AIBU to think I'd rather take my chances with the virus...

[User3billion]

...than give up any more freedom?!

I'm in a tier 3 area and I'm so done. I'm sick of people in tier 1 areas preaching on social media about what we should and shouldn't be doing (especially given it can vary from one tier 3 area to the next). I'm sick of feeling like a prisoner in my own home. I'm sick of not being able to trust a single thing our government says.

I don't understand how we've got to a point in the UK, in 2020, where it's ILLEGAL to visit family we don't live with. And what's worse is that people are happy to go along with this! It's all kinds of wrong.

We deride other countries that deprive their citizens of their civil liberties and yet here we are.

Op i get what you are saying but as hard as it is it is for a reason My eldest DC lives in a tier 3 area and works in contact with the general public i worry about them. We are in the tier one and I am on a weeks holiday from work the first thing i would have done this weekend is took my other DC 's up to see my eldest DC I can't and it bloody hurts .I know you have facetime etc but it hurts not seeing them properly. But I would never take the risk i work with the elderly and I care very deeply for each one I support and I would never forgive myself if I put them at risk.

@MadameBlobby Thanks for your reply. It looks as if the government are playing for time until Christmas, or until there is a vaccine (or they spin up an vaccine-shaped web of lies, and tell us "this is a vaccine"), at which point they'll quietly drop restrictions, hope that hospitals don't get too full, and keep the emergency laws firmly in place.

@Buddytheelf85

I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘liberties vs lives of others’. People accept infringements on their liberty for the good of others all the time without complaint. For example, I imagine 99.99% of us accept that we shouldn’t have the freedom to drink and drive - because there’s incontrovertible, indisputable evidence that it poses an unacceptable risk to other road users. And there’s no downside to banning drink drinking. Depriving you of the freedom to drink drive harms you in no way - it does nothing but deprive you of the freedom to drive after drinking.

But I think the reason people struggle with the Covid restrictions is that they do restrict some very fundamental liberties - basic rights we agreed in the wake of the horrors of WW2 that every human being should be entitled to, such as the right to liberty, the right to a private life, the freedom of assembly and association, and the right to education. And there isn’t clear, incontrovertible evidence a) that the restrictions work, or b) that they don’t cause more harm than they prevent.

I don’t know the answers. But it’s certainly not simple.

Agree with this

A requirement for example to have an acceptable standard of eyesight for driving, to wear a seatbelt, not to drink and drive do not have anywhere near the downsides of the current restrictions on our liberty we are having to put up with.

I don’t understand why people are saying that it’ll be over sooner if people actually comply with lockdowns. The opposite is true.

With open borders and no effective public health track and trace it’s impossible to eradicate community spread. It’ll only be over when there’s a widespread effective vaccine or when most people have had the virus, assuming there’s functional immunity after wild-type infection. If there’s no vaccine for a while then lockdowns mean fewer people get it all at once but also means fewer people become immune.

The whole point of lockdown isn’t to eradicate the virus - that’s impossible now - but to “flatten the curve”.

I’m in Australia where there’s been the advantage of living on and island but there’ve also been tight border closures and an effective track and trace. I know people who work in public health and they’ve been working crazy hours since this has commenced. Im a rule follower as well but I’d be pissed off if I lived in a country where I couldn’t visit a close relative “because Covid” but there was still free movement into the country.

A mixture of gullibility, denial and a desire to believe that the people we are stuck with ruling us for the foreseeable aren't completely useless and venal.

Etopp -I'd take it like a shot. In fact, I'd take it if it killed me, for other people - and particularly young people - to be able to live their lives without fear and restrictions.*
*
What right have you to make that decision for other people ? 'Young people' are not going to melt because they have to limit their social lives for the next 6 months. Neither are they likely to die from consequences of MH in anything like the numbers that will die of Corona , Flu , Pneumonia Cancer and Heart disease over this winter.

Your attitude is to say 'fuck it' let young people spread it all over the place to whoever comes into contact with them. Because 'they' have a right to life. So does everyone. My mother (currently in hospital with Covid & Pneumonia ) is 77. Both my grandparents lived to their late 90s . Until last week my mum was still cycling down the shops.. my kids could reasonably expect to have their Grandmother around for another 10-20 years. Because she's 77 is her life less valuable than your children's right to live without 'fear and restrictions' ? Perhaps the children /young people you know need a little less self absorption and a bit more thought for others in the form of social responsibility.
Being upset, cross , bored - even clinically depressed and anxious are all issues that can be recovered from. Death is a one way street .

A requirement for example to have an acceptable standard of eyesight for driving, to wear a seatbelt, not to drink and drive do not have anywhere near the downsides of the current restrictions on our liberty we are having to put up with.

