Annoyed that its mostly people in safe jobs that are calling for full lockdown

[dogmad170]

Both mine and my husbands jobs are at severely at risk as we both work in hospitality. I am very swiftly losing patience with people in cushy jobs, where they can easily work from home and where there is little risk of redundancy calling for another full lockdown. Feel like we are being thrown to the wolves! Anyone in the same boat want to vent!

There is no coronaviris for which immunity lasts
We have already seen reinfections with covid

Yet you cling to the idea of herd immunity like a small child who isn't getting their way

We have already seen reinfections with covid

A mere handful of proven reinfections from more than a million cases. Very occasional reinfections happen with a majority of diseases.

I haven’t mentioned herd immunity, but let’s base this conversation on things we can actually verify.

You sound like someone who read a couple of articles online and now thinks they're a virologist. Everyone's an expert these days. Ridiculous.

I WFH, as did many in our team, before this pandemic but now do 80+hrs a week doing 2 people's job due to redundancies across the company (not hospitality) + dealing with the immense complexity from Covid. Not what I call 'cushy' ..

I don't believe for a minute than any industry has or / will emerge from this without impact. Hospitality is impacted very badly I agree and I feel for everyone in this sector. They are however far from the only ones impacted: parents are / have been working from home whilst home schooling (no picnic I assure you), kids lost education, people are doing double their normal job due to redundancies (myself included), people have lost loved ones and been unable to attend their funeral (again myself included), live with / are vulnerable people (me again..) etc. I worry more about the nurses and doctors putting themselves in harm's way to get us through this, with more and more people piling into beds. Contacts = cases so everyone had to make sacrifices.

The more this spreads, the deeper it will go and the longer lasting / wide spread the impacts will be. People are dying, that is most important thing to me. And, we're all doomed if we don't control this - and right now it doesn't seem there are any options other than locking down to contain the traction of spread. I'm sick of people who want to stay open no matter what. I've barely seen a soul since February and I do this to protect myself and my family. I don't want to lose anyone else.

I also don't think Contact tracking necessarily needs 'fixing'. I'm not convinced it's broken. this strategy is only meant to work in isolation with small numbers of infected, clusters, etc not widespread community infection at ~ 20K per day. WHO said it right at the start, it's right there published in their guidance to world governments.

20,000 positive cases in one day, with an average of say 10 contacts = 200,000 people potentially exposed to these and potentially also infected / transmitting to their contacts. A week that's 1.4 million potentially exposed from one week of 20,000 cases a day.

If you extrapolate that to secondary contacts (i.e. those who were in contact with the 1.4 million contacts of that first 200,000) they are potentially infecting people without even knowing they are infected, you down down in the pub.... that's possibly 22 million potentially infected from one week of 20000 cases a say... now not everyone will be infected but that's a whole pile of people to track down & isolate very quickly.

The spread quickly becomes exponential at these levels, containment then seems to be the only option to stop it. Contact tracing has worked in countries where people's movements are tracked through surveillance which likely isn't legal here and its enforced by police. Pick your poison..

@OlympicProcrastinator

I sometimes wonder - do people realise that we already think about deaths of people who are very elderly differently than those who are younger in managing healthcare? Not because the health system is run by asshats, but because it's the only way to do it both rationally and also compassionately. When people plan as if the elderly won't die it tends to produce bad policies that do diddly-squat to help them

I’m so glad you’ve said this. It’s almost taboo to discuss because people think that we are saying the elderly don’t matter. This is quite the opposite and something very personal to me which id like to share.

Someone in my family is approaching 94. While not suffering from dementia, she is very forgetful and is often confused. One thing she relies heavily on is family visiting, in particular her son. During lockdown she visibly deteriorated, often saying she wished she was dead and asking why her son ‘wasn’t bothered’ with her any more, wasn’t she loved? Etc etc. This was incredibly distressing for her son. Despite the fact he locked himself away for month so he could safely visit, he was continually denied access. In the meantime, other people were allowed to go to pubs / bars etc then come to work and paint her nails, brush her hair etc while her own son wasn’t able to even hold her hand. Eventually, one of the carers did indeed, bring Covid into the home. Thankfully my family member did not contract it.

However, she did become exceptionally depressed, frightened, confused and wishing death upon herself until finally, after a huge amount of effort / letters / meeting etc, arrangements have been made for the son to visit with safety measures in place. But this has only happened as an exception.

