Will you self isolate if covid positive test?

[Monopolyiscrap]

Compulsory self-isolation is ending if you test positive with covid. Instead, people are being advised to choose to self-isolate.
In reality, I think many people will not. I would not get paid if I self-isolate but am well enough to work, so why would I forego a week's wages?

So will you self-isolate if you test positive with covid?

YABU - Yes I will self-isolate
YANBU - No I will not self-isolate

Actually I lost a LOT of income during Covid. And I ve only just managed to get a job to replace that income. But that’s neither here nor there.

And if my job was threatened because I needed to self isolate to protect others, I would still do it. If I was told I’d go without wages, I’d still do it. Because it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t want blood on my hands.

Now! There isn’t a lot I wouldn’t do to protect my family. I’d lose every moral I have to save my children from becoming homeless and starving.

Is this really the choice most posters are facing? I doubt it. Especially reading the other threads on here.

Is this really the choice most posters are facing? I doubt it. Especially reading the other threads on here.

Plenty of people are facing that choice whether you like it or not. Yet you have the gall to call them heartless? Staggering lack of awareness of how other people live.

I don’t want blood on my hands.

We cannot keep holding people responsible for viruses doing what they have been primed for millennia to do.

It is an utterly ridiculous position.

I am a teacher and we’ve already been told of we test positive, we cannot choose to self isolate if we expect to be paid. So I would go in. I can’t lost a weeks pay it would literally be our mortgage or childcare payment gone

No I won’t test so if i am ok then life as normal

@BeardyButton are you burning fossil fuels and adding to global warming? Because thAts killing people too, though it’s not so obvious, as it’s happening in 3rd world countries and to the next generation.

But I have solar panels, vegetarian and ride a bike...but I don’t force you to do the same, so just depends what your perception of rcause and effect is.

i can’t lost a weeks pay it would literally be our mortgage or childcare payment gone

According to some on here you should be just sucking that up. To hell with debt and danger, if you don't you're 'heartless'. Apparently.

@BeardyButton I have probably im my life transmitted a cold or flu virus that has eventually infected and killed a vulnerable person.
That's life. Covid is no different.
And protecting my family's financial position is my priority. That's the reality.

We do have to 'learn to live' with it but I think that includes having a responsibility towards those who are vulnerable rather than just being out in the general population knowing you could infect someone.

Can we include the financially vulnerable in those that we have a responsibility to?

I won't be self isolating. I literally can't. For 1 I wouldn't get paid and can't afford to lose a weeks wages if I want to keep a roof over my head and not go hungry. For 2 I won't actually be allowed to by my (shitty) employer. It will be seen as choosing to take time off, choosing to skip shifts leaving them short staffed which would get me fired. Even though we only get paid for the time we work if we don't show up to the times they schedule us (which we rarely get a say in) we're seen as shift skipping and is a disciplineable/fireable offence.

I don’t want blood on my hands

Have you ever been out of the house with a cold? I have an elderly relative who died after catching a simple cold. That could have come from you.

@TheKeatingFive

Is this really the choice most posters are facing? I doubt it. Especially reading the other threads on here.

Plenty of people are facing that choice whether you like it or not. Yet you have the gall to call them heartless? Staggering lack of awareness of how other people live.

Agreed. So many are already struggling, which is about to get worse. Losing pay on top of that is just impossible for many.

My partner used holidays to cover his self isolation period. Many will do exactly the same. But holidays are not a long term solution.

Employers can't afford to have multiple staff self isolating if not ill. It puts huge pressure on employers too.

It's not selfish or heartless to put feeding your family first. The word "selfish" has lost all meaning.

@BeardyButton

Actually I lost a LOT of income during Covid. And I ve only just managed to get a job to replace that income. But that’s neither here nor there.

And if my job was threatened because I needed to self isolate to protect others, I would still do it. If I was told I’d go without wages, I’d still do it. Because it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t want blood on my hands.

Now! There isn’t a lot I wouldn’t do to protect my family. I’d lose every moral I have to save my children from becoming homeless and starving.

Is this really the choice most posters are facing? I doubt it. Especially reading the other threads on here.

jesus christ the DRAMA!!!

It's not selfish or heartless to put feeding your family first. The word "selfish" has lost all meaning

Exactly. Selfish = putting oneself or family first.i reckon most people would do that regardless of income.

Difference is, if you are comfortably off you can meet all the needs (and probably some luxuries) of your family and have a "cushion" of surplus that you could lose pay (or likely wfh) if you were required to isolate. Its easier for people to "think of the bigger picture" or proclaim how unselfish they are when actually it doesn't have an immediate or detrimental impact on their finances or lifestyle.

In terms of taking the moral high ground, we could argue to the cows come home about what we do daily that might be killing someone else in the world due to our lifestyles.

