You're right, the gain is 1 person, not two. But, as a well known UK supermarket oft says "every little helps!"

Thinking about it more, you might be a bit nearer than you think. Although 2m is a radius, my understanding is that establishments that receive 'the unwashed public' actually mark out the space in a grid rather than circles so you do lose additional space in the corners and would therefore gain more by relaxing it... yes indeed, every little would help if someone was brave enough to just go with 1.5m like most other countries. Now the government has painted itself in to a 2m x 2m corner it can't get out of it because the media would demand cast iron guarantees that not one person would be affected and a vocal minority of the population would freeze in abject terror and accuse the government of premeditated murder.

FFMAN I did not see your other post, if the 2m rule was made up, then so be it. Perhaps the round number attracted them more than 1.8 or 1.5m. Either way, it is what we have now. Given the terrible response of the British govt to the whole event, I'm happy to stay 3m away. If it matters, I have some understanding of the niceties of making this happen as I am a key worker in the funeral trade.

Gone a bit under the radar but a potential boost to U.K. travel, Boris said when quizzed yesterday air bridges may well be in place by July. Which is good as it appears holiday bookings are surging according to Spain and Ryanair!

The government needed to get itself out of the rather belated corner into which it has pushed itself with this quarantine idea, and the "air bridges" scheme will do that for them. Allow air bridges between the UK and the EU / EEA plus a few others, such as Australasia and parts of the Far East and job done. And if there is a benefit of having the quarantine rules in place it is that arrivals from the new hot spots in South America, plus parts of Norther America can still be subject to quarantine for as long as their cases are still essentially out of control.

I can understand air bridges between countries which both have low current infection rates, bypassing regions with higher rates
But the UK has a current rate at least 4-5 times (often much more) higher than our main holiday destinations.
I can understand flights from mainland Europe to SE Asia wanting to bypass Qatar/Dubai/Singapore but why would these destination countries want the risk of accepting UK visitors?
Our rate is falling, but not as fast as some people had expected.

I can understand air bridges between countries which both have low current infection rates, bypassing regions with higher rates
But the UK has a current rate at least 4-5 times (often much more) higher than our main holiday destinations.
I can understand flights from mainland Europe to SE Asia wanting to bypass Qatar/Dubai/Singapore but why would these destination countries want the risk of accepting UK visitors?
Our rate is falling, but not as fast as some people had expected.

These will be likely opened around 29th June by which time the rate SHOULD if the plan goes as it should have come much further down. Germany I believe will accept British visitors from June 14th I think with no quarantine, plus it depends if your looking at rate per 100,000 population of overall as our population is far bigger.

No, that's the problem. If I were sitting on the other side I'd still be looking for UK arrivals to quarantine until the UK gets it's new cases regularly under 1,000 per day. Of course we are running a couple of weeks behind most of Europe, so by the 14th of June we might have achieved that.

Incorrect, when last seen the German population was in excess of 80m, so some 20% greater than UK. France and Italy are the closest to the UK population figure and so they ought really be the benchmark.

Germany has done a phenomenal job, but the French and Italians are still in the same bracket as us in terms of Greece and Cyprus entry for example, ours is worse than both but not massively worse. Spain has much less population wise and has been badly hit so its difficult to judge and compare especially when countries are working differently in terms of how they compile the stats and how they record deaths.

Ours for instance include people who died when testing positive for Covid 19, this doesn't always mean that was the actual cause of death. I guess we will only learn the true picture once its all over.

Yesterday the UK declared over 2000 new cases, Spain and Italy 5-600, France less than 200. It what way are we not massively worse?

We aren't in the same place timeline wise, we've always been 2-3 weeks behind and its dropping all the time here, not the time to be complacent but the stats suggest we can be positive, hopefully the track and trace going live today will also help push it further and further down.

Aviation and travel wise we are looking at where we will be in 2-4 weeks time when places open up and sure that 2000 will be down by quite a way by then.

One would hope so, however although I am on the relaxed side of worried about Covid-19, it still looks to me as though the UK is taking a bigger risk in loosening the lockdown than most other European countries, with numbers of infections still in excess of 2,000 daily. Looking at it positively, we're probably in a better place than Sweden at the moment, but that isn't really saying much.

The answer lies in the percentage of positive tests in each country (not the raw numbers) as those daily numbers being quoted are a product of the number of tests being carried out in each country. It may well be the case that the UK does indeed have a higher percentage of positive tests, but I don't know the numbers of daily tests in Spain, Italy or France. so cannot confirm that is the case.

Clearly, without delving into the domestic media of all the various nations it's impossible to know the extent of testing. What we believe we know is that Germany, which has comparatively very low numbers of daily new infections, has been testing 100k plus people each day. The other countries have not been reported in UK media. Of course the UK might be testing "the right people" and so have a higher rate of positive tests.

The trouble is that there are "lies, darned lies, and statistics" and they can be presented to give whatever message the presenter want to give.

Very much the case, the daily death totals for example people base a lot on, but fail to realise some of them actually occurred as far back as April, so are not always made clear that it is the case.

For what it's worth, the total number of tests which have been carried out in Spain Italy, Germany and the UK are fairly similar - 3.5-4 million. The number in France is only about a third as many.
I too hope that the numbers decline steadily, if only to save the UK holiday industry. I can't see the usual floods of inbound visitors until new cases per day are more like 20 rather than 2000

That figure you quote on the level of testing in France may go some way to explaining why they daily new infection rates are so low, 191 yesterday, and consistently below 1,000 for the last two weeks.

I source statistics from the comprehensive interactive maps to be found on www.tagesschau.de that are generated using Johns Hopkins University data and updated daily. Where have you found information on daily testing across European countries?

I didn't quote daily rates.
It could be that testing in France is better targeted.
I use www.worldometers.info/coronavirus which is updated in real time and may be the data source for JHU.