How long do you think people will adhere to lockdown?

[LochJessMonster]

3 weeks is doable, people are treating it like a long holiday.
3 months- I think people will give up by that point and more and more will flout the rules. People just won’t stay away from their family for that long. They’ll go out, socialise more.

The virus will spread quicker, everyone who is going to catch it, will catch it and then life will get back to normal. Unfortunately more people will die that way but I also think people are selfish enough to say ‘it’s gonna happen anyway, and this way I don’t have to self isolate for another 3 months’

@Igotthemheavyboobs
Yes, let's make parents of only children feel even more judged and guilty shall we?

Whoa, where did that come from? I interpreted the post as expressing a reasonable concern for children who won't have access to peers as they ordinarily would. Perhaps it hit a nerve? Didn't seem to me to be an attempt at guilting anyone for only having one child.

However long it takes for the penny to drop that they would prefer to put the vulnerable in isolation and crack on with their lives. Once people work out they and their kids are very unlikely to die, they will stop caring as much when they see how much it's going to cost them. The government will then probably happily acquiesce and get back to plan a, everyone catches it some people die, reluctantly of course.

I think it will get easier as we all adjust and get used to it. My concern is that there are far too many people who are not following the advice, therefore making this longer for those of us who are following the advice. People seem to disregard 1228 people’s deaths because they are fit and healthy and no one in their family has been affected. In a nutshell there are a lot of selfish people out there who couldn’t care less

@LochJessMonster

As harsh as it sounds, you will adapt. The human brain is plastic and highly adaptable. I don’t think you going to live with your parents is the kind of rule flouting that would be an enormous issue.

Expect further, harsher lockdowns. It is coming.

@NiteFlights I am intelligent and I understand the situation, I really really do. I haven’t broken the rules once. I get why it’s necessary, flattening the curve, reducing stress on the NHS. I really do understand why it is necessary.

But it will get to a point where people will start to put them and their families first.
And then I think I will struggle to not join in, to break the rules and see my parents etc.
I hope it doesn’t come to that.

@BelleSausage The human brain is not suppose to go without physical and social stimulation for long periods of time. It’s why isolation is used as a torture technique!

It’s very difficult to see how isolating it is, if you live with someone else.

@Igotthemheavyboobs

Yes, let's make parents of only children feel even more judged and guilty shall we

I made the comment and I have an only child by choice. I don’t feel any guilt or shame whatsoever about it, so sorry if you do. I’m just concerned about a long period of isolation away from other children.

Sadly, with a DH who is slightly higher risk due to underlying health issues, but isn't bad enough to get one of those letters - I do think it's unrealistic to think that people will continue to put other people first for months.

It just won't happen, agree that clammer to get the schools reopened will hit after the Easter holidays were due to finish. People will start asking why they are having to suffer to save the vunerable.

There is enough Army and Police staff to keep one major city in lockdown if need be (like London or Glasgow) but the whole country, the villages and small towns at the same time? Nope, there's not enough people.

It's scary and personally, I'm hoping for some terrible weather around easter weekend - hopefully the desire to go out and ignore the rules will drop if it's proper pissing it down. Usually that keeps everyone in. The sunshine this week hasn't helped, easier to go jogging or for a bike ride in the sun.

Can't see it lasting very long. In my area the police have a very strong presence in the local park and it's got my law-abiding back up. It appears that going for the government-permitted, immune-boosting daily walk is heavily frowned upon. I have not seen any evidence of rule breaking but the police are out in force to watch you walk.

So if you are being heavily policed on totally permissable activities then civil unrest is logically the next step.

@StirCrazed - I think you have it. Once it gets beyound 4-5 weeks, the seflish argument will start, why are we all ruining our lives to save theirs? Why can't they just stay indoors with some sort of system in place to drop food at their houses? Why is everyone stopping in?

Then the hospitals will be full of people who weren't officially the highest risk, but had underlying issues that they might not have known about or weren't that bad.

We need more stories in the press about the 40-somethings dying. The 30-somethings who didn't know they had a heart condition. Make people scared for themselves, not just someone else's grandma.

