to think peoples attitudes are just going to contribute to more lockdowns?

[firthy85]

ok. i have always been an advocate to get back our freedom but sensibly. went out yesterday to a local pub for a couple of hours and couldn't believe it. its a great pub lovely atmosphere and staff and has always been a child/dog friendly pub. no social distancing at all, at one point i was squished on a bench between about 5 people. kids running in and out of the pub messing about etc. i totally get that yesterday was a novelty to many people after being locked down since the beginning of november but i feel this total lack of self control is going to end badly for everyone. did you risk going out at all yesterday? aibu?

The risk of outdoor transmission has been shown to be tiny so no, I think we'll be fine.

Who was sat with you? Presumably you arranged to go with your friends and sit at a table for six? If the table wasn't big enough you should have left.

You chose to go to the pub on the first day of opening and you chose to remain squished between other people. You can’t moan about it, you’re part of the problem!

Why didn’t you tell them to move?
If I was sat at a table there’s no way I would allow any randomers to sit near me, I would tell them no you can’t sit here.
There again there’s no way I would go to a pub like that or stand queuing to get into Primark, I’d just not do it.
Yesterday was the same as any other day for me, I went out to work then came gone again.

And despite being outraged enough to post about it here, you stayed at the pub.

Why ?

I love all these double standards. There were a couple of elderly women out shopping yesterday on the TV. They were less than 1m apart and moaning about there being too many people out.

You contributed to it though. You allowed yourself to be 'squished' and didn't say anything or even leave. You are part of the problem you are complaining about.

Your post doesn't make sense. You went to a pub the first day they opened and stayed despite it being busy. There were reopening parties yesterday. Now you're complaining about that. Don't squish yourself on a bench with others. Go to quieter places. Plenty of people haven't gone wild mixing closely with others because lockdown is slowly lifting. You are just not one of them...

if i was to rewrite my OP from a totally personal perspective it would read i had a great time was nice to see everyone again but i was writing this thread thinking of what it may mean in the longer term aproach that may end up being taken to control the pandemic. i live alone so there isn't really a support bubble and so i believe that does mean 2 households can sit together without it being called a bubble. before i was squished i was sat with a man next to me and his dd sat opposite me. we were spaced nicely. sorry if maybe it wasn't made completely clear.

There are two points to consider here.

Firstly, you were contributing to the rules being broken, ergo you should have gone home. Being squashed on a bench with six others wasn’t mandatory, it was a choice you made for yourself. Even if the pub hadn’t put the correct measures in place, you still chose to stay there.

/secondly following vaccination, the death rate and the hospitalisation rate from COVID has dropped dramatically. While there is some concern that vaccinations may not be as effective against new variants, this is an unknown. Added to which, the idea has never been to eradicate COVID, only to control it. COVID is always going to be here. People will always catch it, and they will always die from it, much as they do now with the flu. But we hopefully won’t go back to a situation where it sweeps through the population as it has done in the past year. Other pandemics such as the Spanish flu show that this is unlikely to be the case.

Therefore, there comes a point when we have to open up and allow life to return to normal. There has to be a balance.

I think that there are some measures such as masks which will become a more permanent or at least regular fixture such as in the flu season, and as mask averse as some people are I actually believe that this should be the case. Other countries manage it and have done for years, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t as well, especially if it means less hospitalisation and deaths from flu. But we literally cannot stay in lockdown forever. That goes against everything that we are as human beings.

PS: I have shielded for the best part of the past year. I have seen my partner maybe 5 times, and most recently not since December since we don’t live together. I was told that if I catch COVID I would be unlikely to survive. But I have been vaccinated.

But surviving COVID i no longer enough. What’s the point in surviving if we’re not actually living.

So if after this I happen to catch COVID and die, then so be it. That doesn’t mean that I advocate throwing caution to the wind, but there does have to come a point when we weigh up the risks. Against the achievements we’ve made.

Learnt a few years back, that it is impossible to "herd" a larger group of people. Like herding kittens. Impossible.

I've decided to wait at least a week or so before going anywhere newly opened, until the initial rush dies down. Even if there were no Covid, I don't like being in crowds.

I think the issue is the poor management of the pub more than a general one.

You sound like that woman at Durdle Door .
Am very confused as to how you ended up squashed on a bench. Are you saying this was with strangers?

You know you are part of the problem right?

the staff were doing what they could they were often telling people to sit down and tell your children to sit down. problem was that there was only really 2 people serving. as i said before if was writing my personal thoughts about yesterday i would be saying that i didn't personally feel unsafe because i have never believed in being irrational about it but i was writing the post meaning to look at the longer view of what may happen to our freedom if patterns like yesterday keep happening which would be dreadful to go backwards instead of forwards.

For goodness sake. I can't bear this attitude. If a place is packed, you feel uncomfortable and perhaps unsafe, just bloody leave! It's not difficult. By being there, you're contributing to the high numbers of people.

It's like when people went to the beach last summer and shared photos of how packed it was, whilst laying on a towel in the middle of it!

@AlternativePerspective well said!

So 5 random people came and squashed on your bench with you?

This is why I didn’t go to a pub or the shops.

DDs and I went to the local park with a friend of hers from school and her mum and brother. The three children (DD2 is just a baby) spent their time running about in the trees and I spent my time 2m from the other mum and chatting. Big open space and, whilst there were loads of other people there, no reason to get too close to anyone else.

We looked at the play park and decided it was far too busy to let the children play in there so we didn’t. That’s what you should have done when you saw how busy the pub was.

You are going to have to get used to normality again. The past year has been the abnormal, humans interacting and socialising is the normal thing for humans.
This.
Terrifying how people have do easily habituated to ‘lockdown’ and see it as an acceptable imposition (Stockholm syndrome!)

@namesnamesnamesnames

For goodness sake. I can't bear this attitude. If a place is packed, you feel uncomfortable and perhaps unsafe, just bloody leave! It's not difficult. By being there, you're contributing to the high numbers of people.

It's like when people went to the beach last summer and shared photos of how packed it was, whilst laying on a towel in the middle of it!

Yes. I have hated lots of things about lockdown but number 1 has been the people riding around tubes in central London tweeting photos saying “good, people are finally getting the message and staying away!” etc.

You aren’t stuck in traffic... you are the traffic!!!

We are booked into a favourite restaurant on Friday night. If I arrived and discovered they were not following CoVid safety guidelines I’d leave and I would tell them why. There is no way I’m going to take chances now just to eat out. You should not have stayed if conditions weren’t safe.

Yea, people are wankers. They’re the reason we can’t have nice things (like a normal life). Now they shout about no more lockdowns ever but they did that last summer too.

You’re like the woman who went to the beach and then complained about the people on the beach

like i said personally was for me an enjoyable experience i was talking about what may happen at the top if we get too complacent. its a local estate pub so most people are regulars or semi-regulars living more or less in the same area so have dc's going to school or work with each other. i am blind so take cabs everywhere so i was hardly going to upon realising how packed it was book a return trip meaning i will have spent 6 squid to go out and then come home again.