Labour is right to demand an exit strategy

[Goldenheart18]

This lockdown has removed (I hope temporarily) our basic human rights. I get that it was done to ensure that the NHS could cope with the surge of coronavirus cases. But after 4 weeks the government has confirmed that the NHS is coping, and that it does have capacity for more cases. Yet they won’t even slightly ease the lockdown restrictions, or even give any indication as to how long they will last, or which ones might be eased up first. More importantly they won’t explain what their plan is for getting us back to some kind of normality.

Surely by this point , after 4 weeks, the government should have had a workable plan for exiting the lockdown, given that the longer it goes on the greater the damage to the economy. They keep saying that the science will inform when they lift the restrictions. But that makes no sense. Even if they get new cases down to zero as soon as we exit they will go right back up again. Surely the rate of infection is only part of the issue. The main one is how do we keep the rate of infection low once we leave lockdown (which has to be to be temporary if we do not want an economic depression).

It seems likely that any workable exit plan depends on testing and contact tracing. But where is the government on achieving any of that in the next 3 - 4 weeks? If they don’t publish their exit plan they cannot be held to account for whether or not they are putting in place the right measures to achieve it. And that’s why they absolutely should be open with the public now about what their plans are.

We have just gone through years and years of austerity as a country where poverty and homelessness has surged. We cannot afford another Great Depression.

Aibu?

People still aren't following the lockdown rules, if they start releasing exit strategies people will just believe they can start following those rules now.
Things are only slightly becoming better give it chance for things to improve more and let the government listen to the medical experts and they will tell us what we need to know when we need to know it.
I will happily stay in lockdown longer if it keeps my friends and family safe.
I don't see it as loosing my human rights I see it as something I can do to help the country which costs me nothing.
Just because the NHS hasn't collapsed yet And is coping doesn't mean we want to cause more issues by lifting the lockdown too quickly.

Waiting for the next FB rant from my rabidly left wing relative.Cross the other day because we didn't lock down soon enough.Bit ironic as her siblings had both just flown to the other side of the world on holiday and only just got back home on last flights back when she now reckons we should have been. Is it now going to be why aren't we out of lockdown ?.It's not great but another 3 weeks is necessary I think.

I disagree that the public would get mixed messaging. What I’m saying is that government should disclose what **they intend to do to keep the spread of the virus at manageable levels once the rate of infection has got at a low enough level through the lockdown. Social distancing won’t be enough to do this - you can’t keep school children 2 metres apart - our schools are too crowded. You can’t follow it on public transport or in cities either. Surely the only real way out is by testing and contact tracing - but where is the government on that? If they delay this critical planning it will cost us, the ordinary public, in health and living conditions, possibly for years.

Maybe they are still working out the strategy. This is a whole new situation that nobody in the world was prepared for or expected.
I'd rather they didn't rush things.
We need to give them chance and not rush things.

I've already had a text from my hairdresser telling me she'll be open again on 8th May and asking if I wanted to book in. This is without any real talk yet of an exit plan. She wilfully "misunderstood" the social distancing rule and only shut up shop when absolutely explicitly told to.

Even people of reasonably average intelligence don't seem to understand the basic premise of lockdown and what is necessary and unnecessary travel/actions/behaviour. The hundreds of threads on here asking "can I, is it ok to?" show us that.

I honestly think any talk of our exit strategy and the general public's part to play in that strategy now by the government, will just lead to a whole bunch of fuckwits thinking "ok well I'll just do that now, a few days/weeks won't make a difference".

It’s still early days. Of course they’re working on a strategy, but how on earth are they supposed to know properly at this point.

I'm hoping we stay in lockdown til end of may as I'm saving most of my wages next month for a seaside holiday in august. I'm wfh anyways.

I agree with Wickedly- if they were to mention that certain people we’re going to be allowed out first they’d think they were safe to bend the rules a bit.

Anyway, we’ve still got several hundreds of dead a day. Nothing should be relaxed too quickly.

I get that it was done to ensure that the NHS could cope with the surge of coronavirus cases. But after 4 weeks the government has confirmed that the NHS is coping, and that it does have capacity for more cases. Yet they won’t even slightly ease the lockdown restrictions, or even give any indication as to how long they will last, or which ones might be eased up first.

We're on track to have the highest mortality rate in Europe. The fact that "the NHS can cope" doesn't make that ok!

And the damage to the economy is due to the virus - it'll happen if we stay locked down and it'll happen if we suddenly lift the restrictions and cases surge.

I agree with the need for an exit strategy, if only to show that the government is actually planning ahead for once. They’ve been playing catch up all the way with trying to control the virus, testing, provision of PPE etc. It would be good to see a plan of how it’s going to work shared with parliament in advance so that when it happens it is as good as can be and not cobbled together on the hoof.

Yanbu. They need to start planning now as exiting lockdown will need a huge expansion in testing and that will take weeks to set up. Training staff, getting reagents and equipment, contact tracing technology etc. We don't want to have to extend lockdown unnecessarily whilst this capability is put in place.
This government has been shambolic - too late with everything, dishonest, indecisive. They are going ahead with Brexit talks next week whilst the virus is clearly far more urgent to sort out.

