All restrictions to end this month?

[ElleGB]

Just saw this on breaking news.

That’s it - no more restrictions. Everything back to normal.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I'm really, genuinely happy we are getting to this point. Just a bit unsure about how it will work for CEV people like me.

I don't want to put restrictions on anyone, so hoping (possibly fruitlessly) that the government will explain.

Selfishly, I cant help feeling this is going to fuck up yet another summer. Other countries will still want us to test before arriving. Chances of avoiding it for the week before travel suddenly seem harder.

I'm so very glad to hear this.

As a business owner that is at the end of two horribly long years of struggling, this day will def be one for champagne corks.

Some will cling onto this pandemic by the fingertips though, as this thread shows.

I would be fine with a health care professional who was asymptomatic but positive for covid treating me. I probably have been treated by many health care professionals /my dcs have been taught by teaching staff who are asymptomatically carrying viruses without knowing about it over the years. Before LFTs became readily available in January 2021, many people will have been treated by asymptomatic health care workers and children taught by asymptomatic staff.

@MargosKaftan

Selfishly, I cant help feeling this is going to fuck up yet another summer. Other countries will still want us to test before arriving. Chances of avoiding it for the week before travel suddenly seem harder.

But like you say, it's selfish. Many people will still not want to travel abroad but don't want to be restricted, and they shouldn't have to be just because someone else wants their 2 weeks in Spain. (Not getting at you, just pointing out that it's impossible to be 'fair on everyone).

@ItsSnowJokes

I have seen on here posters go nuts about people going out and about with chicken pox and sickness bugs etc....... suddenly everyone can go out with covid and that's fine.

I posted on another thread would you be fine with your cancer surgeon or midwife coming to you while they had covid? Happy for your newborn baby to be exposed to covid? Cos that is what will happen.

You do realise that the alternative is no cancer surgeon, no midwife? I'd much rather have care than not so I'm perfectly happy with it actually.

I think posters are being very naive if they think the entire population is regularly doing LFTs and (if positive but no symptoms) self isolating.
The vulnerable are already mixing on buses, shops etc with either the unaware / aware positive people, who for whatever reason are carrying on regardless.

Amazing. Am so pleased. It’s been a long two years and I’ve ignored most of the rules so have never really felt the full impact of things but it’s still nice that life will go back to normal in an official capacity.

Boris, all is forgiven!

@WayneBruce

I think posters are being very naive if they think the entire population is regularly doing LFTs and (if positive but no symptoms) self isolating. The vulnerable are already mixing on buses, shops etc with either the unaware / aware positive people, who for whatever reason are carrying on regardless.

You are right. Most people I know are not LFT testing unless they've got symptoms and even then, it's hit and miss who is testing and who isn't. So the number of people walking around asymptomatically will be pretty high.

I've got a stinking cold right now, I've done several LFT tests and all are negative. I'm sure strictly speaking I should be getting a PCR test but there seems little point. I'm generally being mindful and not going anywhere I don't need to, I WFH home anyway - which is how I see it going in the future. Treat it like any other infectious disease.

It's time. I work in a care home we have until now avoided covid. But now most of the residents and staff have it. But nobody is really ill. Most of staff asomtmatic and forced to stay at home while we struggle to get any agency staff to cover. The residents just have a cold and after nearly 2 weeks are all fine.if it wasn't for mandatory testing we would never know anyone had it. But instead residents been confirmed to Thier rooms for weeks for no reason and being confused by unfamiliar staff.

@cakeambush so why do people go nuts about other communicable diseases then? Why are we isolating with stomach bugs or chicken pox? They could make someone very ill or kill them the same as covid and yet posters on here are saying go out and do anything with covid but God help you if you went out with chicken pox. Where does it stop? What is the line?

We’ve been encouraged to do LFTs when we return to the office but what about the vast majority that won’t bother?

