(Covid) To think these recommendations are bonkers?

[NoCharnce]

So the government commission into how to memorialise the Covid pandemic has recommended the government implement “A UK-wide day of reflection should be established and held annually.”

Other recommendations include national memorials (10 sites already identified!), oral histories and museums plus additional funding for local authorities to set up their own memorials.

I can’t be the only one who thinks this is nuts and hope the government ignores the recommendations? I genuinely cannot believe people get paid to produce this crap.

This is exactly the sort of thing those of us who were exempt had to put up with.

I lost count of the times I was called a killer/murderer/disease vector/thick.

By people who claimed to care about the vulnerable, while completely missing the point that many who were exempt were so due to vulnerability/disability.

We're a family of three with six degrees between us and we live in a council flat. Our neighbours include a nurse, a teacher and a lecturer.

Shut up with your classist assumptions.

Also plenty of people live in private blocks of flats where isolating was hard. We had to pass through communal areas to go in and out of our block. There was no choice.

How do you know they weren't taking their actual risk into account?

@JerryLovesMargo

SE England?

I‘m not sure what you are asking here but if you had family members that were high risk yes you could have taken that into account when deciding on your behaviour

The thread’s gone off on a tangent.

What do people think of the recommendations?

If you aren’t impressed, how would you improve upon them?

Do you think covid should be remembered and learnt from to prepare us better in future?

How are families losses to be commemorated?

What would you want to see happening in future pandemic preparedness? What would you be happy with or consider acceptable when another novel virus emerges?

How are families losses to be commemorated?

Privately and not being used to score points by either side of the debate would do me....not going to happen though.

No, north east. Why do you ask?

If the next pandemic is 10%+ fatality you will have more than trying to stop and control families seeing each other at Christmas Sparkle. Essential workers will be too scared to go to work. So no water, electric, internet etc, They hit the sweet spot with Covid in that people were scared but not scared enough not to go to work. Do you really think essential workers will want to go to work and put their kids and other relatives at risk .............for you?

Its chilling isnt it @JerryLovesMargo The attitude to masks here and towards people who cant wear them clearly shows it would happen again.

@JerryLovesMargo

Because I don’t understand why several people on professional wages would be still in a social house.

Particularly when there are reassessments done relative to wage and SH rent upped to open market value if professional wages are involved. SE rent is astronomical so it might make sense that those on professional wages wouldn’t be able to afford it and would need SH. Not so much the NE.

Unless there is someone degree qualified and later disabled or say a nurse who is a single parent, something like that.

You don’t generally get families on 60-80k a year staying in a social house as their rent would be reassessed in light of higher income than when they first moved in…. And if paying market rate they usually would want to move elsewhere.

To get on a social housing list where I am there have to be problems - single parents, job loss, homelessness, disability etc etc and if financial circumstances improve you are reassessed. Very often people move on anyway, after buying the house at massive discount of course.

"In the 1980s, residualisation may have been a partly unintended consequence of housing policies pursued with varying ideological intent"

Since 2010, and more so since the return of single-party Conservative government in 2015, we’ve seen something further: welfarisation – ‘a conception of social housing as a very small, highly residualised sector catering only for the very poorest, and those with additional social “vulnerabilities”, on a short-term “ambulance” basis

From Municipal Dreams The Rise and Fall of Council Housing by John Boughton.

Yes Sparkle im deffo the right wing one 🙄

@JenniferBooth I think you need to go to a library and pick up a number of books on zoonotic disease.

It is well documented that disruption occurs and anyone at the planning level would be anticipating this and managing it. Things like PPE, back up workers if some fall ill/die/refuse to work.

For instance with Ebola “At the community level, a cyclical pattern of fear occurs, with a loss of trust in health services and stigma, resulting in disruptions of community interactions and community break down“.

Ultimately you will still have people going out to work despite grave health risk because they need money to feed their family.

I remember the coffee and cheese madness.

Sadly I had a similar incident this morning...half frozen milk led to cereal and cream which isn't very nice at all.

@JenniferBooth I was homeless at 18 and I had to go on the housing list, it was incredibly hard to get on it despite my situation at the time and plenty of points.

I was offered a few flats - all in an apartment block the floor above had alcoholic men, the floor below sex offenders.

Then a house finally but it needed massive renovation that was not forthcoming and I couldn’t afford, and somebody had vomited over the window so I decided It wasn’t for me and stayed in private rentals.

The demand for housing is so strong and has been for decades, it’s not like anyone can walk in and be handed a house.

You not knowing them doesn't mean it didn't happen 🙄

How are families losses to be commemorated?

How do people normally remember their family and friends?

I demand an Alzheimer's memorial. My dad died of Alzheimer's just before the pandemic. Actually what "killed" him was someone coming into the care home with a cold, which he caught and it developed into pneumonia, and he died with his lungs gargling fluid.

It was pretty awful. However people go through this every day.

I'm not suggesting it didn't happen but if there were huge numbers of people who were petrified despite being young and healthy I would have known some of them.

@WestwardHo1

I know people get sick and die.

But when we lost people to covid we very often hadn’t been able to see them for months. Some died very suddenly, others had prolonged spells isolated in care homes or hospitals.

I remember hearing my relative who was partially deaf crying and semi hysterical because they couldn’t understand what was going on or why we couldn’t come to the hospital. Several traumatic events followed. Then the abnormal funeral etc.

We lost more than a dozen family, friends, colleagues.

It was hugely traumatic and I think that’s why I like the idea of a space to acknowledge that. To sit by myself or with others to remember, chat, reflect.

And to have some sort of communal reflection, standing together. It does sound comforting to me.

But I appreciate that won’t be everyone’s experience.

there are reassessments done relative to wage and SH rent upped to open market value if professional wages are involved

No there aren't. Absolute tosh. Source: I live in social housing, DH works in SH.

Please don't make things up.

Our rent is market rent anyway, which around here is under £500pcm for a 2 bed flat.

DD is a NQT so on a fairly low wage and I'm disabled so can't work, not that it makes any difference.

The wonderful thing about social housing is that it was conceived for working people of all backgrounds to live side by side. Where I am there isn't a shortage - several flats and houses near me have been empty for months because there isn't the demand. And we've lived here for over 20 years, paying back into the 'pot' (and no, we'd never buy our flat, even though we could for under £20k as we've been here for so long). So everyone benefits.

Maybe stop derailing the thread by making up lies and sharing your assumptions on people who live in SH, eh.

There should be a tasteful tribute to the nutters of the pandemic: the covid deniers the conspiracy theorists.

Yep @Dontcallmescarface My parents were terrified that I would get arrested for going round to care for my 93 yo dad when he came out of hospital after a late diagnosis of an infection thay was actually more likely to kill him than covos as his GP refused to see him face to face and misdiagnosed him.
My MIL got too terrified to even go into the garden and panicked when the carers who needed to hoist her out of bed came near her.

@JerryLovesMargo

Ok so you fit into the disabled category.

Where I am the wait list can be 4years. Some people never get a social house because there are more needy who achieve more points, say a disabled single mother with several kids, trumps single man with no health issues.

I know of the reassessments, brought in via Cameron wasn’t it? Because my friend went from paying £220 a month to £550 a month and she and partner then decided to buy the house as a mortgage was cheaper. Some others have moved elsewhere.

It may depend whether your house is a genuine council house or under a housing association as to what applies.

Never the less if receiving housing benefit (uc now) you have to tell of changes to income.