So basically the government are removing themselves?

[princesstwinkle]

So Boris has just tweeted what I presume is going to be announced later. To me it is the government removing the responsibility from themselves so that they can blame to public when a second wave occurs. All very vague and unhelpful!

For the love of god they have repeated what they have said all along .I think the problem is nowadays peoples expections exceed reality .There will be 2nd peaks everywhere.
Just because you can imagine it doesn't mean you can make it happen.

Think the biggest mistake has been the "stay at home save lives" it should be stay a home slow deaths people think lockdown for months and CV goes away and doesn't come back.

test and contact trace helpful but we have 69 million people and people can spread it 2 days before realising they have it.

also limit contact-to who my family the general public

can i go into someone s house?

Why is being concerned about your health in this pandemic Tory bashing?

As for the 'common sense' approach, that doesn't work when it means employers can use relaxed measures to put their staff at risk.

I'm sorry if people are bored and fed up, but that's a small price to minimise a second wave.

This is entirely the government removing responsibility from themselves to shift blame.

Not to mention the stay 2m if you can. A massive loophole for workplaces who can say well we tried but we can't maintain 2m!

It means be generally aware of your surroundings; act with caution, don’t mingle with strangers, cover your mouth, wash your hands. It’s really not that fucking difficult and people should take some responsibility for themselves rather than needing everything spelt out.

Isn’t the Germany issue linked to specific outbreaks in two meat packing factories? And that’s pushed the R up?

And weren’t ‘meat packing factories’ known to be risky?

@princesstwinkle - so what is your solution?

Not to mention the stay 2m if you can. A massive loophole for workplaces who can say well we tried but we can't maintain 2m!

That’s not new.

I think this is reasonable. Regarding second wave... The biggest problem and spread is in nursing homes, of which a lockdown does nothing to stop the spread. Also, the vast vast majority of deaths are over 60 so the most sensible advice would be to tell the over 60s to stay at home, let others choose and the economy can recover.

If you are unsure, look on the Gov website;
www.gov.uk/coronavirus
This has plenty of information

To all those saying 'it's up to us to protect ourselves', what the hell do we elect a government for and pay taxes? For them to hand back over responsibility to us when their strategy goes tits up?

I agree OP the message now will lead to a total free for all. Even if you are not directly affected due to being low risk i.e age/gender/class the virus is still deadly to many people over 70.

This is abysmal, so many people have been brainwashed by the cult that is Boris, that they're starting to agree with his ridiculous lack of strategy, responsibility and planning for this pandemic!

@SpringBlossomIsBeautiful I've already responded to you regarding this. I suggest you look back and read it 🙄🙄

I am not confident in the ability of all humans to use common sense. I am not confident in our government's ability to communicate what that common sense should look like. I am not confident that businesses will not try to exploit loopholes in order to exploit workers. I am not confident that anyone is driving this train.

Stellaris22... do you actually seriously think that people are just bored and fed up?! Its not because they are seriously worried about the state of the economy and future stability and success of the country?!

It's interesting that so many people this is the end of lockdown. I don't think it makes much difference and just reflects the fact that many workplaces are now opening and this is what will need to do when at work. Nothing's changed.

@ProseccoSupernova but a second wave and a second lockdown would do nothing for the economy anyway! They have already done studies on this that we will be worse off economically if a second wave hits

@Dodgytrousers I'm sure the thousands of people who've died and others who have been left with lifelong effects are getting bored too. What an ignorant comment.

I do actually. I work in a small supermarket and regularly have customers complain about being bored and fed up of the lockdown.

I do think most people need a nanny state actually. A large proportion of the population clearly don’t have the capacity to make sensible decisions and there are businesses who couldn’t give a shit about the health of their workers who will and have exploited any flexibility in the system. We need strict guidelines now regarding this virus and I think we need more laws to protect the environment in the future and support smaller businesses and workers instead of enabling fat cats to get fatter. We have found that people can follow rules; why not start using rules to help those who lack common sense!

Not to mention the stay 2m if you can. A massive loophole for workplaces who can say well we tried but we can't maintain 2m!

This is the crux of what I find annoying - it seems like it’s going to be up to individual bosses to make decisions about how to reopen business safely. That’s going to be a real headache for a lot of people.

A second wave is pretty much certain to hit, which is why we can’t keep the country on ‘lockdown‘ until that happens.

For weeks they have been talking about only releasing lockdown when 5 criteria have been met. Only a week ago I think they said we had met 2 of the criteria, but I thought there had to be a marked decline in deaths/day and new infections....which as far as the daily updates report, doesnt seem to have happened yet.
I completely get that we cant stay locked in forever (I am furloughed and DH is self employed so we're on reduced income which I know is not sustainable) but it seems a bit of an about-face to keep saying wait for the 5 pillars or criteria to be met and then decide "oh fuck it, it's taking too long, hopefully 2 or 3 out of 5 will be ok..."

Stellaris... the vast majority of people are bored and fed up, but that’s not WHY they feel we need some loosening of restrictions.

The 2m distance is not set in stone. WHO recommends 1 m and Germany are using 1.5 m for example.