my family safety.

i guess it’s a form of ignorance on my behalf.

 

Austria have announced that they are reopening hotels on 29/05 - can’t imagine they’ll have too many foreign guests.

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Because the possibility is vanishingly low compared to the possibility it's directly related to the known presence of a widespread and dangerous virus?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

I have just started constructing some graphs using data for seven countries and will do a comparison at some point.
Russia was one of those countries and already the observations from the graph were not stacking up to the rate per cases to deaths.
This from the BBC ticker does not surprise me at all:
New record for Russian infections
Officially the total of new coronavirus infections in Russia has overtaken the totals for China and Iran.
On Tuesday the Russian government reported a record daily rise in new cases – 6,411 – bringing the total to 93,558. Moscow has the most cases, compared with other Russian regions.
The number of deaths rose to 867.
Deaths are still far below those for the worst-hit countries, such as the US and Italy, but Russia’s numbers are rising daily.
Some medics do not believe the official data and are naming fellow medics they say have died from Covid-19. The list – 72 names so far – is posted on Facebook by Dr Vladimir Budiansky.
And an opposition website, Open Media, reports that dozens of nurses have quit a Moscow hospital – Kommunarka – where allegedly they were underpaid and lacking necessary protective kit. The management disputes their claims.

If 'better' numbers ever come out regarding deaths, I am sure there is a lot going on here we don't know about. Just recently images of those ambulances queuing for the hospital did not look good at all.

Wow! Even the BPC is now starting to ring the alarm bells:

Why UK's death toll could soon be the worst in Europe - in charts

UK has recorded Europe's highest average daily deaths for four days in a row - pushing it towards becoming Europe's worst affected country

The UK’s five-day average for coronavirus deaths is now the highest of any major European economy at this point in the pandemic’s curve, new analysis has revealed.

At this point in the pandemic, some 42 days since the tenth death, the five-day average for deaths in the UK stands at 598, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. This is far higher than Italy (559), France (509) and Spain (423). 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/28/uks-death-toll-will-soon-worst-europe-charts/

 

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39 far higher? All still early days yet. All eyes are on Russia if the data ever comes out!

Coronavirus: Scottish government suggests covering face in shops
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52457324

Wales has reported 232 new cases and 17 new deaths

Scotland has reported 200 new cases and 70 new deaths

This is true and is what causes the disagreements. The experts don't really know yet how it is going to pan out and us armchair experts certainly don't. So at the moment I think people are entitled and likely to post completely different views. For example you are perpetually highly critical of China, I am, but much less so. Xioni2 is critical of the Government. But we shouldn't be made to feel that a criticism of a government policy should be withheld. I'm sure China would say that about their people and we don't want to go down that road!

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Journalists don't do themselves any favours when they sensationalise things - I don't count a 7% difference as "far higher".

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NHS England has reported 546 new deaths up from 329 yesterday



Last Tuesday. NHS England announced 778 new deaths

Prof Hugh Pennington in front of a Scottish Parliament Committee this morning has painted a fairly bleak picture in some regards,  he's not putting any money on vaccines as they are generally not effective against coronaviruses.

"Probably the best thing we can hope for is a vaccine or a set of vaccines which are partially protective," he says.

Adding that these may not work for the elderly because generally vaccines have not been as effective among this demographic, ie the people most vulnerable to full blown life threatening COVID-19 are least likely to be protected by any suite of vaccines. 

Also estimates that R0 value in care homes has been as high as 14, and by their very nature even the best run care homes taking all the precautions would struggle to lower the R0 number below 10 once the virus is in a home. He described care homes as 'super spreaders'

This is a long standing issue, Phil, and I'll be interested when someone unpicks the history so the lessons can be learned. Although there were voices warning of problems, many, myself included, assumed that preparedness and surveillance at the time were adequate. We did not challenge the available information. There was no single coherent message. I suspect that the end of the Cold War affected public and political thinking and less effort was made to transform spending for preparedness in war into preparedness for civil emergencies. A lost opportunity. Armchair critics can speculate all they please, and may even sometimes prove right, but as I said: "If they are smart.....

R.

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Almost all the European countries from that list plus Australia and New Zealand closed their borders, had some form of lockdown and they are using the WHO recommended test, trace and isolate strategy.

Singapore and South Korea are champions of that strategy and they even avoided having strict lockdowns.

The European countries which rely on tourism (e.g. Greece) will have a big economic hit, but they rely on the money tree in Fraknfurt. They have also started talking of allowing tourism between safe countries only.