It's not wanting to hang onto the pandemic with my fingertips that makes me think this is too soon. I want covid to end as much as possible. But until the antivirals/antibody treatments are more widely available then I think my parent may still be at high risk of dying from covid.
I've hated it. All of the measures, lockdowns and restrictions have been awful. But ending it all for political expediency to distract people isn't reassuring.
I notice some people commented earlier were not the first country to end restrictions - but I'd not be surprised if he claims we were at some stage - he's lies about alot of other provable things in parliament.

I am happy about this. Ds has just had six days off school completely asymptomatic due to being positive. They set online work bit he doesn't learn that well that way. Half the teachers at his school are isolating so there's a constant stream of supply teachers. It's been rubbish.

However I still think NHS staff will be sat at their desks masked up for the foreseeable, and isolating.

@CovidCorvid

So can nhs staff go to work if they have it?

Doubt it ...we still have to work from home if pinged or a contact in my area - frustrating actually as we are always in ppe and socially distanced at work and very strict icpc rules - can't make drinks for another person , twice weekly testing, constant touch point cleaning etc etc so think we would be very low risk if a contact

Normal life, it’s fantastic news. Quite frankly I don’t care why he is doing it, just that he is.

The vulnerable need to continue to take precautions, masks, social distancing etc, but the way admissions and deaths are declining it seems the obvious thing to do. The isolation rule is now more damaging to society over all than the virus.

The government says it will publish further 'plans' in a week or so - I'm foolishly optimistically assuming these will include policies for workplaces, allowing immune-compromised employees to separate themselves to some extent from workers known to have covid. This could piggy-back on to the existing policies of decent employers e.g. for workers undergoing chemotherapy being able to keep their distance from people with streaming colds etc.

I doubt that free LFTs and PCRs for the general public will continue so I doubt anyone would know whether a colleague had covid. I imagine you’ll be able to buy LFTs if you wanted to take one before visiting someone vulnerable for example, but I doubt they’ll be free for much longer.

I have seen on here posters go nuts about people going out and about with chicken pox and sickness bugs etc....... suddenly everyone can go out with covid and that's fine.

I think that someone can think you shouldn’t go out with chicken pox while also thinking it shouldn’t be the law. I don’t think people should go to school/work/a restaurant if they’ve got a vomiting bug, but I don’t think it should be illegal for them to leave their house except in an emergency.
And with a stomach bug, general school/workplace rules are 48 hours vomit free - not 10 days regardless of symptoms.

And I’m well aware covid is not a stomach bug but I’m responding to this specific comparison.

I think free tests are supposed to stop on June, I’m guessing they will also bring that forward now.

I agree, people shouldn’t be going out with things like chicken pox or the flu but we should not be making it illegal to do so. We have many contagious viruses and diseases in society, many much more fatal than Covid currently is, the flu for one. We need to now live with this.

It’s time.

@FourChimneys

I'm really, genuinely happy we are getting to this point. Just a bit unsure about how it will work for CEV people like me.

I don't want to put restrictions on anyone, so hoping (possibly fruitlessly) that the government will explain.

Surely it will be the same as it is for any other illnesses, such as the flu. We will be offered annual boosters (I imagine), and take the same care we always have. We've always been CEV, we've always had the same risks to illnesses as we do now. We just have to live and take the care we always have before covid.

Nothing has changed in our hospital and I can't see Boris' announcement changing anything because vulnerable people are still... vulnerable aren't they??

Today a patient tested positive to covid with a high temperature & confusion... he had bad Parkinson's and epilepsy; they had called his NoK in before I left.

We the staff are all still wearing ppe including masks but most of our elderly patients are quite deaf so we often need to pull our masks down so they can hear us better and lipread a bit. We've now been told to wear visors in those circumstances.

I'm worried because I gave the covid patient drinks a few times and was very close with no ppe just a mask on. Because we only put gloves and apron on for actual personal care.
Now we've been told to wear them in each room!!!
So im doing LFTs over the next few days just in case. I am triple jabbed anyway but I don't want covid as I have epilepsy myself.

