Eat Out To Help Out: Brilliance or Lunacy?

[verdantverdure]

On the day the Covid Inquiry convenes I thought I'd ask your opinion on Eat Out To Help Out.

Covid case numbers and deaths were low, as we'd done a phased return out of the first lockdown.

Then we had Eat Out To Help Out and it all kicked off again within weeks.

What did you think? At the time? Now?

YABU Eat Out To Help Out was brilliant, I loved it.

YANBU Eat out To Help Out was a bloody stupid idea that was obviously going to help the virus spread, leading to another wave, more economic devastation, and tens of thousands of us dead. And it didn't even help the hospitality industry because it screwed up Christmas which is usually their most profitable quarter.

Some people want to look after our own and object to thousands of us dying when we didn't need to.

It was, yeah.

Nobody died because they sat in a restaurant!
They are dying because Covid Extremists and fanatics shut the entire country down for years. As a consequence people were unable to receive timely cancer diagnoses urgent treatments while a generation of school children have lost viral years.
Fanatics who supported this have blood on their hands!

I think you might be right.

There definitely seemed to be a English Plan B incase the vaccine didn't work or was limited in how it worked.

Scotland pursued zero covid all eggs in one basket for far too long. They seemed to think it was a stable virus like measles couple of injections and it would be life long immunity. Rather than considering it to be like an ever evolving flu

It was great

Some people want to look after our own and object to thousands of us dying when we didn't need to.

You can't tie one scheme directly to thousands of deaths when there were multiple other factors at play at that time.

My biggest learning from covid was the need and freedom to decide your own precautions. No one was forced to eat in a restaurant. If you wanted to reduce your risk of catching covid from those that do, you adapted your behaviour and in circumstances where that wasn't possible, wore one of the better masks.

We all have different views but given that we've subsequently had to learn to live with covid, I'd have preferred fewer lockdowns. The you're killing thousands rhetoric is neither fair nor proportionate in my opinion.

Have you been unaware up to now that people who knew they were more vulnerable to Covid caught it from people they couldn't avoid, often in healthcare or care home settings? @sep135

Do you not remember Italian hospitals in early 2020? Can you not imagine the NHS experience made exponentially worse?

In what possible sense have you decided that lockdowns were unnecessary?

Which country was shut down for years? Which schoolchildren missed years of schooling?

@GreekDogRescue

• Nobody died because they sat in a restaurant! They are dying because Covid Extremists and fanatics shut the entire country down for years. As a consequence people were unable to receive timely cancer diagnoses urgent treatments while a generation of school children have lost viral years. Fanatics who supported this have blood on their hands!*

Boris Johnson was a "Covid Extremist"?

Lockdown lasted for years?

Lockdown shut the entire country down?

Hospitals were shut?

Viral years?

Absolute waste of taxpayers money especially when subsidising wealthy, not healthy, chains like MCDonalds.

Honestly the world did go a bit mad in 2020.

I wouldn't say brilliant, but at the time I thought it an OK idea - encouraging people to eat out and save some businesses. If I remember rightly most places, certainly the ones I went to, were all outdoor seating?

Honestly @Westfacing my view is that it gave business busy times on different days from usual, and potentially a good few weeks followed by staff sickness and then smonths of chaos, Tiers, lockdown, buggering up the office Christmas lunch:party season, buggering up Christmas itself, then buggering up New Year's Eve. Then lockdown again.

None of that was good for hospitality.

Yes Boris Johnston was a Covid fanatic.
He shut this country down for no good reason and now we must suffer the consequences in delayed cancer diagnosis’s and delayed health care with devastating consequences.

I am sorry you find this acceptable.

‘Viral years’ read vital years. Spell check. It’s really not that hard to figure out the meaning.

‘Stay at home. Save lives.
Seriously? Even the most fanatical of the extremist Covid Cultists now realise the covid fanatism was extremely harmful, especially to school children, some of whom have now disappeared from the school system entirely.

Reasonable people will NEVER fall for your harmful rhetoric again.

No doubt you work from home, have private healthcare and are completely immune from the damage you have caused.

Shame on you.

Not much that you say bears any resemblance to the facts as I recall them @GreekDogRescue. I'm having difficulty recognising the reality you describe.

We had a hard lockdown for 3 months, after that, restrictions eased, some areas had tiers, we had another couple of short lockdowns, which most people ignored, we know this because infection rates didn't fall very much and the Govt decided to party like one had partied before......

The Educational Tsar told the Govt what was needed to help school children, Bojo ignored this advice and gave an small extra amount, the Ed Tsar then resigned in disgust.

Other countries which had harder lockdowns do not have the issues with health a cancer treatments like we do, why is that? under funding? incompetence? Nor do they have the issues with children missing schools, there are laws compelling parents to take their children to school.

@Alexandra2001

Other countries which had harder lockdowns do not have the issues with health a cancer treatments like we do, why is that? under funding? incompetence?

I'd say incompetence. My OH was due to start cancer treatment infusions the week the full lockdowns were announced. He got a call on the morning of his first infusion to tell him it was cancelled and to wait to hear when it was going to be rescheduled for.

He waited, and waited, and waited. After a few weeks, he phoned oncology several and just got the answerphone each time, he left a message, but no one ever called back. He then started phoning the cancer nurse "hot line" and the same happened - phone never answered, no one ever called back. Months passed and he physically went to the oncology dept to find it locked and in darkness. He went to reception, but there was no one there. He phoned his GP surgery but they didn't know what was going on and weren't remotely interested in helping. He went back to the oncology dept the week after and started asking random people (the security guards on the door, random NHS staff wearing lanyards, etc), and eventually someone told him that the entire oncology dept had moved to a different hospital in the next county! He phoned there and, yes, the oncology dept was there and he finally got put through. They couldn't understand why his treatment hadn't been rescheduled, couldn't understand why no one had contacted him, etc. So after three months, things started happening again. Apparently, they'd been "open" throughout and it was just an admin cock up that they'd forgotten about him!

So, yes, incompetence in my OH's case.

Lunacy obviously.

Succinct and to the point.

Just popping this here.

I suppose at the time I thought it would be good for hospitality businesses we went out for a few meals when we were on holiday but were fairly cautious about mainly eating outside and not in especially crowded places.

However I'm pretty sure EOTHO was run throughout summer holidays in which people were able to travel throughout the UK and also go abroad for holidays.....so I'm not sure it was all down to people eating out in the UK!

Hmm yes, noticed that during lockdown one too. We were locked down while others were allowed to fly in and out.

Here's a little nugget from the Covid Inquiry:

. Dr David Halpern, "People were 20% more likely to go to a restaurant if it was covid secure. In contrast 6% more likely if we paid them to go.. If covid secure was in place, that would encourage more people to go out"

Dermot Keating, "Financially cheaper with less risk of transmission, if you went down the covid secure route instead of paying people to eat out"

From Patrick Vallance's diary:

More from Patrick Vallance's testimony at the Covid Inquiry and his contemporaneous notes:

inews.co.uk/news/politics/sunaks-eat-out-to-help-out-drove-second-covid-wave-vallance-tells-inquiry-2766292