40,000 Fans and No Masks

[DadAManger]

Watching the football. Yes, I like the football.

But WTF, no masks (literally not one mask) and hugging and kissing like it’s a San Francisco in 1980.

This pandemic is over then? My kids aren’t being sent home from school again, I can spend time sitting with my grandmother at home? I know I will be told ‘life has to go on as normal’. I think I have lost my mind - I just don’t understand anymore.

I'm finding it difficult to get worked up about this. We've known for ages that outdoor events are less risky albeit there are now examples of outdoor transmission in Australia apparently.

Indoors in primary school is different risk wise as no pupils are vaccinated and younger primary teaches have likely had only one jab. We also now know that transmission does happen in schools and as it stands even a double vaccinated teacher has to isolate if one of their pupils tests positive.

We all know delta is more transmissible and yet nothing has been done to mitigate that transmission. All very well saying test instead but the government chose tests that the Americans have decided aren't fit for purpose, spent 37bn but completely abdicated all responsibility for testing in schools (which the majority of people won't agree to anyway) left schools to do their own contact tracing without training or support meaning it's almost never done properly.

It's entirely predictable what would happen since may but the government don't care. Most likely they need kids infected since they won't jab them and they don't care if it is inconvenient for parents, zero hour cleaners dinner ladies losing jobs and money as a result.

@SimonJT the school really aren't laughing at me at all and neither are the local community centre hall which can't hire out their room to make money. The bouncy castle people certainly aren't laughing at me, in fact the poor woman was crying when I spoke to her about getting a refund on my deposit of over 18 months ago.

I don't know of a single school where I live that is having transition days, sports days etc. You are very lucky. Schools don't have the man power or the space to organise this within whatever guidelines they have been given.

My 7 year old went to bed saying how rubbish she is at sports and nervous of sports day. I went to bed sad because she'll have to do it on her own. 40,000 people (almost all men) went to bed last night after having a brilliant time doing something normal with no social distancing, singing etc. However you want to look at it this is not right and huge sections of the population have no choice but to comply with these stupid rules whist for others the rules seem not to apply. It's not just football, it's all the sporting events and no quarantining for VIP's, business execs. I'm allowed to feel furious on all we've missed out on and are still missing out on, it's compounded by the unfairness of the situation.

@TheRosesOfSuccess @MrsFezziwig it’s not about reading it off MN it’s about knowing the rules as I read the news, a family member is an undertaker and that I have been to a few funerals the past couple of years all of which only allowed a maximum of 30 people 15 or 16 of which were allowed inside depending on venue size.
It only changed a few days ago that they could allow more people depending on the venue size but there is still a limit that the individual places set.
It’s quite strange that you would openly post on a thread that there’s no limit when a quick read of the rules (or common sense) would tell you that there has been a max. limit set since Covid started like every other venue

Nope, football fans are immune from covid... The same way the "rich and elite" are I joke

Is this going to be a regular thing? Every time there's an England match there'll be a 40,000 fans and we can't do this/that whatever?
This is at least the 4th thread I've seen.

Coronavirus topic needs some sub sections IMO. Or have one long '40,000 fans and...' thread.

@Sparklingbrook

Is this going to be a regular thing? Every time there's an England match there'll be a 40,000 fans and we can't do this/that whatever? This is at least the 4th thread I've seen.

Coronavirus topic needs some sub sections IMO. Or have one long '40,000 fans and...' thread.

Good idea.

@Thelm from the 19th July that stops so I would get some lateral flow and get on with it now.. (just what I’d do personally)

What gets me is the singing. We cant go back to our choir and sing, or can only sing in groups of 30 socially distanced outside. thats from Government rules not from the choir rules - we are all desperate to get back to singing together and not on flipping zoom where we have been stuck since March 2020. Yet football fans all together, singing their little hearts out cos "its coming home!", makes my blood boil a bit. Everything else is slowly opening up yet if you are in a non-professional choir still cannot be more than 6 socially distanced in a room. We are over 100 in our choir, and I would so most of an age who have been double vaccinated. All would take a weekly test, or lateral flows etc.

@Taliskerskye my Dad is in a Care Home, bed bound and has dementia. I am only allowed one visit a week. I have to turn up at 3.30 to do the lft wait 30 mins and then have an hour with him. Can only arrange a visit Monday to Friday. I can't leave work 2 hours early each week. I'm not sure how many care homes actually allow 2 visits a day. I shall be glad when they are able to relax visiting a bit as I'd like to visit my Dad more often.