Absolutely - there aren’t any downsides to those kinds of requirements, they don’t impinge on any fundamental freedoms, and they have very clear and well-evidenced benefits. So any comparison of the Covid restrictions with those sorts of safe driving requirements just don’t work.

I think a more accurate analogy would be if the governments of the world banned road travel for leisure purposes in order to prevent road deaths. Around 30,000 people are killed or seriously injured on the roads in the UK every year, including children and young people. Globally around 1.4m people are killed every year in road accidents and millions more are seriously injured. And, in addition, air pollution is estimated to cause around 35,000 premature deaths a year in the UK.

So it’s fair to say many, many lives would be saved if the government banned road travel for leisure purposes. But I think most people would agree that banning road travel for leisure purposes would be too much of an infringement on our fundamental liberties, and I don’t think we’d call those people selfish murderers for thinking that.

There’s no reason the UK can not close its boarders

There’s no reason anyone returning can’t self isolate on return

The track and trace is only limited if people refuse to engage and comply

These are choices

No, the track and trace could still be limited even if we had 100% compliance as soon as people were contacted (which we won't because that would require proper payment to isolate). This is because the system itself simply isn't good enough. We are not reliably identifying and informing every contact. The population adhering to rules, even those rules that do actually make sense, is not enough by itself. The governance and infrastructure have to be there.

It would also require illegal workers to be contacted and paid??

@BluebellsGreenbells

It would also require illegal workers to be contacted and paid??

Yes, that's a good point. And they're a much larger part of the UK economy than a lot of people realise . The government should know though!

@gjejgej

The restrictions are fucking useless and have little impact on the spread. Do you really think some disposable masks and 10pm curfews have a serious effect?

Curfews are ridiculous. Masks have been shown to be effective. Distancing demonstrably has an effect.

If we went back to normal I doubt it would make much difference to the case numbers.

Upon what is your doubt based? Are you Donald Trump?

@wanderings

YANBU at all, but this is Mumsnet, where anyone who doesn't bow down and cower to the virus and toe Saint Boris's line (or anyone more power-crazed than him, such as Drakeford) is automatically a mass-murdering granny killer.

And I think we have every reason to worry about life post-pandemic. Will Saint Boris or whoever replaces him EVER declare the pandemic fully over? Will our rights be restored TOTALLY to what they were? Will we have a massive crisis of mental health, all because of a lockdown for a highly questionable cause?

The esteemed lying, cheating, gaslighting, doommongering leaders we are saddled with would do well to remember one thing: they are our servants, not the other way round. WE PAY THEIR WAGES, while they are deliberately cranking up the spin machine, peddling lies, deliberately pitting groups of the public against each other, spreading fear, and distorted facts and figures to suit their agenda, supposedly in the name of health; when in fact, it's about control. There will be far more deaths from lockdown than from Covid, but Saint Boris doesn't care: he knows his days as PM are numbered, and he'll soon be retiring on his gold-plated pension while millions are unemployed because of his lockdown.

Ridiculously melodramatic. And I say that as someone who loathes this government and Johnson in particular.

I personally don't think people's freedom and Liberty is more important than someone else's lives. Young people are not going to die if they can't meet up, go to the pub or club together for a year or so but someone vulnerable might. It's rubbish for them, I agree, but suck it up. It's a very short period of their life for the greater good. At least they aren't trying to work, home school and worry about paying the bills. There are bigger issues involved in this. Boo hoo, they can't go clubbing.

There were restrictions back in war time with food restricted, travel and a curfew on being aloud out. I bet the population weren't moaning about their Liberty and freedom back then. It was done to save lives and keep the country going, win the war. It's the same now.

There is such an absence of intelligence on this thread! A wonderful argument for why the masses shouldn't get to choose what they do in a global emergency.

"until last week my mum was cycling down the shops".
I'm sorry that your mum is so ill, but isn't that the point, she didn't sit indoors worrying that she might catch the virus if she set foot in a public space and interacted in any way with others. My mum has met others to socialise in the summer, a very careful selection of elderly friends. Advice where she lives, is that she should see no one except my father. The risk is increased for herself and others, just like your mother's risk increased by going shopping (my mother isn't shopping at all btw, too risky). But how else are people supposed to "live"?
My mum also used to love to cycle to shops unfortunately now too infirm to bicycle.

Very best wishes for your mother, but you cannot blame society for your mother's covid, unless you know someone that deliberately infected her and flouted self isolation rules.
We all make choices every single day that increase our risk. Every Amazon parcel we order,very avocado that is shipped over, every book we collect from library. Shall we ban all these things cos they are inessential? Do you live your life like that?

