To think "it's alright for you" for those who want lockdown for now until eternity?

[GlummyMcGlummerson]

I've seen, on both MN and social media, outrage after the PM announcement last night that strict lockdown won't be in place any more. Lots of sensationalist "great so now people can come to the Dales and kill us all" type posts. Furious that builders can go back to work and school children can go back to school in June to "kills us all". People are saying we should have lockdown until there's a vaccine, or until September. All these people on social media either:

• work from home anyway
• run their business from home
• didn't work anyway

AIBU in thinking "yeah it's alright for you!". Some of us need to return to work to keep a living and roof over our heads. I am furloughed until the end of the month but if my workplace can't re-open by around July then my job is basically fucked. I'm a single parent to 2, my ex runs a business that also relies on lockdown being eased, so if he loses his business then I lose maintenance payments.

I think it also shows a woeful misunderstanding of what lockdown is for. It wasn't implemented so that we could stay at home while the virus fairy magicked corona virus away. It was never the expectation that lockdown would solve the virus problem. There will be a second peak - NHS barely survives flu season as it is, it's important that the next peak doesn't coincide with the inevitable flu peak

I agree OP.

I think a lot of people will miss the daily drama once we get back to whatever normal is the "new normal"

Some posters seem to be revelling in it.

The problem is that there was never a proper lockdown. We haven't been nearly as restricted as most places, and what has been done was done too late. It's not that I want lockdown to go on forever. I actually think if it was done properly it would be over much more quickly. Instead we are half-arsing this so we will be in and out of restrictions for a long time. But it won't be the government's fault if there's a second peak, of course- it'll be because we didn't follow their ridiculously unclear directions.

Meanwhile we are being expected to hand over a huge amount of information to some Tory cronies running a not very secure app. Otherwise it's our fault if tracing can't be done properly.

People are bloody hysterical and this virus has demonstrated how woefully incapable a huge proportion of the population are of assessing risk.

Agree, it seems some people want comprehensive advice on how to act in every aspect of their lives.

Sandybval

There’s no accounting for stupid. I don’t feel that way about anyone going back to work.

Millions have continued working throughout and I for one will be eternally grateful to them. Our family, with 3 vulnerable people, wouldn’t have been able to function without them.
FWIW, it’s not a very nice feeling knowing other people are potentially taking risk so that we don’t have to 🥺

Kindness

No there are no guarantees.

We KNOW some young healthy people will get it. We KNOW some people WILL die. We deem the low likelihood of young healthy peopld dying to be an acceptable level of risk, relative to the many many catastrophic consequences of a lockdown lasting for an undefined period of many months.

The current situation is unsustainable.

The majority of the population is fit and healthy, so going back to work, having a job and money to spend is the far better option. The alternative would be to die of starvation

It's not alright for anyone. We have one of the highest death rates because of our incompetent government. Nobody is alright.
People are scared.

I dont think people who must work should be pitted against those who stay home. We should all be looking to those in charge for the mess we're in now.
(And no before someone jumps me I dont care that it's because they're tories I care because they're making a pigs ear of it!).

@Expat30 one of our loved ones did die , she was 29.
Same still stands

When one of your loved ones dies because of this virus. I'm sure your perception will be very different and NOT just vunerable people die. Healthy people do die too

See i dont think it would. I would obviously be devastated if any member of my family or friends died from this. I am certain that i would do the woe is me thing, why did it have to be them, life is so unfair etc etc. Thats a natural reaction.

I wouldnt then decide to lock myself and my family away in case we suffered the same fate, because that would still be incredibly unlikely and wouldnt actually make us feel any better about losing a loved one. It would make our lives worse, we would have more time to dwell and ovethink, things i am prone to doing on a normal day. We would also likely lose our house, which again would only further reduce our quality of life.

@Chillipeanuts oh I know, don't get me wrong, it's the minority I'm guessing that feel that way, and no one should feel bad for working from home; it is protecting others too and it's just the way the cookie crumbles. I am glad that people like yourself and your family who are vulnerable are able to stay safe, and the more who aren't as vulnerable that can get things rolling, hopefully the more support for those who cant. It's just those that are calling others selfish etc when their reasons are reasonable.

I would have liked a proper, serious lockdown for the last 2 months, for people flying into the UK to have been quarantined. Businesses would have survived that. Instead we had a half arsed effort and now a reopening while our daily death toll and infections are still too high

This. I'm concerned about the ongoing impact of lockdown, but also concerned that we'll screw this up too.

Also really pissed off at all the people who keep saying that if some people go back to work then they might as well visit granny. I hate that so many people have lost their livelihoods or their actual lives, for others to balls it up because they can't wait a few more weeks for a hug. The work thing is to prevent poverty. You can speak on the phone to everyone else.

