No point in lockdown anymore

[LifeMatters]

All my neighbours seem to think that we are in a paid staycation by the government and social distancing are out the door.
Everyone around where I live has friends and family over, are having picnics together on the grass in front of their flats, the roads are busier than ever.
It's crazy! There's no point in making this country suffer any more so better all let's just go to work and what happens happens.

People are taking advantage of the paid time off and not staying indoors. What is the point of this lockdown if people are not following it anymore?

My next door neighbors had friends and family over all this week...it's crazy.

lilgreen he's got a fuckin' elderly visibly disabled neighbour right next door who'd dearly love the offer of shopping brought in,, and his work closed down at the beginning...

isn't it weird how different it is in different places? I wonder why that is. Perhaps if others see people not sticking to it, they think, well, why the hell should I?

Or maybe it's your perception? You are a reasonable person, able to make a sound and reasonable judgement on what you're seeing.

A friend who travels the same route to work as me told me it was shocking today how many cars were on the road. "It's just like any other day!" According to her. I refuse to get drawn into it, send her the stats from our police force showing traffic up 2% on yesterday, but down 61% on this time last year.

Perception is 90% of the truth. My friend is like the op. She could be the op.

@ToffeeYoghurt completely agree

Without the furlough scheme 6.3 million people would have been made redundant instead. You can't go to work and sell/create/help/organise when there's no demand for your services.

I am sorry that your neighbours are not taking it seriously. In my town people are a lot better and it's very quiet no traffic, few walkers. Nothing open. No one out.

I am furloughed. I'd love to be back at work. I am terrified of paying the mortgage and bills if I'm made redundant, which I will be if the government decides to send us 'back to work' and my company doesn't have the incoming revenue to keep us.

Not sure why you’re swearing at me.

Many shops like B&Q have reopened. They didn’t have to close anyway. So the staff and customers will be out on roads and visible. Only seen a few people out in groups that aren’t obviously family.

I completely agree OP, I am in surrey as well and it’s baffling me the amount of people I know that are absolutely begging for lockdown restrictions to be lifted. Many of them not paying any attention to it either!
It absolutely breaks my heart that my family haven’t seen my 4 month old daughter in 7 weeks now and I would love nothing more than to go and see them however I genuinely care about my family’s well being and would never want to put them at risk or them put me at risk! My parents both work for the NHS so that’s a risk in itself and my dad has had the virus 5 weeks ago and is still severely struggling with his weakness and his breathing! he’s only 52!
The only thing I can put everyone’s carelessness down to is they don’t know anyone that it has affected :(

I am finding the tweets by Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Health at Edinburgh Uni interesting. She understands there needs to be a balance between considering the economy and viral spread but thinks we need the next 3 weeks to remain in lockdown to get the spread down and increase the testing, tracing and quarantining system in place.

mobile.twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1258344526118346753

Totally agree, people have been aholes, having street parties, I have even seen people skip diving where I live and randoms wander in and out of my building. However, the lock down was to stagger infections, nothing can stop them except totally staying in. However, if I lived in a better area with no cases I would go out. The inner cities need more police action and further lock down.

@museumum I'm in Scotland too and that's what I'm seeing too. More and more businesses, which decided to close but were not required to, are opening up again. In my last trip into town (a small town) there were far more shops opened, whilst complying to social distancing rules. Garden centres locally are either now click and collect or delivery services, hardware stores opened, shops like poundstrecher etc were open too. As were bakers and butchers. Cafes are now trying to do takeaway by either collection or delivery. Far more than were open at the start of April. None are breaking the rules but would only open if they were getting the customers.

Several households in our village are receiving government parcels but having friends and family round, going out shopping, collecting takeaways and non essential building materials. Surely those receiving these parcels are classed as vulnerable and should be shielding not doing all of the above. Some of the visitors are from 2 different households coming in the same car so 3 households not social distancing together. Makes me mad.