Like many elderly people time is NOT on her side. By being honest about this does not mean they are not cared for. But making their last year or two of life lonely, sad and soul destroying when they ARE going to die soon seems so cruel. Is it a case of ‘well as long as it’s not from Covid’ then it’s ok? Do we stop visiting elderly people full stop every year from now on? Because I worked in a residential home and before Covid every year we would lose several people from flu / pneumonia but keeping people away from families wasn’t considered.

Yes, exactly. People like your relative are going to die, and they will die soon. It's not unusual for care facilities for the elderly to have a normal turnover rate of something like 30%. That is quite a few people who have been prevented from social interactions our going outdoors for the last six months of their lives.

Most of these elderly people are not simply going to go to bed one night healthy and die in their sleep. There is a good chance they will die of a respiratory infection, heart failure, dementia, possibly cancer. These are not typically quick and easy, and most will have DNR orders in place already. It's really not obviously better to avoid covid today by being quarantined and end up three months from now, still under lockdown, dead from pneumonia.

I think that there should be some common sense with this. I've had long Covid and so worry about catching the virus again.

My DM is 81 and has always been vulnerable to bronchitis in recent years. She is careful, as she doesn't want to 'pop her clogs' just yet. She could realistically live for another 15 years at least (not necessarily as bone of us know what's ahead).

However, she's a very bright woman, with a PhD, and she's therefore very capable of doing her own risk assessment, as am I.

We all know the risks. My belief is that we should be left to figure out for ourselves what risks are worth taking and when we should refrain.

Not that the government shouldn't be doing anything. They should focus on test and trace and get it right.

No we don’t know anything for definite but we can see a few patterns and understand how other virus’s work that can help us.

While some people have had the virus twice, most people who have had it have not been reinfected. There have been several known cases of reinfection and one death from a reinfection. Most people that get it a second time have had it less seriously. These are the patterns so far and appear to follow the patterns of other coronavirus’s.

One of the reasons many experts argued flu kills less people is that we have SOME herd immunity, meaning that because the population as a whole has been exposed then people who have it twice have it less seriously and those who are vulnerable need extra protection. We know that a person vaccinated from flu can still get a different strain of flu but will likely get a less serious case if they have received a vaccine of a different strain.

So far this virus hasn’t behaved any differently to other viruses.

Just to add, I really want my DDs to be in school. Yes there's a risk, but once again that's where text and trace is so important.

@Chuggington2

No one is saying that *@quarentini* but most (bar a few) that I’ve seen have done the absolute bare minimum, and many have flouted the rules or let their punters flout the rules for all to see. More than likely with their eyes on the money rolling in rather than long term survival.

It is difficult to not feel frustration as well as sympathy having seen all that and knowing the sector could have done a lot more: Proper understanding of how the virus spreads (a quick. Google would suffice to educate) Pre booking only, Mandatory ID for track trace, cross referenced with the lead party booking, table service only, masks and visors for staff, enforcing some semblance of distancing between punters, just a few things that yes would be a small bit of extra effort but not much more (especially for bars given the licensing laws they operate under anyway) that would have made a huge difference collectively. Most did the bare minimum though and now look where we are.

Re your second paragraph: that is precisely how all the pubs I’ve been to have been operating. They’ve been amazing

Chuggington2
So I disagree that “most” have done the bare minimum

Whether or not those calling for a lockdown have ‘safe’ jobs is a distraction from the true issues:

The background infrastructure isn’t supportive of the economy. In particular -

• TEST AND TRACE isn’t fit for purpose
• BREXIT is just around the corner
• We’ve spent a ludicrous amount of £ on both these things...

Both appear to be shambolic!

TBH, even if things stayed as they are now, I think a lot of pubs and restaurants will not make it through the winter. They won't be able to fit enough people in once the weather turns to make a profit and many people will choose not to go out as much or at all anyway.

@Goosefoot

TBH, even if things stayed as they are now, I think a lot of pubs and restaurants will not make it through the winter. They won't be able to fit enough people in once the weather turns to make a profit and many people will choose not to go out as much or at all anyway.