"young people aren't going to melt if they don't have a social life"
But their socialising just happens to support the economy.
Fancy that.
You do realise that interactions and shared experiences are what drives most of what we buy and sell, be it services, entertainment, retail goods, construction, travel, sport.
All this talk of Christmas..it isn't just to do with sentiment, the economy depends on people meeting up

@MadameBlobby

There should be absolute uproar about the shambles of track and trace (all the money wasted in that should be used to support those who are unable to work/financially struggling).

Totally agree

Why isn't there an uproar? I don't understand it. Billions of pounds disappeared without trace.

Perhaps the children /young people you know need a little less self absorption and a bit more thought for others in the form of social responsibility
Exactly that and that with my kid affected one in Uni, the other doing A levels. Not once did I hear them moan about their right to liberty, not even when they turned 21 and 18 during the lockdown and couldn't go out and celebrate.

Because they understand that there are vulnerable people who deserve their lives to be extended when in all likelihood it would be but for the risk of Covid.

Because they can appreciate that this only for a few years of their young lives and they still have plenty of time to make up for what they've lost.

It is scary how many young people lack resilience and feel their world is falling apart just because they can't go out as they used to or meet with all their family.

I still struggle to understand that this is really happening.

At the start when Wuhan was locked down I remember conversations about how that could never happen here. The police just wouldn’t be able to stop people leaving one area for another never mind locking us up in our homes.

Like you OP it does blow my mind every time I remember that visiting my parents or in laws is now illegal. Or that not covered my face in a shop is now illegal.

"It is scary how many young people lack resilience".
Every young person I know has shown extraordinary resilience and fortitude, self isolating dutifully when asked at uni, not celebrating a levels with friends, not travelling around over summer.

It isn't impossible. They survive.

But too much sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.

Which is why the unis opened their campuses. Do they know something we don't? Or was it just incredibly selfish of them to need the money to educate our children from on campus accommodation?

Was it possibly that it benefited our kids to go to uni on campus rather than online and it was better for their life chances to get away from home? So selfish of students to want a social life, after all..

@dontdisturbmenow

Perhaps the children /young people you know need a little less self absorption and a bit more thought for others in the form of social responsibility Exactly that and that with my kid affected one in Uni, the other doing A levels. Not once did I hear them moan about their right to liberty, not even when they turned 21 and 18 during the lockdown and couldn't go out and celebrate.

Because they understand that there are vulnerable people who deserve their lives to be extended when in all likelihood it would be but for the risk of Covid.

Because they can appreciate that this only for a few years of their young lives and they still have plenty of time to make up for what they've lost.

It is scary how many young people lack resilience and feel their world is falling apart just because they can't go out as they used to or meet with all their family.

When you categorise those feelings as scary and indicative of lacking resilience, you place a potential barrier in the way of your children sharing them with you if that is in fact their experience. And really, there's not a great deal of value in someone decades older talking about the feelings of that generation about the pandemic, any more than there would be in a load of 18 year olds talking about how the middle aged are taking it.

It interests me that people who say that they won't follow the restrictions are the same ones that talk about the hit to the economy and effect on young people due to lockdown. Even if you don't care about the lives of other people do you not think that you are making things worse for businesses and economy in your area if you "take your chances", get infected and infect other people. The more cases in your area, the longer you will be in Tier 3 and the more chance of further restrictions.

@Belladonna12

It interests me that people who say that they won't follow the restrictions are the same ones that talk about the hit to the economy and effect on young people due to lockdown. Even if you don't care about the lives of other people do you not think that you are making things worse for businesses and economy in your area if you "take your chances", get infected and infect other people. The more cases in your area, the longer you will be in Tier 3 and the more chance of further restrictions.

This is based on the assumption that following the regulations is automatically safer than not, which simply isn't true.

Some of the things that have been banned in higher tier areas, such as seeing people outside in private gardens even when SD, simply don't present a risk in themselves. They're banned because of the belief that people will take that as an excuse to go in houses instead, which may or may not be true but either way, sitting in your mum's garden in a very big coat 2 metres away from her is not a risk.

Equally, some of the things that are banned are potentially more safe. There are still limitations on informal childcare, you're supposed to be in a bubble: it isn't a free for all. But let's say one set of grandparents provide care to two sets of grandchildren from different households, at different times. Monday and Tuesday for GC no 1, Thursday and Friday for GC no 2. This is illegal in parts of the country, because the grandparents should only be in a childcare bubble with one household. But there are plenty of instances where it will involve fewer contacts and therefore a lower risk than the alternative of the children being in formal childcare placements instead. There are families who are breaking the law in this way who will nonetheless be taking the safer option.

Now clearly if the people who say they're going to break the rules are eg planning a large party indoors with loads of people, that's liable to make things worse. But the point is, regulations and safest practice aren't synonymous.

My cousin and his family went down with Covid back in April. He is still unable to taste anything and is permanently tired. A close friend has a sister who died. All she suffered from was diabetes. This is really not a joke and I would not wish this virus on anyone.