I think public opinion and tolerance will wane very quickly. The opinions on MN as well as the daily mail are showing that. One to two weeks ago on here it was all 'we need a lockdown', 'shut the schools', 'the government aren't doing enough', now increasingly threads are appearing talking of the long term economic, social and health impact is this and the 'cure' being worse than the disease.

Two days in a row now opinion pieces in the DM are talking like this and about the impact of those who are poorer and more vulnerable taking the brunt and people will realise that all of the governments amazing financial help will need to be paid back through income tax hikes, VAT increase etc plus funding cuts and austerity measures.

People will get fed up, their kids will be bored and fed up, they'll want to see friends and family and will start to ignore the rules, even the ones taking it seriously now. The ones who never took the rules seriously in the first place are a lost cause.

@LochJessMonster I didn’t mean to imply that you’re unintelligent. I understand what you’re saying. I just wish that people in general would try to be less selfish, stay calm, and stop saying that going without face to face social contact is equivalent to being in solitary confinement in Alcatraz or something.

I think it will depend to an extent on Italy. If they start rioting I imagine things here will be rethought.

The person I know most excited about the lockdown is a Marxist even though it's been enacted by a right wing Tory Government. People like her love the idea of restrictions of freedom, showing papers to the police and neighbours spying on each other.

Nice to see someone else using the bellwether of the DailyMail. The comments section is definitely shifting that way.
One problem is that it does disproportionately affect a lot of dm readers (over 50s/60s) but people are very good at blocking out what they don't want to hear and it's hard to maintain high levels of fear when you look around you and it looks okay.
We aren't used to a police state here. Italy and Spain have more civil guards and interesting histories. People here won't be compliant for much longer, not once they realise it's months not weeks.

I think a few weeks before people starting sneaking round to see relatives and partners/ boyfriends/ girlfriends.

I'm not sure the weather is going to keep people in. I walk my dogs whatever it's doing, icy horizontal rain, the lot, and a rule of thumb if the weather is terrible I barely see a soul. It's been cloudy and sleety here and I took the young dog out this afternoon, and it's been busy by local standards. The local police are disagreeing with each other about the guidance in front of people they've stopped, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence and won't encourage compliance.

I worry if it comes to people choosing their own options. We do not have enough people in the police or military including reserves to enforce lockdown in each individual town. Its not feasible and would put so much pressure on those enforcing it, especially if people did not comply.
There just doesn’t seem to be any good options to choose from.

I think the economic impact is also going to sap people's will to keep on isolating. Yeah, sure, the nice middle class accounts will probably be OK to keep working from home for a few months, but there will be more and more organisations that just can't pay their staff. The 80% furlough payments won't come through until the end of April. Universal Credit has a massive backlog. How many people in the country can afford to live on zero income for a prolonged period?

I think once people stop being able to feed their families they will care a lot less about Coronavirus being a potential threat to them, instead of the real threat of hunger, and they sure as hell won't care about Corinavirus being a maybe threat to immunocompromised people they have never met.

I'm not saying that's how people should react, by the way. Just how I think they will.

I would bet a lot of money that threads like this will stop cropping up once the death rate is over 1000 a day in this country. That is where we are headed in two weeks time.

Whether people will adhere to rules has no bearing on the making of those rules. Many people claimed that they didn’t need and wouldn’t use seat belts 30 years ago. People who don’t are now the exception not the rule.

We’re all still adapting. We need to keep adapting. Those who adapt quickest will do the best in the long run. Harsh but true.

OP- being alone all the time sounds incredibly difficult and you do have my sympathy. What can you do actively to make your situation better? Do you have anyone else you can talk to for even ten minutes a day? Any old friends to contact?

I Zoomed with mates last night and we all had drinks and a chat for an hour or so. It was so great to have pub chat.

Can you set that out

I know two relatively young, fit and healthy people who have died in NYC overnight. Friends of my sister. They died alone. No one to comfort them.
50 Italian doctors have died.
You are not doing it for ‘others’. You are also protecting yourself. You MAY be ok, but you can’t know that.
Till yesterday we thought small children didn’t die from it. Now one child has indeed died. Has the virus mutated? Is it different to what we thought?