I think playgrounds will be opening after tomorrow's announcement

[ssd]

Yay at last for the little ones

@upstar you may be a Statistician superstar at work but you have fundamentally misunderstood what lockdown was meant to do for the data curve.

Earlier lockdown should remove the momentum from the outbreak when the numbers are increasing incrementally. The earlier lockdown the better and the quicker it is to control. A la Germany. If you let it roll for longer then the harder it is to get it under control as you have more infection points. Like we have or Italy had.

Think of it like a forest fire. You’re arguing that our smaller fire burned for longer cos it was started later even though the firefighters started tackling it at exactly the same time and with the same tactics as the bigger fire. That principle of longer burn only works if there is a finite fuel source and it is left to burn out itself. This is what the herd immunity was meant to bring. A lack of fuel = no new people to infect.

The reason she doesn't cate about the cobija is because it gives her an opportunity to blame Westminster. She won't be the one facing reduced tax take and she can simply blame the tories for causing job losses by not extending the furlough scheme.

As usual it will be the nice cuddly SNP trying to save lives while the nasty tories only café about money.

Yes - I read through the phasing document and was looking forward to today. But then she realises that if full households are allowed inside together, she'll have gone further than England when she wants us to stay behind.

I reckon the outdoor pubs have been delayed due to the schools fiasco. Can you imagine the headings if pubs (even if outdoor only) were allowed to open and schools are still in the state they are?

I guess it's still slightly more organised than Englands random approach, but why on earth commission and publish a document and then ignore most of it or drip feed it in until people have died of boredom, because they ain't dying of coronavirus any more.

The reason she doesn't care about the economy is because it gives her an opportunity to blame Westminster. She won't be the one facing reduced tax take and she can simply blame the tories for causing job losses by not extending the furlough scheme.

As usual it will be the nice cuddly SNP trying to save lives while the nasty tories only care about money.

She doesn't care about the economy because she doesn't understand it. Yes, she trained as a solicitor, but she barely worked as one, and has been in politics since. If I phoned her up about worrying about finding this months staff wages, she wouldn't have a clue

To be absolutely fair, she shouldn't need to be an economist or lawyer or expert in education or health or anything else, she should have a team of people who can be trusted to know and do all that and what she needs in herself is a high level understanding and the ability to question and debate and assess the information she is given.

Unfortunately whilst there may be people talented in all that stuff, those people are not on the cabinet. She has a pretty good understanding of politics and fuck all anything else. Trained up by Salmond which says it all.

Someone on a thread wondered why Hugh Pennington wasn't being consulted. As I understand he has been critical of SNP in the past so obviously has been deemed no longer an expert. One must only be surrounded by sycophants who exist in your echo chamber dontcha know...

You're right, WaxOn. I was impressed by Kate Forbes initially, but Derek mckay wasn't a hard act to follow

@Bartlet the goal in Scotland was never herd immunity. You're misinformed. It was to keep the caseload manageable and prevent the NHS and other public services from being overwhelmed. That's what flatten the curve was about. Herd immunity is a misnomer latched onto by Johnson in late February/ early March at the CBI conference which completely baffled public health officials at the time. It requires at least 70% of people to have immunity and can only be achieved through vaccination or by small intense local lockdowns. Think about chickenpox - it goes through the community regularly but it has never died out. That's because herd immunity is extremely hard to achieve naturally. In some countries they vaccinate against it - it's almost unheard of where they do.
Herd immunity was only a political policy dreamt up by those around 10 Downing Street. It was never ever a feasible public health strategy.
Ironically when a public health strategy is successful people will always complain that it was all for nothing.
I'm happy the Scottish government are cautious because the virus is still here and we do need to get it as low as possible and open up slowly.
However I'm sure if the virus comes raging back in the winter -which is highly likely then there will be people all over Mumsnet bitterly blaming Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP for opening up too quickly!!!

@upstar

It's interesting you say the "goal in Scotland was never herd immunity."

That would certainly contradict Sturgeon's own clinical director Jason Leitch- he said there was "no choice" but to develop herd immunity and let the virus work through the population.

Rural north east Scotland here. Very much get the feeling everyone is doing their own thing anyway.

My ds starts p1 in august. I have no idea who his teacher will be, which days he'll be in for and which if any if his friends will be in his class. To say I'm unimpressed is an understatement.

Who is actually following the 5 miles for exercise? That is the weirdest rule ever. We're not breaking it every day but if we want to go to a particular place for a day out/walk I don't even give that a second thought.

We’ve been following it religiously and we went an extra two miles last weekend, and were accosted by an angry local - the place was deserted apart from that person and us!

It is a mad rule - we are now allowed to break it to meet people but not to use our judgment to go for a hike or beach somewhere outside 5 miles and use our judgment on whether the place is too busy!

@SkyscraperStreets did you actually watch this? Especially the bit where he explains that people will inevitably get the virus and will probably develop immunity and we need to delay and suppress the virus and protect the vulnerable. ( later called "flatten the curve) And that the term herd immunity is confusing. And that they want to avoid the terrible impact of lockdown as much as possible until the right time because it will be for the long haul.
I'm going to hide this thread now as I have some other things to do. Like work, get out for exercise and maybe make a mask or two.

The shielding advice on the government website is confusing.

I'm allowed to exercise with members of my household.

I'm allowed, from today, to play golf outside or go for a hike but I must maintain 2m distance at all times, even if I live with the person I'm out with.

So I can go for a run next to DH but not a hike.

I think it's trying to take account of people who may be shielding within their own household? so they could go for a solo run but could go and play golf or hike with a member of their household but still stay 2 meters apart?

Nah. still doesn't make sense, if they were self isolating within their own home then what difference does it make whether the 2nd person is from the same household or not?

More bonkers stuff that has no basis in science - it's all now either political or a finger in the air job.

What difference is there between going to a park and buying takeaway food from a vendor and sitting eating it on a bench, 2m from the next bench, and sitting on a bench in a beer garden 2m away from someone else, eating or drinking supplies from the pub?

I'm really shocked at the way some businesses have been treated differently from others where the same risk applies. What about shops in shopping centres too, most of which are large and airy, so shops on the outside of the complex that have a door to the outside can open but if they are further in the centre they can't? What about if they are near the entrance? Is it to stop queues being next to each other? What about a row of shops outside trying to keep their queues apart?

What they actually need is proper guidance such as X customers per square foot of shop space, aisles need to be x wide, Perspex screens need to be installed at tills, no more than x staff restocking shelves when open and Y when closed. Then they can decide if they are able to open or not.