I'm seeing this already. I walk past our village pub every evening with the dogs, in the warmer months the garden and car park had well spaced out tables, well organised and always had a good turn out of customers most evenings. The last 3 week's its had a handful of people in the garden, none in the bar. With the colder weather it will get worse.

Its a family run pub, feel awful as it has 3 generations living there, tented from brewery. Its not just their jobs, its their home and lives.

@TasslesandFringes

Whether or not those calling for a lockdown have ‘safe’ jobs is a distraction from the true issues:

The background infrastructure isn’t supportive of the economy. In particular -

• TEST AND TRACE isn’t fit for purpose
• BREXIT is just around the corner
• We’ve spent a ludicrous amount of £ on both these things...

Both appear to be shambolic!

Very good points

Why is nobody discussing the North / South divide on this? Why is it that the number of cases in the North are so much higher? There is only so much that can be explained by bigger cities surely so what accounts for the rest? Is it behaviour of people, cultural differences, poverty differences, I am amazed that this is not being discussed....thoughts anyone?

@Molly499

Why is nobody discussing the North / South divide on this? Why is it that the number of cases in the North are so much higher? There is only so much that can be explained by bigger cities surely so what accounts for the rest? Is it behaviour of people, cultural differences, poverty differences, I am amazed that this is not being discussed....thoughts anyone?

Why did no one care about this in March when it was London badly hit but the whole country was locked down which was completely pointless in areas with few, if any, infections?

Oh yes I totally get it! Although I am in a secure job and all of my colleagues are (nhs) I have one specific colleague who is seriously testing my patience at the moment. All she ever talks about is Covid and all the negativity, how we weren't shut down for long enough, how we need another full blown lockdown, how we must start wearing masks all day long sat at our desks (office is very socially distanced, we take them off when we sit down). She's desperate to get the whole country fully down. All well and good for her and her husband who has retired but she fails to consider people whose jobs would be seriously at risk like my partners who brings most of the money in.

Maybe a but controversial but...

As a self employed person who was badly hit by lockdown, both financially and psychologically I would actually like another lockdown. HOWEVER. What I would like is a clear two month total lockdown that AFTER THAT releases us back to living in the pre Covid way.

I think a short sharp lockdown will be better for business and people if it means we are then allowed to go back to normal. What is draining peoples mindsets and business's finances now is this long drawn out highly restricted attempt at normality

Here here OP. All lockdowns do is defer the inevitable. They just suppress the virus for a while and then it reemerges. I'm sick of people with safe jobs acting like everyone's in the same privileged boat as them.

Hi. I'd like a full lockdown.

I'd like a full lockdown because I live in the North and I think we're viewed as sadly unimportant.

I think we're going to get put into Tier 3. I think it won't work because nothing is going to get R below 1 while schools and universities are open. And then I think they'll leave us there because let's be honest we're not London, no-one cares about our hospitality. We'll be in until after Christmas.

In the same way that Tier 2 compensation magically gets attention when it's London I think the only way anyone is going to care even slightly about what happens to us is if it's nationwide. And at least a full lockdown stands a cat's chance in hell of businesses being able to reopen before Christmas.

@moaningmyrtle1 tell her to shut the F up and give her stats. Also this link www.express.co.uk/news/world/911394/flu-season-epidemic-2018-symptoms-latest-spread-news-cdc

I’m self employed, I havnt been self employed long enough to get any of the gov grants, so zero help given. I think a full lockdown is needed

I certainly don’t want another lockdown. The first one didn’t work so why should a second? 🤷🏻‍♀️ People are absolutely fed up with all of this now. I understand that people’s lives and jobs are at risk but feel the Government does not have a proper grip on this pandemic. Mind you, we have not really been in this situation before where we don’t have a vaccine. Christmas is going to be very different this year and I think we will be well into next year before we start seeing a difference...

As selfish as this will sound, at this point a lockdown/forced closure is the only way I'll get support to cover my business costs. That being said I'm still without an income. I get no support while I struggle to keep going.

OP i am sorry that a lockdown would impact you so badly. Unfortunately, it is an impossible balancing act because if it is necessary and not done, other people will also be impacted-in terms of their health.
The only thing I would take issue with is that wfh is not a cushy option and does not mean your employment is safe. I have wfh (self employed) since I lost my job 3 years ago. It is not cushy. No regular income, holidays, sick pay, regular hours etc. It is also not safe.