We (mostly) live in the UK. We aren't exactly shining examples of keeping every other human we could alive as a nation.

I am not exactly about to walk into a room of 90s knowing I have covid though. Equally, I'm not going to condemn other people for being 'selfish' when I am aware life isn't that simple either.

I am more 'it is what it is' and its a fait accompli, which isn't really going to change a lot regardless of whether I think its a good thing or a bad thing.

The UK started the pandemic from a position which was pretty shit in terms of our structural inequality. The pandemic has just increased that. You can't ignore that. You can't just pretend that a crunch on the cost of living isn't going to affect people and what they have to priortise.

I sleep as well as the next person. We all worry about our own more than other people we don't know, simply because thats the most human of things to do. Most people I think are just muddling through, trying to their best possible at this stage. Without malice. Just fucked in the head through the mental fatigue of it all. And with different priority levels for different things.

The idea that people are inherently bad or selfish is nuts though.

We all worry about our own more than other people we don't know, simply because thats the most human of things to do

Exactly this. Do I care more about my family than about someone I’ve never met? Damn right I do. And the vast, vast majority of people do too.

Is "heartless" going to be the new "selfish" on MN?

@OrinocoGlow

Is "heartless" going to be the new "selfish" on MN?

Clearly.

There isn't an ideal solution to any of this.

The government has spent more than £6billion on mass ltf testing.
The NI increase will raise £12bn a year which is supposed to be going directly to the NHS and social care.

We have to ask the question whether going forward we want to spend half the extra we will pay on NI JUST on lateral flow tests? I'm not convinced thats what the public have in mind when they think about how their extra tax will be spent.

The mentality that they are free to the government as well as us, hasn't got through to a lot of people. Its burning through money the NHS doesn't have.

It never fails to amaze me how thoughtless and wastefully people have used them, testing multiple times to check that the test they took twenty mins ago was correct. Or getting a PCR after the rule change, when they've already clocked a positive LTF.

How many lives could we save if we used the money in different ways for healthcare?

I don't think we should be charging everyone for tests, but I also do think we should be focusing our minds a little more on how this isn't necessarily the best choice of limited finances for the NHS either.

Something many habitual testers really should pause for thought about. Is it selfish to be doing free tests just so you can go to a nightclub guilt free? Or so you can have a massive 50th Birthday Party with your mates without worrying? Cos thats very much what has been happening and its not really thought about in terms how the money for all these tests could go on life saving drugs instead...

We shouldn't be making these type of choices, but thats the reality of life and what happens daily.

We have got so caught up in a mentality that only covid matters that many of us have completely lost sight of all the other bad and awful things going on out there - often at cost to the health of ourselves or others.

Whats the point in telling someone they might kill someone else if they go out for a walk with covid, (when they are unlikely to meet a sole on this walk) only for them to end up with severe depression and maybe in need of considerable mental health care as a result (or worse)?

Its making shitty trade off decisions that no one wants to acknowledge.

@ShallWeTalkAboutBruno

I don’t want blood on my hands

Have you ever been out of the house with a cold? I have an elderly relative who died after catching a simple cold. That could have come from you.

You have to be much older and much more vulnerable generally to die from a cold. I wouldn't go to visit a 100 year old with a cold, but I wouldn't stay in either. We don't have overweight 60 year old men in ICU with colds generally like we did with Covid. It's still a much more serious illness for old people.

If I have to I will. If I don't I won't.
But I never test so never know..

"Whats the point in telling someone they might kill someone else if they go out for a walk with covid, (when they are unlikely to meet a sole on this walk) only for them to end up with severe depression and maybe in need of considerable mental health care as a result (or worse)?"

This is a reasonable argument against strict lockdown for weeks and months on end, but not against a week's self-isolation!

@ShallWeTalkAboutBruno

We all worry about our own more than other people we don't know, simply because thats the most human of things to do

Exactly this. Do I care more about my family than about someone I’ve never met? Damn right I do. And the vast, vast majority of people do too.

Of course, but there are people on this thread who DO get sick pay, but still won't self-isolate. It's hardly a sacrifice for them at all yet they still won't do it.

This is a reasonable argument against strict lockdown for weeks and months on end, but not against a week's self-isolation!

Only if it's paid for. Otherwise it's too much of an ask. And I'm not sure how that would work with self-employed. Three million of them were allowed to fall through the gaps during the lockdowns so I don't hold out much hope.

Again there was an example above of a self-employed person who could afford to self-isolate, but wouldn't to avoid postponing a job with a client.

Again there was an example above of a self-employed person who could afford to self-isolate, but wouldn't to avoid postponing a job with a client

That was me that posted that, about my DH. I said he wasn't on a low income or zero hours contract, I did NOT say he could afford to bin off a several weeks contract.

If I get paid by work, then yes. If not, then no.