Corona virus, China major city lockdowns, etc.

[si_the_geek]

Nope, not buying it. The confusion was accidental and a result of poor message in my opinion.

Based on the news within an a hour of my post, I fully agree.

We now have a 50 page document clarifying things, and among other things it shows that it was supposed to be "from Wednesday" (for work at least), and that even government ministers (including the Foreign Secretary) who were interviewed earlier today don't actually know the rules yet.

I think I'll wait a few hours for the news outlets to read and abbreviate it! (which they should have been allowed to do before/while it was announced)

It feels to me like there should definitely still be some limitations on this because the way it's been phrased at the moment is wide open to abuse. (Si, I'm thinking about going to Arnos Vale park this afternoon and doing some very, very slow sit-ups on a towel with a couple tinnies. Do you fancy doing your exercise in the same time and place? We won't be meeting, just doing sit-ups 2 metres apart from each other. If we get bored we can take a drive down to Weston Beach and do our sit ups there. Plausibly won't be able to join us because... Wales)

It's worrying that I immediately had the urge to grab my shoes to get there right now!

As I'm the kind of person who abides by rules, I have the feeling abuse will be rife... oh dear

Our testing approach has been an utter failure, we aren't managing anywhere near enough tests (even with dubious maths to reach our self imposed targets). Contact tracing isn't going to be much use when nobody knows if any of the contacts have COVID-19 or not because not enough testing is being done to establish a baseline in the first place. Nobody seems to know what is happening with the tracing App, although the proposed solution is highly likely to be a failure due to mobile security preventing background tracking.

It has the potential to be fine when we need it, assuming that the infection rate keeps on the expected trajectory (so there are fewer people who want a test), and the tracing app works well (it is already being tested on the thousands of people on the Isle of Wight, with the aim to eliminate flaws).

At the start of the weekend I saw an interview with a specialist in that kind of thing, and he made it sound very promising... but based on how badly the news on lockdown changes has been handled, my faith is significantly diminished.