Stricter lockdown coming?

[chocolateisavegetable]

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-30-million-households-to-receive-letter-from-pm-warning-things-will-get-worse-before-they-get-better-11965131

What might a stricter lockdown look like? Will we get to a point where we can't go out to exercise at all? Or is it more likely we'll only be able to go shopping once a week?

Noeuf

Define those at risk though? We know that elderly and those with health problems are at a higher rock, but everybody is “at risk”
I know 2 people that have died, one in their late 40’s - no health issues.
It really is pretty indiscriminate in who it kills

Noeuf- I agree. Every time I see a sky article on Italy I think here we go. They're kind of the Sun or the Mirror shock headline clickbaiters.

@Noeuf

There are multiple reasons you cant just seperate the vulnerable even if we ignore that this has made vulnerable many people that we wouldnt usually consider vulnerable. Its not just really old people who would need to be isolated, lots of people got the letter (inc whole families due to one child with vulnerablities) and services would struggle to maintain a normal service. Its easy to think of this in terms of 90 year olds but this virus has made people with asthma vulnerable and killed young people with no previous health concerns

Even if it was just an issue with the "frail" You cant truly isolate people. Say the general population who you have no concerns about getting it are group C, and the isolated person is A. We can tell A to stay at home, but as its a marathon not a sprint, some people will either still need to go out for essentials them selves or will have carers. A people will need to interact with carers, medical staff and possibly wider groups like delivery drivers or family that lives with them

That creates group B who are the "go betweens" between group A and group C who will have no health concerns generally themselves but interact with those that do. Group B is huge. Its the family members that live with person A, its the carers that drop in to do personal care, its health care staff. You cant isolate these people as the number is too large. B needs to keep low levels of disease, else hospitals will shut and they will pass it to A.

Thus if group C has a high level, it will increase the incidence in group b who will give to group A. Think of C being a checkout worker who serves B who is a carer for A. If C is low risk then B is low risk, but if carers are constantly living and interacting with people with it eventually B is going to get it and either pass it on unwittingly or self isolate and leave A without care.

We are all too interlinked for isolation of one group to be effective

We are isolating those at risk as much as possible. That's pretty much everyone

Option 1 isolate over 1/3 of the population..the old, the fat, the vulnerable and let the virus rampage through the rest, killing rather a lot on the way and causing great resentment ...the isolated about being isolated and the rest about not being isolated once they see friends dying

Option 2 lockdown

Hopefully not- at some point there comes a stage where we have to balance the interests of the vulnerable against those of the majority.

For me, the current lockdown is as far as we should go- the vulnerable should be protected, but I don’t believe it is fair to ask everyone else to give up all their liberties and pleasures for a long period to extend the lives of people who will in all likelihood die in the next year anyway of other causes.

We will also reach a stage where the lockdown will cost more lives than it saves. We need to get to a stage where the vulnerable are shielded and everyone else is able to live as normal while taking precautions.

There are 20,000 deaths from flu each year and almost no attention at all is paid to this.

I think one person allowed out fro shopping every three days, as happened in China, is most likely. Plus harder lines on who is allowed to go to work, public transport shutdowns, full school closures, then removal of daily exercise outside the house.

I think those measures might only happen in hotspot areas, so London and the Midlands foray, then on a rolling basis where needed.

@StormyClouds stop talking about the fucking flu. It’s irrelevant.

starsparkle08 the equality act still applies so I would hope we would still have reasonable adjustments. Really we should be covered by the care for a vulnerable person but I'll be asking for authorisation from his social worker if I need it. There would be carers and those they care for pushed over the edge and in danger if adjustments weren't made.
I think it is unlikely restrictions that severe would happen but of course it is worry when our lives are already very difficult at the moment. And we weren't the ones who were gathering in large groups last weekend.

@ChipotleBlessing

The flu isn't irrelevant at all. There will come a stage where we have to consider whether it is worth destroying the economy and the excess deaths from issues like mental health, domestic violence and job loss in order to prevent only around double the number of deaths (in a worst case scenario with corona) that happen every year from flu anyway.

it really is pretty indiscriminate in who it kills

Ffs no it isn't. You do have the odd outlier, as with anything, but statistically, it is clear who is most at risk.

@Esspee Who is going to put all the dogs, horses, sheep, pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, ducks and goats down? It would take weeks and weeks for vets to achieve that.

I think one person allowed out fro shopping every three days, as happened in China, is most likely.

But how would this be policed? We don't have the resources or the systems in place to do what Wuhan did.

I think most likely is we follow France in that people are only allowed out alone.

Hope so. Enough already

@SimonJT
At what point in my small contribution did you see anything about animals being put down? I fear isolation is causing you to hallucinate.

I think they might close building sites down and only essential work allowed.

I don't think they need stricter measures. Just enforce the ones they have now. My local park is full of strava mad cyclists who must think its Christmas having lovely weather and no work. I took my bike out the other day and ended up going home due to the sheer volume of cyclists.
Stop cycling and running in the park. The roads are much easier to avoid people. In the park you are coralled into close proximity.

BBC has just said it'll be likely that construction work will stop, they'll shut car garages, and stop postal workers etc.

Itll be awful if the post stops. My great auntie cant use any tech and we send her cards and letters all the time. She will feel so alone.

I think they might shut down some non-essential work places for a brief period of time but only if infection rates climb significantly. Based on the current predictions, I don't think the NHS is going to run out of capacity in the short term is it? In which case, I don't think anything will be done until that's a real and possible issue.

I'm sorry but this has nothing to do with the virus, 250,000 people in the UK died from flu 2 years ago, not shutdown, we weren't even told. I don't want anyone to die, but with the late shutdown compared to other countries and the fact we're being told it's more contagious than flu, then unless we have a million deaths, someone is pulling our plonkers.

For me, the current lockdown is as far as we should go- the vulnerable should be protected, but I don’t believe it is fair to ask everyone else to give up all their liberties and pleasures for a long period to extend the lives of people who will in all likelihood die in the next year anyway of other causes.

Firstly - the vulnerable are also being asked to give up all their liberties and pleasures for a long period

Secondly - many of the vulnerable and even of the extremely vulnerable are in all likelihood going to live a good many years possibly even half a "lifetime" if they can avoid being killed by coronovirus. You are asking that a lot of people should lose years off their lives to protect your pleasures.

The flu doesn’t crumble the NHS, that’s all that is trying to be stopped.

@StormyClouds I'm in the extremely vulnerable section. And I'm 35. I'm not expected to die anytime soon

The empathy for people in the vulnerable section seems to be missing I was merrily living my life and then bang, shock diagnosis age 32. It could have been anyone on this thread
I work FT, I don't get any benefits, no help and I never ask for any. But no, I'm likely to die and it doesn't matter?

Will we still be allowed out for medication? If not I’m giving up now.