There is definitely a relaxation where I am (London suburb). The streets are still quite empty and people are social distancing, but the roads are trafficky again. Today it felt like normal rush hour traffic on the high street at 5pm, whereas even a week ago it was eerily quiet. Our local park - which was a ghost town over Easter - was packed today with people picnicking and walking in groups which didn’t all strike me as family groups etc.

I don’t know what to make of it all, really. My family, friends and colleagues have been taking it seriously. But it seems a lot of people have had enough of lockdown...

Yep. I work in a supermarket and several colleagues today were talking about "having family over" casually.
That said, I do believe the vast majority are following it.

I live in a small market town in a tourist area. It has got much busier than at the start of the lockdown; the walks around here are busy and cars are parked up. The main town car park is pretty full whereas it was empty at first and I’ve started seeing gangs of teenagers going past the house in the past few days and more people generally. My neighbour’s daughter and grandchildren started out waving from the gate and are now in the garden every day. How on earth anyone can think it should have happened sooner is beyond me, people are just so selfish and stupid. DSD is in Paris and it’s been so much stricter. She had to get special permission to go to her place of work earlier this week.

A friend who travels the same route to work as me told me it was shocking today how many cars were on the road. "It's just like any other day!" According to her. I refuse to get drawn into it, send her the stats from our police force showing traffic up 2% on yesterday, but down 61% on this time last year

I think part of this may be due to public transport issues (reduced timetables and people not wanting to get public transport as a private car is less risk) and a reduction in car sharing.

People are out and about, the streets are as busy as they ever were and traffic is up again. No one is staying home.

Oh don’t talk rubbish. Of course people are staying home. How else do you explain the reduction in the numbers of cases, the fact we aren't seeing twice as many deaths and the numbers are flattering?

Just yesterday someone tweeted a picture of Princes street, one of the busiest in Scotland at this time of year. There was barely a soul on it.

Don’t go on with that “no-one is staying home” nonsense.

Furlough payments were too high, there should have been a clause to say they would be removed if caught breaking lockdown.

lockdown wasn’t strict enough like other countries and people aren’t reporting enough when it is being broken.

Yes. People are out with friends here too. Massive gathering today of 30 ish people in a wood near us.

I’m not into judging. But I do feel this lockdown and all the money poured into it will have been a waste of time and resources, bringing future misery that could have been avoided.

Furlough payments were too high, there should have been a clause to say they would be removed if caught breaking lockdown.

Can you explain why you think this would be helpful and how it would work? Also the relationship between ‘high’ furlough payments and non-compliance with lockdown?

@icecreamandcandyfloss.

Your post gave me a much needed laugh. Bless 😂

To all of you saying Furlough is over generous..
Go pay rent and support a family single handed on 80% of the minimum wage after being told there is no work for you till this situation changes.
Go do that and tell me how much of a fucking party it is.

We have adhered to lockdown,our neighbour has not.
She then has the gall to stand outside clapping for the NHS when she’s had visitors over all day sitting in the garden drinking. The hypocrisy and stupidity of some people with an “I’m alright Jack” attitude 😡

Most of my neighbours are abiding by it but I was queuing outside Waitrose on Tuesday, I say queuing I was a queue of one, and waiting for a member of staff to say if it was okay to go in or not. Next thing I know a man barges past me and calls me an idiot. There was no need to barge because I was away from the door and not blocking anyone, but I guess he just thought that the rules don't apply to him, the utter arsehole.

In regard to 'furough payments being overly generous'...

Over two million people have applied for universal credit since mid-March.

Do people think that's overly generous too and so if you can't work because there aren't any jobs, you should just be homeless and starve?

The great majority didn't have a choice about being furloughed (a small minority were able to request it because they have caring responsibilities, but employers were under no obligation to grant it).

People I know who have been furloughed are worried sick about their reduced income and the prospect of redundancies, not having a paid holiday.

People near me have been pretty good. But I'm beginning to see people in groups again out for walks etc.