So what was the plan after vaccinations?
A gradual return to normalisation.
Reality check
From some of the comments here, you would think that self isolation was actually stopping outbreaks in school and they were unusual.
I believe the figure is something daft like 80% of primary age kids have now had covid.
The current guidance is nuts away especially in the context of omicron.
Kids are supposed to continue going to school even if they have household members who are currently positive. The problem being that even with lateral flows the risk of being infectious and passing it on to classmates before having symptoms is extremely high. So high that before Christmas PHE was overriding the official government guidance and telling schools not to allow siblings into school if one had covid.
If you have two kids, then you aren't just looking at isolation for them, its looking after them as they get it one after another and then you get it yourself.
And people wonder why parents aren't testing kids and aren't isolating?! Like really?
God forbid if you have more than 2 kids.
Its already the case in lot of places where the rules are now utterly disregarded as they arent tenable.
Nor do they even work.
The fact that we have schools with small classrooms full of 30 kids which is much more unfavourable than other countries, combined with greater financial insecurity means the uk was always fucked
I do think people calling for the continuation of rules that have utterly failed to prevent mass outbreaks is pretty laughable and naively assuming that mass ignoring of testing and isolation is already in progress and will only collapse spontaneously in the next couple of months anyway.
The rules have become a security blanket which fails to acknowledge whats really happening/already happened. This whole idea of 'being safe' from being infected by covid at this stage in the pandemic is quite frankly utter nonsense.
People who are vulnerable will continue to be vulnerable in 5 or 10 years. This isnt going to change now. Most will have now been exposed now anyway and do have some immunity.
We either choose to live with testing and complusory isolation going forward forever (with all the mental health, physical health and financial costs that accompany that - most notably staff shortages) or we make the decision that we just get on with things.
Why not now? Why isn't it suitable, given the existing levels of community transmission - and crucially the fact we have high levels of immunity right now from boosters and omicron which makes it an ideal time to do it now rather than in several months time. You want to be relaxing things when immunity is high, now when its had chance to wane. The current R looks to be hanging around below 1 right now too.
Genuinely what do people want to happen in the next 6 months, year, two years?
Given whats happening in practice anyway, i fail to see why so many people are utterly up in arms.
As for the 'selfish' comments. Well you are wanting isolation because that suits you - isnt that selfish. The balance is shifting in terms of what the risks to society are. There are multiple risks associated with kids being forced to isolate. They are not necessarily 'safe' if they are at home. Particularly those in poverty or considered 'at risk'.
I'm a realist and a pragmatist. I don't see what continuing restrictions beyond march at the latest will achieve and how this will outweigh the benefits to society across the board.
This is not March 2020. The risks to society are fundamentally different now. They are fundamentally different to even November when Delta was circulating.
We have to adapt to where things now are.
If not now, when?