So many once in a life time things are banned or heavily restricted, weddings, funerals, visiting dying loved ones, proms, graduations, even basic education but Football? oh no that can carry on as normal.

Terrible hypocrisy from this awful government but we will all put up with it.

But football didn't go on as normal did it? If it had it would have happened last year.

Football didn't carry on as normal!

For the purposes of these '40,000 football fans and...' threads it has to be that football carried on as normal apparently.
But if that was the case it would have happened last year and the crowds would be full capacity.

Are you all saying football isn't carrying on (pretty much) as normal now?
Whilst many other things, involving few people are still banned.

Grassroots sport is allowed now, yes. And a bloody good thing too. Still no crowds watching the matches though.

@thecatsatonthewall

Are you all saying football isn't carrying on (pretty much) as normal now? Whilst many other things, involving few people are still banned.

As normal would mean no limit on the spectator numbers surely?

I'm more pissed off about the new "rule" that business leaders who show that they can provide "economic benefit" to the country will no longer have to quarantine.

Obviously the virus can tell how much is in a person's bank account now.

I know. Ducking ridiculous. You can't sing at weddings yet you can bellow and sing at footy??

Fans at Hampden are socially distanced and wear masks. Wtf is England thinking??

@thecatsatonthewall

So many once in a life time things are banned or heavily restricted, weddings, funerals, visiting dying loved ones, proms, graduations, even basic education but Football? oh no that can carry on as normal.

Terrible hypocrisy from this awful government but we will all put up with it.

Pre-tested 40K crowds at Wembley isn't "normal". Lots of German tweets moaning about "Delta coming home" though. But they probably don't know it was a test event. And UEFA is insisting on bigger crowds for the semi and final or they were going to move them to Hungary who don't care at all.

Although it was noticeable that there were far fewer people at Hampden Park for the Sweden-Ukraine match but maybe there would have been more there if Scotland/another home nation had been playing there.

Totally get the thing about the choirs though. Utterly ludicrous when everyone has probably been double jabbed by now.

Still can't believe this was allowed to go ahead. Why is football a priority right now over things like weddings?

@beigebrownblue

This comment is inhuman. It really is. No regard to children whatsoever. I please ask this be removed. it is disgraceful and disgusting for parents and kids.

I've reported it. Attending football games does not take precendence over kids welfare. Thanks.

Rightly reported it. Shocking the mentality of some people.

It’s a pilot event, the whole premise is to put thousands of maskless people together and see what happens. They all had to test negative beforehand and will be tested again 2 and 5 days afterwards to see whether it has caused an outbreak. The pilot events so far have all gone pretty well AFAIK, I know they had one at the crucible in Sheffield a couple of months ago and also a nightclub in Liverpool I believe- both went without a hitch.

We can’t wear masks forever, they’re trying to test the waters with pilot events to see what happens if the public were to stop wearing them. I’m hoping they will completely lift restrictions in 3 weeks and we can go back to normal, it’s so fucking boring now and most of us have been vaccinated.

@Youdiditanyway

Sounds great BUT there is no requirement for people to do a test following the event - see Government guidelines on the Euros posted earlier in the thread.

Also, the initial pilot events only 15% of people returned both tests. I'm assuming 100% did the pre event test but only 15% returned the post event test. If they were serious about these being trial events the returning of both tests should have been made legal.

As a scientist said yesterday, the data is not complete and they do not really know the spread of the virus after the initial test events because of the low number of people doing a post event test. It's in the PHE report.

I agree, we have to get on with life but it seems dressing these events up as "test events" to check the spread of the virus is just a cover to let them all go ahead. Meanwhile, normal everyday things are still fairly difficult and are not functioning how they should be. We do need to open up but surely things like schools, doctors, dentists should be the first things to operate normally.

Again, this was NOT a test event, and neither were the group games (which I went to). The only requirement is either double vaccination on the app (of which you could log in to anybody’s as they don’t check either your ID or the name assigned on the ticket app) or a negative lateral flow (which can easily be faked and I have witnessed this happening) and there is no follow up testing afterwards for either the group games or the second round games. There were a lot of staff at Wembley (more than usual) but it was impossible to enforce mask wearing and even if it was there was again minimal mask wearing in the crush for the tube afterwards. Most people did comply with masks whilst in the inside areas at Wembley though.