yes

Just like banning incoming from people from Vancouver because of an outbreak in Newfoundland.

I have been here since March but have been trying to get back to the UK since May. After 3 cancelled flights my next one is 15th August. We will see! There are hardly any cases here in Mallorca but since the Brits and Germans have been arriving for the last 2 weeks social distancing has gone out of window. We are required to wear masks all the time now since last week. Very few visitors wearing them.

From 26 July, the FCO advises against all non-essential travel to mainland Spain based on the current assessment of COVID-19 risks. Only the Canary Islands (Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Graciosa) and Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera) are exempt from the FCO advice against all non-essential international travel. Sorry didn't read far enough for the quarantine info

Would you expect anything else from an Idiot who's running the Home Office? Priti Patel is pretty useless.

I think closer to 99.9% and of those that die 9 out of 10 are over 70 and already sick. It should also be noted that Spain learnt to count Covid-19 deaths properly at the end of May and since then they have had a daily death rate of just 2 to 3 people. The stupid knee jerk and hysterical reaction of the UK government has probably just added another 20,000 job losses to the millions now coming through.

I think it is a knee jerk reaction but the Govt gets blamed for taking too long , then acting quickly. damned if you do, damned if you dont.
However according the worldmeter stats ( which I believe are reasonably accurate??) I think they show the date rate, globally at around 6%. which is one hell of a lot more than your stated .01%
and the UK death rates officially near to 15% so i think this less than 1% often stated needs to be revisited!!

Worldometer shows the fatality rate among known cases. The real number of cases, most of which mild or asymptomatic, is higher by orders of magnitude. At least this is what antibody testing tends to show. The vast majority of PCR tests are conducted among those who either have symptoms or are known to have been in contact with someone infected. God knows how many untested, undetected cases with mild or no symptoms are booting around as we speak.

Back on the original topic of travel quarantine - have we got a legal eagle here who can explain whether or not quarantine for arrivals from the islands is legally enforceable? Given that there's no FCO advice against non-essential travel to those marvellous places, on the grounds of what can a quarantine order be imposed?

Also if someone dies of a heart attack, cancer, old age and they have covid, the death is recorded as a covid death. The only sensible way for this to go is to isolate those over 70, or with an underlying health condition that puts them at risk. Properly isolate, not this go shopping once a week, exercise outdoors every day etc. The rest of the population should just get on with life, it would be over within a year and the economy would survive. The madness that seems to have enveloped the world is only set to prolong this for years. It will not go away until enough of the population have had it. More people will die with the current strategy as the elderly and those at risk are exposed to a longer period of this being a problem. A vaccine has never been developed for any coronavirus, ever. Total utter madness driven by politicians looking to get more votes and the media. Insanity!

Or put another way, everybody over 70 is put under house arrest so you can swan about rather than acting like a grown-up??

SWBKCD, I think your response is unjustified. The vulnerable groups like all groups need to take responsibility for themselves. We cannot protect a minority by actively destroying the livelihoods and lives of millions who are at little risk. Without a functioning economy we will not be able to provide the resources to tackle this crisis. I would worry more about the associated social and economic costs of a depression than a virus which evidently is mild for the vast majority.

Put Covid measures in place, let people make their choices and get back to work.

Because people will fly BCN to PMI to dodge the 14 days

Except if you are over 70, can they not make choices?

The case is out on a virus but new RNA viruses are aa distinct possibility and there hasn't been a lot been a lot of impetus to develop vaccines for many milder coronaviruses.
But the quarantine measures should definitely not at present include the islands and probably not some parts of Spain. The rea problem in the UK is that the government doesn't seem able to make measured timely appropriate decisions at at.

And is there anything to stop them from dodging the 14 days by flying to a country which does qualify for quarantine exemption and taking a flight to the UK from there? Not being ironic, not suggesting that anyone should try it, just asking.

A lot of noise about death counting and certainly not being done well in England, but we will have to wait for the Inquiry to learn more. The law that applies to doctors, who are the only people except coroners that can sign death certificates, has not changed so I would be acting outside the law if I put the cause of death as covid when it was a heart attack. However if the covid caused a heart attack I should put covid as a cause on the death certificate. The death certificate is my diagnosis and not the laboratory findings. So I would like to know whether someone civil servant is counting a death as covid when the doctor hasnt put covid as the cause but merely listed it under 'other conditions' which were not a cause of death.

Although these are the groups most at risk you cant assume others can just ignore the pandemic. Children under 11 can, and many young adults remain asymptomatic, but we know a significant number are pauci symptomatic. A recent paper from the Netherlands has shown 90% of these may have difficulty with daily activities three months later. The under 70s may not often die but they may have long and possibly lifelong disabilities.

No one here criticising the Scottish government who were the last to open up Spain and closed it down again at the same time as the other devolved governments. Why would that be or is this just about England and people making political points?

The fact is that all 4 governments have acted in unity so they must be worried.

There have been vaccines developed for some corona viruses.

LTNman, exactly. Nobody seems to be squealing about Norway imposing similar rules. And more notably the Spanish Government is saying a 2nd wave is imminent and are only lobbying the UK to relax the rules for the Islands. To expand on my previous post a quick FR24 check shows 15 MAD-TFN today and 11 yesterday. The Islands are filling up with the City dwellers.

I know this is uncomfortable reading for most on here, but if we don't protect the UK economy then there will be no money for holidays. The uncomfortable truth is leisure is discretionary. The industry must look beyond the immediate hysterics of Karen and Wayne on Facebook. Hopefully the call centres and ops are busy booking extra flights and hotels in Greece and places with far lower infection rates.

Yes, apparently Public Heath England are, or have been, mis-counting deaths, but not by looking at death certificates so no doctor was involved. The clever idea was to record everyone who tests positive for Covid-19, then periodically they'd get a list of all deaths, and if someone in that list had tested positive, they counted it as a Covid-19 death. What could go wrong? If I'd tested positive and then fell under a bus weeks later, they'd have counted me as a Covid death. They've been called out on it: watch this space.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53443724

That's all well and good bex88. It has been made clear by health authorities and researchers all over the world what the likely factors are to define 'vulnerability' ... age, concurrent medical conditions, social situation, density of housing, number of persons in a household etc.

But sadly, there are some groups that are equally vulnerable because they willingly place themselves and others at risk ... but do not have neither the understanding nor the intelligence to realise it. And of course there are also groups who are sufficiently egotistical that they can only consider their rights, their point of view or get a buzz from rebelling against what they consider to be 'authority'. The sort of vulnerability exhibited by these groups shows that some groups are unable to take responsibility, and it isn't just a question of how many years they have under their belts.