Would you support a new English lockdown?

[demitrimendeleev1]

Just that really
Yabu- I wouldn’t
Yanbu- I would

I wouldn't be pissing rainbows about it but I'd get on with it - like most people, I suppose.

@WanderingMilly
I’m having a hard time managing the feeling of resentment and sadness when I see how the industry my DH works for suffering while others crack on like nothing ever happened. We are doing something or we don’t! I’m not vulnerable and ready to start a “normal” life tomorrow! I do anyway working at school every day. “Restrictions” with open schools, packed shops and playgrounds bursting with people is a joke.

NHS gets 'overwhelmed' every winter so I am getting a bit sick of healthy people having to stay indoors to 'save the NHS' when frankly the NHS should be here to save us.

Not like this it doesn't. We can't save you currently, we don't have space or resources.

Yes. Am in tier 4 but we need the whole of the UK to be following the same policy if anything is to work

I just don't know. Trouble is people just won't do the sensible thing, they were on the beaches on masse all summer, crowding the shops before Christmas, doing whatever the hell they want.
If everyone had been sensible this year it wouldn't have come to this.
It looks like we'll have to have several enforced lockdowns because people needed to be treated like children.
As a result businesses will go bust, the economy will crash and more and more people will be unemployed.
I have a job in the NHS so at least I can go to work everyday but I have so many friends who are teetering on the edge and about to lose everything they've worked for. Another lockdown will finish them off.

Yes, strict and swift.
Schools shut too, except to KW/v pupils.

The government to support businesses to be flexible with their workforce around childcare.

Schools can't do this alone.

We’ve effectively been observing a lockdown since March. We have only met family and friends outside and have only eaten our twice (in Summer). We’re working from home, having shopping delivered and the only real risk to us is our children being at school. Lockdown or don’t lockdown - the only real impact on us would be the schools, which I have a personal preference to remain open but if a short sharp lockdown reduced rates I’d cope. Just please don’t do a load of half arsed stuff and keep us in limbo forever - my DC have already missed over a term of school (March to September) and more isolating.

I'm in tier 4 aka lockdown so am guessing this will continue for a while. I don't want them to close schools.

Restrictions, yes. A full lockdown, no. They're just not sustainable, the economic and the health cost of lockdown cannot be justified by the number of lives saved by lockdown. We have become entirely risk averse and need to accept that we can't control life and death, no matter how much we might want to. There is only so much we can reasonably be expected to do.

I might reconsider if they confirm the Oxford vaccine works against the new strain and propose a lockdown for a set amount of time to vaccinate a certain percentage of people.

No I wouldn't. Covid has been around for over a year now, and we've still not been able to get any kind of control over the figures. Another national lockdown isn't going to change that.
How much longer are people really willing to comply to something that isn't making a difference? We've got to just get on with our lives at some point.

What do people think 'live alongside' the virus would look like in practise?
Do we just let people catch it and accept the deaths as just unfortunate?

Unless the vaccines turn out to be the magic bullet so many hope for, we may have no choice
And the answer the first question is to properly shield the CEV with ongoing furlough just for them if necessary. Yes it would be hard for the CEV to give up so much, but asking the entire population to do the same is hardly any better given what it's costing

One of the reasons the first lockdown worked is because it was spring going into summer, the virus doesn’t like warm weather. I sure as hell don’t want another one now because it would achieve nothing. I’d settle for proper mask wearing, people observing social distancing properly and shops enforcing the shopping alone policy - those would make a massive difference. ,

I’m in tier 4 so already in a lockdown so a full national lockdown will change nothing for me anyway. If we have any chance of getting out of it we need other areas with higher infection rates and % rise in cases to also be lockdown. Let’s be honest- it is shit, and would be really shit not to have Xmas day (for those who are still able to have one at the moment) but now is the time while the schools are already closed. Waiting until next week will only mean it will have to go on longer and the schools be closed longer.

I’m in Tier 4, not worried about my or DH’s job, we have a comfortable house and a fully stocked larder and chest freezer, so personally we’d be ok. But I do not support another lockdown. What was it Mr Spock said, ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’. We cannot carry on trashing the economy with never ending rounds of lockdowns, especially with a predicted disastrous Brexit around the corner.

