Not everyone works in offices

[Toomboom]

I am getting annoyed by the media and news channels saying how social distance could work once we get out of lockdown. Everything seems to be showing offices and how they will be doing things, not sharing pens, putting screens up etc. Even watching BBC news they are only talking about people in offices and how it will work for them.

What about the rest of us that don't? There are thousands of us out there that won't be able to implement the 2 meter social distance rule, what about us? I work in a very busy school kitchen, there is no way we can social distance. What about people that work in the fast food trade, hairdressers, factory workers, other catering staff, hotels and anyone else that can't social distance easily?

I do wish that people would realise that there are many of us out there that don't work in offices 9-5. We need to know how to stay safe too.

There are a lot of jobs that just cannot be done while staying 2 metres away from the next person.

Fitting children's shoes, teaching people a skill where you have to physically correct their position or for safety reasons, measuring someone for clothing, fitting hearing aids and glasses, there's all sorts.

The performing arts would be particularly badly-hit. Not only would the audience have to be reduced considerably (dramatically reducing ticket sales) the people on stage can't all stay 2 metres apart from one another. Have you any idea how cramped it is in a theatre dressing-room?!

Society cannot continue with social distancing forever.

We hear of the tragic deaths of people working in the NHS, but are there any stats on the deaths and infection rate of supermarket workers. They have had a lot of face2face contact throughout this, despite the 2m guidance, so you would imagine there would be a lot of fatalities? Has there been, surely that would be an indicator of how it would work in other workplaces that do not have as much public contact.

I work in a factory setting. We've been at work the whole time, the company has tried to put social distancing in place. Some production line speeds have had to be slowed to allow this and screens put up in some places.

Almost all the office staff are working from home though 😏.

@Galvantula , strangely enough our management and office staff appear to be safely tucked up at home too.

I moved house in the earlier stages of the lockdown. We had no white goods so needed them to be delivered. They delivered to the front door and it was up to us to get them into the house. Luckily that was feasible for us, but my mum and dad wouldn't have managed.

Removal firms were working though. We chose not to use one as, again, manageable for us to do the move without and it reduced our contact with others, but for some people it will be essential.

Essential does not only mean life and death. There are grey areas. And at some point you have to ask, to what extent do the costs of lockdown outweigh the benefits? Because we all have to admit that lockdown comes with huge costs, from things like increased DV and serious child abuse to undiagnosed cancers to people going without things like working white goods to children's mental health being in the absolute doldrums from this unnatural way of living... I don't think the majority of the country will prioritise limiting coronavirus deaths above all else for long, tbh.

It’s funny to imagine hairdressers never opening again because they can’t socially distance

I’m kind of not seeing the problem here. Some workplaces can enforce social distancing quite well, some can’t. Even those that can’t will be able to do something - eg more frequent hand washing, hand sanitising stations, more expectation that people will take frequent sick days, staggered lunch breaks. Everyone will just do what they can and that will have to be enough.

Or maybe we just extend lockdown until CV has gone. I’ll see you all in 2040. Of course life as we know it will be over but that’s fine.

I’m a self employed contractor working in schools and nurseries. Usually visit 15+ settings a week. Expect to be able to work a small amount on line when schools and nurseries open but earnings will be well down for a long time. No government scheme to help me before others ask. Luckily husband earns enough to keep us going in the short term. But unless things are back to some kind of normal by September the business I have worked so hard to grown over three years will basically stop trading.

German hairdressers are finding ways to reopen:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/learning-to-love-the-grey-german-hairdressers-reopen-under-strict-rules

Frazzled, schools have been instructed by the DfE to continue to pay third parties as usual, on the basis that their funding hasn't changed.

Bus drivers are performing a life or death service. How do you think nurses get to work? How do blood donors and non-corona patients get to appointments? How do suburban and rural non-drivers (and urban people with mobility problems) get to the food shops?

Apparently a large number of self-employed hairdressers are still working illegally (the news talked about “an underground network”), so we can safely say that yes there will be people happy to take the risk of working in an imperfectly SD way once they’re allowed to.

So how am I to look after small children 2m apart then!

Just ignore them crying, needing feeding, needing their nappy changed, needing help on the toilet?

And not let them play with each other?

Let's bring them up to be socially isolated and fearful of people shall we?

I guess if our fridge breaks DH will just have to hope his insulin lasts, eh?

There's lots of kinds of work that social distancing isn't possible but the majority of people work in offices, factories, warehouses and retail it is being addressed, I can't see hospitality reopening anytime soon. Construction for instance work in groups and companies are organising work to keep groups together to minimise mixing

The risk, and the resultant need for strict social distancing as we currently understand it, will be a function of how much virus is circulating. Which will in turn depend on how well the testing and tracing regime works, as well as an improving evidence base on transmission.

If there’s very little virus circulating, cases and contacts are isolated and hotspots are quickly identified and dealt with, there will be much lower risk to the NHS or to individuals than with virus circulating at its current levels.

At some point there will need to be a return to individual choices around the risks we are willing to take. I, as a healthy woman in my early 40s who doesn’t live with anyone vulnerable, may choose to take risks that someone in a different demographic profile may not. Just as I am willing to get in a car, live in a city with the attendant air quality risks, etc etc.

Similarly, a 25 year old hairdresser may be more willing to work than one in her 50s, given the risk.

And those risks will be very much informed by the amount of virus circulating in the community

At some point we will all need to reacquaint ourselves that we take risks every day in our lives, and as lockdown rules are made less stringent it will become more about our individual risk tolerances.

Work in large care home and probably come within 2 metres of about 30-40 different people a day. Impossible to social distance from clients and staff so we don’t even try. It is what it is.

As things ease I imagine it won’t be all or nothing. First of all I can see large office based workplaces being asked to continue working from home “where possible” and to do whatever is possible in the workplace to comply with social distancing measures. Lower risk activities will start to reopen with adaptations. I expect social distancing in public to remain and gatherings to still be limited. As someone upthread said, this isn’t about no individual ever getting the virus, but limiting the spread and keeping that R number low- even if some people can’t socially distance at work, the spread is still much reduced by them not then standing in a queue, going to the cinema and going to the pub close to lots of other people.
There will have to be a balance and there will have to be common sense applied- I work in healthcare and there are lots of measures in place but touching people is sometimes unavoidable. That doesn’t mean all social distancing goes out of the window- members of staff still stay 2m apart etc. You do what you can with the limits you have.

We need to remember we aren't trying to eliminate transmission of the virus just slow it down. So if those who can work safely do the mitigates the effects for those who have to work in close physical proximity.

Itoldyouiwasill sounds utterly deranged.
It’s one of the most bonkers covid related opinions I’ve read on here and that’s really saying something.
I take it restaurants will have robots bringing your food out then and it would mean the end of Theatre and Cinemas, life as we know it would have to end.

Saying that unless a job is life or death it shouldn’t exist is ludicrous.
People need to work to feed their families, keep a roof over their heads, the government cannot endlessly support people.
My DP runs a taxi/transfer business which has grinded to a halt, obviously if he’s able to get bookings again i.e ppl going abroad, weddings etc he will take them and no he can’t distance but he has bills to pay so he will work.