Bozo's new policy is just going to produce worse results, a really high death rate, and an economy that's even more stuffed than it is now.

@LakieLady hazard of living in a tourist area I’m afraid .

Expat30
Yes, I know some people will die, and that it could include people close to me. I accept that risk. It is a risk. Not a certainty. I weigh it up with the other risks and decide how I want to live.

Just as I know there is a risk the people i love could be killed by flu, or meningitis, or pneumonia, or in a car accident. We cannot live in isolation in a lunatic attempt to prevent anyone ever dying. The negative impact on the whole world is too much relative to the certainty that everybody will die, one day.

When one of your loved ones dies because of this virus. I'm sure your perception will be very different.

Equally when you lose your job, can’t pay your mortgage, struggle to buy food. That’ll impact your perception.

What about when tax receipts get so low that it starts to impact what the public sector can afford to pay for? Teachers salaries, NHS provision, essential services.

When you start to see the impact of lockdown on vulnerable children, their education, on domestic abuse victims.

There are MANY downsides to lockdown too.

I would have liked a proper, serious lockdown for the last 2 months, for people flying into the UK to have been quarantined. Businesses would have survived that. Instead we had a half arsed effort and now a reopening while our daily death toll and infections are still too high

This

And I think that those who want to and are able to keep their kids off school at least until September should be encouraged to do so.

It just isn't safe for DCs to go back to school yet. Tough on parents who want to go back to work but health has to come first.

Both staff and children have to be as safe as possible and there haven't even been discussions abut what measures to put in place. My HT friends are saying no way at the moment.

I agree with you. And yes, there will be a second peak and it is the lesser of all evils provided the NHS is still coping.

Back in March, before lockdown etc, people weren't scared.

The enforcement of lockdown, the restrictions etc, that scared people. In a sense we needed them to be scared so that they obeyed the restrictions.

The problem is I think that even though it was spelt out very clearly back in March that these measures were to protect the NHS, to ensure it didnt become overwhelmed, a lot of people have either decided it's quite nice being at home and getting paid (whether or not they are working or on furlough) and/ or started to believe that the reason for lockdown was to protect us all from Covid, and that therefore they can't go anywhere until there's a vaccine.

It's spot on that people's assessment of risk is really poor and this has highlighted it.

@AlternativePerspective exactly. Yes we have a benefits system now so people won’t starve but we need to pay for that benefits system going forward. No country in the world can afford for most of its population not to work long term, let alone that people actually need to grow and produce the food so we don’t starve........

NZ are in a good position now but what is there plan going forward, do they plan to remain closed off to the rest of the world until a vaccine? As soon as they open up they risk it returning. Maybe they can manage it: I’m not sure how much food/fuel etc they import but it will be hard. Of course social distancing was easier in a country where there are more people than sheep and people are in general more self reliant.

The UK can’t close off, we don’t make our own food, we use lots of immigrant labour, we have a land border with another country. We live in densely populated cities on the whole.

Shield the vulnerable and get the healthy young out to work to feed the nation and pay for the nhs and get small kids socialising with other kids again before we have some sort of future crisis in child development. Utter madness of some posters on here saying they will isolate there non medically vulnerable small child until there is a vaccine, up to two years of never playing with another child!!!!!! The social, developmental harm from that massively outweighs the risk of covid 19. Before there was a vaccine for meningitis there were often fatal outbreaks in schools, but kids weren’t locked up and that was a disease that actually killed children.

Less people than sheep - duh

I agree to an extent that it's selfishness, an 'I'm alright jack' attitude. But it's also government and media-led mass hysteria leading to an inability to risk-assess. That in turn is linked with a number of more deeply-ingrained problems: poor numeracy skills so that things like percentages are not really understood; poor scientific literacy so that neither nuance, nor the interlink between science, politics and economics is understood; very poor science reporting; the 'Black and white' lowest common denominator level of public debate - so this is like brexit, but worse; and the fact that post-Thatcher and in an increasingly neo-con libertarian world, the unions have to fight their own 'black and white /everyone's going to die' battle in order to try to gain or keep political ground. We've come to a pretty parlous state. Not sure what the solution is though.

People are bloody hysterical and this virus has demonstrated how woefully incapable a huge proportion of the population are of assessing risk.

Agree, it seems some people want comprehensive advice on how to act in every aspect of their lives.

All of the above, so true.

I’m not sure fear of the virus is lack of ‘critical thinking’

The implication in that is if you have anxiety your IQ is pretty low, I’m not sure that is the case.