Boris and co missed their chance to get a handle on the virus (New Zealand style) and anything they do now is futile, so why ruin the economy and people’s lives for no real gain?

It would be tough but I think there's no choice now, with this new variant. You can say - and many pp have - that we've been in some kind of lockdown since last spring, but the truth is our lockdown rules have been pathetic compared with most countries' and with what was needed. The tier restrictions are just pointless is the face of such an enhanced level of contagion. If we had done it properly in the first place, we wouldn't be in this position. At this point, I think we need to have a really hard, ruthless lockdown and make some proper progress, or just let it run rabid through the community - and be ready to accept that a lot of people will die. Personally I would take the lockdown, but carrying on as we are is just prolonging the agony of both uncontrolled infections and economic damage, and has to stop imo. I also think we need a sodding extension to the Brexit negotiations, which is still possible despite the technical deadline being long since past. There are limits to what this government should be choosing to inflict on us all at once.

I think these half measures are a waste of time and do more damage than good, we've not long come out of the supposed lockdown and the numbers are higher than ever. Either shut everything down including schools so people hardly leave their house and we really get a handle on bringing the numbers down or keep everything open that is considered covid secure to keep the economy going.

The only part of lockdown that affected me was the schools closing. I worked all the way through and still am even in tier 4.

Lockdowns don’t work they only ruin the economy, that it self is very very scary.

it only works if schools and education shut.
they won't so a lockdown is pointless.

I think the problem is with these half arsed measures we are stuck in limbo.

The economic and the health cost of lockdown cannot be justified by the number of lives saved by lockdown

I believe you're right, especially as we're not being told how many Covid has actually killed in and of itself

And no this isn't the start of a conspiracy theory - simply a recognition that there are still so many unknowns

I think stricter measures are the only answer the last lockdown was a joke. Schools should either close or be on a rota system and fines should be removed. I know that not everyone is in a position to be able to do that and the impact it will have will be really hard for some but it is schools that is driving this.

What do people think 'live alongside' the virus would look like in practise?
Do we just let people catch it and accept the deaths as just unfortunate?

I’ve never advocated for that, I’m now wavering. The long term cost in terms of lost years of life (not to mention poverty, hardship and misery) can’t be overstated. Recessions aren’t just about people being poor, they cost lives.

Do we just keep locking down and accept those premature deaths as unfortunate? Which set of deaths do we prefer?

There’s no good way out of this.

Think we can comfortably say the majority now support a new lockdown

The only way to effectively drive the numbers down is to lockdown. The tier system is frankly farcical and doesn’t work. I live in a tier 3 area but literally 5 minutes up the road is tier 2. My DH works in tier 2 and, whilst most of his colleagues live in tier 3, they are going to the pub with their friends in tier 2 because it’s so close and because they can basically. People are going to work or school all day five days a week but then are told not to see each other once the work/school day ends which just makes no sense. I really don’t think the virus knows when school/work has ended and thinks to infect people more then... I see school children walking home together all of the time and I really don’t blame them. They’ve just spent 6 hours in a room together so why wouldn’t they also walk home together?

Don’t even get me started on bubbles. The government just makes it up as they go along. Most people have no understanding of the rules, bubbles or tiers and just make their own rules up. The only time anyone actually took it seriously was during the first lockdown when everything was closed.

I don’t really want to be in full lockdown again with DC home from school and such but it’s the only way to actually get the numbers down. The last semi-lockdown didn’t work at all because schools were still in and a lot of people still went to work.

People just think it’s Christmas and I’m going to see my family and friends. The government relaxing the rules then snatching it away from people has infuriated lots of people too which is understandable. I think many will still go see family.

At this point, I think we need to have a really hard, ruthless lockdown and make some proper progress, or just let it run rabid through the community - and be ready to accept that a lot of people will die

Rightly or not I believe the first option's out because like the rest it'll be widely ignored, and for a number of reasons it won't be enforced

Unfortunately that leaves the second option - unless, as said, the vaccines work