Why is lockdown being eased when the alert level hasn’t changed?

[Skybluepink123]

Just seen that the CV alert level hasn’t been reduced from 4 to 3 yet the government are easing lockdown measures imminently. At level 4, the virus is widespread and risk is high and restrictions must be in place. Why then has the government been allowed to ease measures when there is still a clear, identifiable risk to our health?

If you really want to fuck the economy , go full pelt towards a second significant wave of infections

If you really care about the economy then please make sure you do everything you can to get and keep this virus under control, even if that gives enormous short term problems, and even if it's highly likely you may lose your current job....because you want a recovering economy to find a new job . It sucks.

If people rush to get back to 'Normal' that 'normal' will be forever different to the normal we've known. No pubs, no cinemas, no softplays, no nightclubs etc and a 1000 people dying monthly from Covid.

I guess the question is the pay off.

Too much virus in the community means lots of self isolation. That costs government SSP.

So paying Out one way or enough is about Baka don't the books on what is greater.

Also Monday many more are returning to work and schools are returning for the 3 year groups. So less people at home 24/7 to arrange meet ups.

I still think it's too soon but I've worked through this so I can work and keep my level of separation from others as it's been all along.

Exactly what @attackedbycritters says.

I was reading about one of the countries that took fast and strong action to contain the spread. I can't remember which one. They're slowly reopening now (sensibly not to Brits). One of their spokesmen said they'd taken the short term pain, long term gain approach.

Yes, in the 1918-19 flu pandemic, the places that locked down longer had LESS damage to their economies in the long run. As they had actually dealt with the disease properly the first time.

Another good question is why lockdown is being eased when the Government's own 5 tests have not been met.

The government are chancing their arms and throwing the public to the wolves or those daft enough to socialise too quickly or too often.

The answer to your question effing is because the public is accepting it and indeed supporting it.
Perhaps more importantly those with the power to challenge this - the national media - is supporting it.

It's not meeting 'dear old auntie Ethel' it's seeing grown up children, grandchildren and parents. It's teenagers being able to see their friends.

So fuck off with your 'dear old auntie Ethel' shite.It's minimising how much people have sacrificed already.

Effing probably because Boris told everyone yesterday we had met them.

Boris needed something new and big for the press to splatter over their front pages other than that Dominic Cummings broke lock down.

Just stay two metres away from anyone that doesn't live at home with you and wash your hands a lot, particularly when you've touched things outside the home and then you shouldn't be adding to infection figures.

It's very hard not to see it as a 'bread and circuses' tactic given the timing and the sombre note struck by Vallance at the same briefing. As well as the many doctors, scientists and other health professionals urging caution. I worry that people will follow Johnson's easing measures in good faith and inadvertently spread the disease.

And as for the economy, this doesn't have to be the economy versus people's lives/health, there are middle ways as poster after poster has pointed out, I'm so tired of the anti-lockdown brigade trying to represent things in the most simplistic either/or terms possible. Or assume that people who are making reasoned decisions based on authoritative material are hysterical, stay-at-home types. However, from speaking to friends, colleagues am encouraged that so far everyone I know is sticking to distancing as much as possible, and being very sceptical about government messages.

Because the government want to justify re-opening schools?

Because we 're all going off our heads is why!

The lockdown risks all being for nothing. They were too slow to lockdown and too quick to get things back moving.

If they'd locked down when they should have done we'd have been in a better position weeks ago to ease restrictions.

Yes, in the 1918-19 flu pandemic, the places that locked down longer had LESS damage to their economies in the long run. As they had actually dealt with the disease properly the first time.

The 1918-19 economy was very different to the one we have now. No NHS to fund for example. The money needed for NHS, social care, benefits and all the other public services is massive and doesn't just appear. You can't compare the 1918-19 flu to what is happening now and I wish people would stop trying to as it's not helping anything.

Our economy is already in a huge decline, where is the money supposed to come from to continue to support the people already affected by the lockdown, the shielded who can't go to work, the people who will suffer because other conditions have been neglected, the mental health crisis that is coming? Have you seen how many have applied for UC since the start of lockdown? It's not 1918.

Erm... Nothing has changed yet!

Just stop! You're only pissing my yourself off.

Get your head round the realities. Sunak has just announced a flexible end to furlough and SEISS. We have to start arranging our lives to include work and COVID19.

We will be coming out of lockdown, we may go back in for a while, it is still a reactive process.

I know we have to get the economy going etc but how many people are not actually still working and paying taxes? Even people on furlough are paying taxes! I get the economy is just paying wage related taxes but what % of the government's income has dropped?

ToffeeYoghurt

OP it's because, as seen on this thread, the UK (at least, English) public have passively accepted our shockingly high death rate, one of the highest in the world. Indeed more than acceptance, many are enthusiastically doing the government's job for them. Othering of non white people, the elderly, the disabled, poorer people, downplaying, minimalising.

Meanwhile other countries who've tackled it - either with proper lockdowns or early implementation of test, to track, and trace whilst cases were still low and mandatory mask wearing, are slowly beginning to return to normal.

Of course because we haven't done anything we won't see a return to proper normality for a long time.

This

It's not 1918

We know a lot more about economics than we did back then
We have a better understanding that money is just an artificial trading tool. There is no magic money tree because money isn't a physical reality.

We know that rushing this will damage the economy more .. a broken NHS, massive death rates, mortuary's and funeral homes overrun, fear and uncertainty, food supply chain disruption

We need control not the Wild West

If you want to save the economy control the virus.

I wonder how much inheritance tax the gov will have made by the end of their herd immunity bullshit approach?

Because they are doing what they said at the very beginning of this. There is no drive to stop the virus running through the population, only to keep it at the level at which it seems that the NHS can 'cope' with.

Lockdown will be eased, cases will go up and as the NHS starts to strain again, a further lockdown will ensue, probably regionally based next time if they can get their act together to manage contact tracing and support services locally, which is highly doubtful.

Vulnerable and at risk people can still self isolate. The rules are not forcing us all out. We still need to be responsible as we normally would - when our child is sick, we keep them off school for 48 hours and keep them in our care. We know what to do, we don't need Boris to be our mum and dad.

The economy had to get going. As it , employment is going to skyrocket and there will be even less tax receipts in the autumn. How do you think the NHS is funded. Even if you are a Labour 'just borrow, borrow, borrow and let our grandchildren pick up the tab', the borrowing is already out of control due to furlough.
So if you want an NHS et al people need to go back to work and they will resist that even note if the Gvt hasn't indicated that it is 'safe' to meet 'family'. So that is why the social side has to be eased -to try to encourage the reluctant sheeple off their sofas and back to work.