Eat Out To Spread The Virus About

[verdantverdure]

AIBU to think that it was basic common sense to know in advance that Rishi Sunak's Eat Out To Help Out short term boost for the economy would begin the covid second wave and kill tens of thousands of people in the U.K.?

YABU Who knew that packing out restaurants during an airborne pandemic would lead to infections and deaths?

YANBU Eat Out To Help Out was obviously going to cost British lives.

Shouldn't your username be captain curated hindsight

Gosh we need to move on from this.

Hospitality was decimated during the pandemic, loads of businesses have never recovered. Cases/Deaths were exceptionally low in summer 2020, we were down in Scotland to on average less than 1 death a WEEK. Loads of us were more than happy to eat out and were not bothered about the teeny tiny Covid risk at that time.

Or

“lovedlockdown”
or
“longingforlockdown”
or
”loveagoodwhinge”

This sentence

'I've kept it out of the news'

is the most worrying thing about this. Ministers should not have the power to control what's in the media. Especially when public health is at risk.

I think you are being unreasonable. Other countries didn’t have implement the „eat out“ scheme, yet they also went through several waves of Covid.

I imagine the govt have lots of information they choose not to release publicly!

Quite. If he was so ethically bothered he should have raised it in the press, and in parliament.

Let’s not forget the man was also carrying on an affair as well while all this was going on.

YABU everything apart from first 6 weeks of lockdown was ridiculous, lockdown was the stupid idea of the pandemic, caused more problems than it solved

Loved eat out to help out. Used the scheme a few times. Was really nice to be able to see people being able to do their jobs and small businesses being helped out a bit.

Eat out to die out? Good god imagine living your life thinking up things like that.

It was obvious for me that the eating out would increase my chances of getting virus in comparison with just sitting at home or going for a walk in the woods.
We used it twice, both times when we were visiting quite expensive outdoor cafe near quite expensive NT property we were visiting. It’s calculated risk. We could afford eating out we couldn’t afford our DD to get ill but still couldn’t spend all our days inside the house.
The other time we went for coffee while shopping we deliberately chose local independent cafe which didn’t take part in the scheme. Bliss.

Eat out scheme was an absolute life line to many restaurants and it was fab. Also I don’t think it led to any spikes did it?
I also think the people that took advantage of it would have been meeting up with friends anyway. Certainly I was and did!

What would you have done instead, and what do you think would have happened?
also, are you an epidemiologist/virologist/relevant healthcare professional/etc?

I’ll take a punt OP

you are retired or employed in public sector or non hospitality role

you don’t have children

you are financially comfortable

you didn’t enjoy eating out pre covid?

YABU and misunderstanding the issue. Locking people away from each other gives the appearance of controlling the spread of disease.

Winter flu causes insane amount of deaths and has the NHS on its knees every single winter. Why is it we don’t have a lockdown every winter?

I currently think a war is being waged between pro lockdowners like Matt Hancock and anti lockdowners like the journalist that has leaked the messages.
I am and was anti lockdown ( not so much the first one but it should have been lifted earlier) so I am on the journalist side BUT I think releasing these messages is not a good thing to do and actually they show Hancock in a reasonable light anyway. Trying to make decisions in a difficult situation and the difficulty in keeping / releasing lockdowns. Media and labour were pro MORE restrictions!

Err, and that’s what happened, right? People dying en masse after going to the pub.

Hospitality needed it. There were people washing their shopping and quarantining mail for days before opening it because they were convinced of surface transmission. The industry needed people to realise that going out to eat wasn't going to kill them. I remember people on here taking cutlery from home because they thought it was safer. Without EOTHO I think that there would be even more redundancies and closures in the industry. Delivery helps a little but businesses need the revenue from the drinks too.

YABU

Nothing could have prevented a second wave. The point of the lockdowns was to avoid overloading the NHS.

The cost of lockdowns is enormous as is.

Anyway it’s done, and we need to move on

Lockdowns don't prevent death. They delay them. Opening the country would inevitably mean an increase in deaths and the warm weather was a good time for people to go out.

Hilarious. 🙄

We used the scheme and really enjoyed it until we went to a noodle restaurant that was literally heaving. I mean I understand why they did it but they literally must have had double the amount of tables they usually had in there. You couldn't walk between the tables without the people in the next table standing up and pulling their bench in. It was set up in a similar style to wagamamas as well so everyone was shoved onto long trestle tables with other groups. If I'm honest that put me off. And I wasn't even especially worried about catching covid.
So all the comments about restaurants were socially distanced aren't necessarily correct. I'd have turned around and gone home probably if I hadn't had DC withe who were SO excited (understably)

YANBU Government made several terrible decisions that cost many lives. Just for profits

It was unreasonable to lock down the country.

We called it, fill your gob and save a job.