A Second Lockdown?

isn’t it a bit of a false economy though if it helps to send us and them back into lockdown. Felt ill thought out at the time. Those business deserve govt support and assistance and it alongside entertainment and the arts should have been specifically targeted with greater levels of assistance but I’m unconvinced that encouraging people to go out was the right idea ( and then condemning them for going out).

of course a trade body would accentuate the benefits that’s why they exist to promote the interests of their members. I just want a govt capable of joined up thinking and dont think this was a great example of that.

 

The biggest issue with eat out to help out for me is that it should have been tied to a proper track and trace app. ie you can have 50% off but in return you have to register you was there with a government supplied app.

Problem there is there wasn't a proper app.

 

If the case numbers continue to double, there would be more cases than people in the UK by the New Year. Worrying times.

 

as a non essential business then yes it has contributed. You really need to strip out and support all not essential businesses. The get back to the office message was another flawed one and has contributed to it unnecessarily. We wasted lockdown. The Govt had the chance to get prepared it didn’t so we are where we are.

 

This is so many levels of stupid.

 

My absolute best wishes to your wife, mate.

That’s absolutely valid, but surely the lockdown should have allowed those to continue, by keeping the virus as low in circulation as possible?

 

To be fair there's some false conflation between those at risk and those needing care. The majority of people we were helping who were at risk didn't need care, they needed someone to do their shopping or other tasks that would allow them to stay in their home and not go out. A strategy could very easily work for the majority who are at risk to allow them to choose to self isolate.

I fully accept care settings are more difficult but again it would surely be better to ask those involved in providing care to be more stringent in social distancing and renumerate them accordingly than embarking on another lockdown, when the first wasn't even a lockdown designed to stop covid but (definitely needed) to delay it to flatten the curve and stop the NHS getting overwhelmed.

Which comes back to hospitalisation still being far far lower than previously, so do we need to go back in to lockdown anyway?

 

What would you consider an essential business though? Surely it's literally only utilities and food?

 

All valid points and options. I just don’t know that it’s possible to isolate a subset of society and allow everyone else to run free. Especially if you want everyone else to have no restrictions, like people such as db3k seem to. Older people generally are not the most tech savvy, how do you get them all to switch to online shopping if that’s the plan?

On the final point, case numbers are used as like an early warning sign. Down the line that will lead to more hospitalisations and more deaths. That’s why cases are looked at closely.

 

Absolutely on the tech point, that was the biggest challenge we faced. People with the financial means but not the digital capacity to shop online, or the ability to get delivery slots (in turn related to having locked down those not at risk). Since that period though the supermarkets have scaled up delivery capacity and volunteering groups like Age UK have scaled up their ability to support online shopping over the phone with people.

As an aside this whole pandemic has significantly escalated the move of the whole world to digital platforms, and huge numbers of people are going to be disadvantaged moving forward. The government needs to be bringing forward and investing in a major digital poverty strategy now, not post-covid.

In terms of hospitalisation rates, I certainly understand the nervousness that they could escalate but they are nowhere near where they would have been predicted to be when the government devised its levels based on the R rate. This is one of the risks that needs to be balanced, alongside unknowns around long covid. But I always believed there were two routes back to some normality; a vaccine or identifying combinations of drugs and interventions that allow us to better treat it. There certainly seems to evidence that the latter is being achieved.

 

My husband wears a mask on the drive to the supermarket alone. The mask doesn't bother him whatsoever and that way he can put it on in the house and wash his hands and then not have to touch it again until he gets home, rather than putting it on and off whilst out of the house.

 

that would be for our govt to decide if they weren’t useless twathooks not us internet randoms.

 

It could be far worse as we could live in London under Khan as the mayor. He's wanting to kill off hospitality by making masks mandatory in restaurants and pubs. He also wants them mandatory outside so that will put off people going shopping on high streets. He also wants numbers at of all places funerals and weddings to be cut.

He really is useless.

 

‘normality’ in China is not like normality here. Difficult to draw a fair comparison

 

Also for something seen as the worst health crisis in a century, we should all probably have access to a better quality of face covering surely?

 

I'm sorry but you're an absolute idiot. You prove it time and time again.

You constantly post nonsensical garbage from facebook conspiracists and pass it off as this 'gotcha' moment and height of intelligence.

 

You really are tiresome.