What do posters outside Scotland think of our handling of the pandemic?

[ssd]

Genuine question, not bigging up ir putting down Scotland or anywhere else.
The news us just getting confusing and various threads on here add to it.
I'd just like to hear what non Scottish posters think about what's happening up here. The numbers are really low but we're still locked down more and of course have fewer citizens than England, and less congestion.
Thanks for any answers.

I'm Welsh and think our governments have prioritised flexing their powers over what is good for the countries at times. I don't think it will pay off in the long term for us.

I'm Scottish , living in Scotland
NS talks a good game compared to Boris , but the media up here are also less critical of her preformative

The handling of Nike conference stinks of a cover up , and there has been a fiasco in Care Homes,
Home carers took ages to be given suitable PPE, and many had not been tested ,
I think most people have been ignoring the 5 mile rule for weeks now , it makes very little sense.
Restaurants and pubs will most likely not be able to operate with the 2M rule
She did not rule out a potential quarantine for other visitors from rest of UK , when asked a question at at the press conference today , which would be a disaster for tourism
I fear for the economy

Scot living in England.
Delighted that Covid numbers in Scotland are so low.

Not a fan of the SNP but I have a certain amount of respect for NS.
Clear communicator ( even if I don’t like the message most of the time)
Surrounded by incompetent and inadequate colleagues eg John Swinney.

Lots of political point scoring and posturing during this crisis but if Scotland manages to be Covid free by Sept, then well done.

Will she and the SNP be off the hook for the mismanagement of Scottish care homes, Scottish education and the Scottish economy ?
Not to mention the Alex Salmond saga.
The Scottish media rarely seem to scrutinise the SNP effectively.
Time will tell.

I want to visit my elderly Scottish relatives who are really struggling.
Too old to be getting on public transport and they don’t drive so their world has been tiny for 4 months now.

I’ll not be going into quarantine when I visit them which again seems to be one of those stories circulating in the press ( a bit like schools and blended learning) designed to cause maximum angst for regular people just trying to do their best in the circumstances.

I fear for the Scottish economy.

Interesting all the opinions here, many of you don't think much of NS, even though our numbers are way down here.
It's a hard one, we are watching Leicester have to lock down again and that'll damage business there, whilst our numbers are low here and many feel that's damaging business.

It's a bloody minefield really.

The job England and Scotland have had in getting numbers down just aren’t comparable. Much higher population and density of population down south.

@ssd

Interesting all the opinions here, many of you don't think much of NS, even though our numbers are way down here. It's a hard one, we are watching Leicester have to lock down again and that'll damage business there, whilst our numbers are low here and many feel that's damaging business.

It's a bloody minefield really.

Yes, reopening early to ‘get the economy going’ is foolish if businesses have to keep closing again. That’s not financially viable.

The real problem will be how/if you get tourism going again. No easy answers here. If countries who open up for tourism are second spikes in the autumn, and more painful lockdowns for their populations, that may swing it.

I’m not outside Scotland, I’m in it and I don’t think our ‘handling’ of the virus has been any different from the rest of the UK, except that Scot Govt has decided to extend the main ‘lockdown’ measures longer. Scotland has had a lot fewer infections most probably because because of its position on the lines of travel from more distant hotspots and population / distribution so I’m relieved about that.

I guess the very self-conscious ‘four nations’ way of conducting the Covid-19 messaging is because health is devolved, but realistically there couldn’t be substantial differences, or only those which made sense at a more local level, and that isn’t necessarily just ‘four national’. People who dislike Johnson and like Sturgeon saying ‘Nicola has handled this so much better,’ are just telling themselves a story they prefer. The virus has been in charge.

Where I live, in a backwater suburb, everyone has been seriously ignoring the ‘guidelines’ for weeks now, all the trades have been working fully throughout the lockdown and I have yet to see a pensioner of this Parish wearing a mask in a shop, or worrying overmuch about social distancing in a queue. Local businesses are howling now at the extended restrictions, they’ve been badly hit, lots won’t recover.

Within a couple of miles radius of me, although the community infection rate has remained low, four care homes have been in the news headlines for the number of residents they have lost to Covid-19.

Why is everyone 'so surprised' that it took the UK and everyone else 'so long' to lockdown?

We thought we were dealing with a virus that killed 3,000 out of a population of 1.4 billion. We would have been expecting less than 100 deaths here if we were to believe what happened in China to be true. China never locked down until 7 weeks after their first case. The UK locked down around 7 weeks after it's first case too, as did many other countries. We followed a very unreliable lead but what else can you do with a novel virus that has never infected humans before? You know nothing about it and can literally only do what other countries have done first and follow their lead.

Lots of mistakes have been made but we can't say that lock down should have happened sooner. There was basically nothing to go on at the time and large gatherings in Scotland were cancelled before lock down was put in place. The schools closed 3 days before lockdown was announced, as did the bars and literally in the space of those 3 days, the country ground to a hault and we were only allowed out once a day for a walk.

I think shes done the best she can

Unintelligent and xenophobic.
Like many around the world, Scotland made the insane choice to put COVID positive elderly people into residential care settings, sometimes without having been tested. There were no tests offered to care home staff, and so the infections were spread.
Nicola Sturgeon is guilty as hell.