Totally good with extending lockdown, but there must be a working exit strategy, even if it cannot be finalised without further science.
For Hancock and Raab to refuse to discuss publicly is to treat the public like imbeciles.
I am in Scotland, and for once I agree with Nicola saying she’s going to treat us like adults and have transparent discussions.
It is ridiculous that any government would go into lockdown with no earthly idea of how they might get out. New virus or not.

The exit strategy is possibly changing all the time I would like to hope they are watching how other countries are getting along to get an idea what's the best route

This shouldn’t be about politics (tired of the left/right wing bollocks, this is a public health emergency not a fucking election campaign).

At the end of the day, the lockdown has to carry on because we don’t have enough testing (fact), we don’t have enough PPE (fact), and we aren’t protecting those in social care.

The virus continues to spread as a result. I very much doubt it’s because of the tiny minority not adhering to social distancing.

So unless the government gets its act together and ramps up PPE production and testing then lockdown continues.

I'm no fan of the Tories, they have been recklessly incompetent BUT we just don't have the information to give the strategy out publically. It would be a terrible idea to give people hope of X or Y and then find you just can't do it, people would get ahead of themselves and start doing stuff they shouldn't because 'the government said I'd be able to visit my family/travel across the country etc by now' - unfortunately, people are understandably desperate for things to ease and there's a lot of evidence that folks are likely to do the wrong thing in a situation like this unless the boundaries are extremely clear, and they can't be right now.

We have the advantage that we can see how things in other countries go first which might help see what really works. Of course what really works is early lockdown and loads of testing and tracking, none of which we did and there's still no sign of a plan for the latter two. I'm not sure there can be any plan in place until we have a reasonable capacity for those two.

I don't know about an exit strategy, the government should have had a better plan going in to this, they had plenty of warning, but did nothing until things got too bad to ignore. They could have ordered in PPE & equipment & put training in place in January instead of burying their heads in the sand.

Surely by this point , after 4 weeks, the government should have had a workable plan for exiting the lockdown, given that the longer it goes on the greater the damage to the economy.

I don't get why people think the only thing standing between now and a return to normality is it occurring to politicians to sit down and have a think about it.

They say they don't want to talk about it now, but I think it's more likely that there is little or no plan, because in fact there is no easy way out.

My best hope is that maybe by the end of June the smartphone app (not the NHS version but the Google and Apple one) will be available and we can partly end the lockdown on condition that anyone in a public place is required by law to have a smartphone on them with app active. (All this talk about the app being voluntary is stupid, given the threat we are facing I think it would be perfectly reasonable to arrest and criminally convict anyone who doesn't use it.)

Are they supposed to pull an exit strategy out of their backside? I do not envy their position at all.
If very easy when you're not the one making decisions to say how you WOULD do things. That you WOULD be doing a better job. And make demands.
I cant imagine the mess we would be in if Corbyn won and I didn't even like boris before.

An exit strategy is not the same as an exit timeline. They can discuss possible strategies without saying, this will happen on that date. Plus there is a lot out there describing what a possible exit strategy might look like. Lockdown is not to end the virus, it's to buy time. Read The Hammer and the Dance for a really good explanation of what this might be medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Agreed, you can have a strategy about how to lockdown and decide when to implement the strategy at the right time. That right time is currently undefined.

@strawberry2017
'People still aren't following the lockdown rules'

Yes they are. 'civil disobedience' or whatever the hell you want to call it was accounted for. More companies closed than was planned for. I don't know anyone who's swanning around doing what they want, and I'm fairly sure it's the same in most places. Capacity is doing ok.

People ARE following the rules, and it's working.

Actually (sorry, but this makes me really annoyed), by not even talking about what exit strategies might be, I think the government is making the situation much worse. Some people seem think that it's black and white: lockdown or normal. It's not. There will be a new normal for quite a long time, and the sooner people realise that, the better. The government's attitude, that we have to be kept quiet like idiots because we can't cope with reality, makes me spit.

I'd rather Labour was focusing on demanding to know why there is not enough gowns for NHS staff and not enough tests being done.

Plus, they can't please everyone with what happens next. People will be pissed that it's too soon, too late, too much, not enough, kids are in school, kids aren't in school...the list is endless.

Death is still a thing. Sickness we don't have all the answers to is a thing. Maybe not as much in our sanitised first world but it's there. It's not insane to want to feel some reassurance that your livlihood your family depends on can open again at some point, or when you can see your mum again, or you know...literally anything.

We should absolutely do what we can in the next 3/4 weeks to ease things but let's not pretend that it can go on forever.

As long as the government are talking amongst themselves about an exit strategy that is good enough for me right now. It will be good to wait and see what happens in the countries who are relaxing lockdowns.

A lot of the general public are coming across as thick and quite frankly ridiculous. For the past three weeks all I have heard is people talking as if the lockdown was only going to last three weeks and shocked that it was extended on Thursday. Of course it was extended. Hundreds of people are still dying. People need to wake up and see this. The very vulnerable were given letters advising them to self isolate for 12 weeks. This is the minimum amount of time that I think we will be in lockdown for.