Lots of my colleagues have already had covid, some have relatives who unfortunately have long covid.

I think Boris is trying to distract the country from his blunders by playing the populist card as usual.

I have personally been living a normal life anyway going out everywhere and only wearing a mask in extremely busy places eg packed buses.
I think self isolation should definitely continue if a person is definitely positive sorry.

@BobbyeinArkansas

Amazing. Am so pleased. It’s been a long two years and I’ve ignored most of the rules so have never really felt the full impact of things but it’s still nice that life will go back to normal in an official capacity.

Boris, all is forgiven!

Well, I guess that's what he was aiming for.

I have no personal concerns about lifting the restrictions early. I have had covid, I'm triple jabbed and my vulnerable relatives are ultra cautious in any case, so I don't feel particularly at risk. On the other side of the coin I can work from home easily so isolating for 5 days is not that big a deal. So I don't think this is going to have a significant impact on me personally either way.

However, I'm very concerned by the fact that this seems very much to have been a political decision rather than a scientific one. It's very telling that the idea of lifting the self isolation requirement earlier wasn't even discussed at the last Sage meeting. This smacks very much of a last minute idea that Boris and his mates have come up with in order to win him back some political credit rather than a carefully considered decision taken in the interests of the nation. And it worries that we have a PM who thinks nothing of gambling with people's health in order to boost his popularity.

It is not so much that I disagree with the decision itself. I'm actually very happy for us to lift restrictions if the time is right, but I think the decision has been made for all of the wrong reasons and without due consideration of the potential consequences.

Still, it looks like it will work for Boris as apparently all is forgiven. I shouldn't be astonished to discover that people have such low standards, but it amazes me very time. I guess the benefits of a democracy always come with downsides.

@AlternativePerspective

People should bloody stay at home if they have an infectious disease.

If there’s no longer testing then presumably the a-symptomatic won’t isolate but anyone with symptoms bloody should, just as people should stay at home with the flu, bad colds etc.

But let’s not pretend that Boris isn’t doing this to try and win back some favour both from the public and the back benches.

I think this is the biggest positive social change that we need to see coming out of the pandemic: it was always vile and selfish for people with heavy colds etc to be on public transport or in enclosed public spaces or workplaces spreading their disease to others. This needs to become completely unacceptable socially (with proper sick pay mandated).

Usually that suggestion is met with "but then I'd be off half of the winter!" but - as the Covid restrictions demonstrated - that is not the case: far fewer people got any colds/ flu etc because people were not mixing when sick. And therefore people having the manners to stay at home when poorly would actually mean far fewer sick days in total. And fewer people becoming seriously ill with infectious diseases other than Covid.

@Stripyhoglets1

Its going to be awful for people who are still very vulnerable to being very ill/dying if they catch it. You can't refuse to go to work - and at work you could be surrounded by people who could well be positive as they no longer need to isolate - or if asymptomatic- won't even know they have it. Its not all over. Its just as likely to spread and harm a certain number of people - and those people matter too. They shouldn't be doing this until everyone who is vulnerable can have access to the special covid treatments that are currently only available to a few people (you get a letter if you're eligible). My parent has COPD and they haven't had a letter - but covid would be very bad news for them.

So they should wait until that can be guaranteed.

Yep. The plan has been clear for a while now.

They have gradually lifted restrictions at a rate the NHS can cope with while maximising within that limit how many people get it, to try to raise population immunity levels.

Stopping isolation, and then testing for all but a few keyworkers etc, is just the next level of the same plan.

The vulnerable are being chucked under a bus here.

Yes we need to accept it's becoming endemic. The Government effectively ushering that along in the full knowledge it will lead to many deaths of the CV without proper mitigating measures in place to protect them, and not being open that this is the strategy and they are the sacrifice, is grotesque.

Oh look, Boris Johnson throws another dead cat into the room 🙄