Why can’t people use a bit of common sense?

[whenthejoyreturns]

It’s absolutely driving me mad. I keep hearing people on the radio and tv bleating on. For example, they’ve got 3dc so if they want to meet up with the grandparents oh no, that’s 7 (just be sensible).They can meet in a garden but shock horror, they’ve got to walk through the house so is it allowed? Have people really become so pathetic they can’t use a bit of common sense? They’re having to phone a radio station to ask this!

"Totally agree. A lot of people don't understand that they themselves are responsible for their own health."

A lot of people still don't understand that the lockdown and the rules were/are nothing to do with protecting your own health as an individual. Asking people to employ common sense over their own situation is fine but that's not what this is about.

Because common sense is meaningless. You can see it in this thread. “When will people understand that you alone are responsible for your own health?” That poster thinks that is common sense, but they haven’t understood that it’s not about protecting your own health, it’s about protecting the health of wider society. Or if they understand, they just don’t care. People who have held wild parties, flocked to the beach, etc, no doubt thought it was all common sense.

Agree with pp. what some people think is common sense, others see as breaking the rules or being utterly stupid.

To me it would be Common sense to

• not shake hands with people with Covid
• not hold major events with large crowds when a virus was sweeping the world
• staying at home if anyone in my family had any symptoms
• not drive if I were concerned about my eyesight
• carry on with testing people not stopping even though the advice was to test test test
• get the track and trace program up and running before sending kids back to school

But hey that’s me, some people disagree.

That is why we can’t just say use your common sense. Some people don’t have any!

Common sense, for me if it was only about the health of me and my family, would have been to shield the vulnerable and everyone else carry on as normal. Keeping a distance as much as possible and lots of handwashing, knowing that if we did get it, it was very likely to be a mild illness. It was drummed into people really quite forcibly that that would be akin to murder.

I have had to hide my local chat group on Facebook as the amount of idiotic comments are killing me.

The latest was .....I've only got a small back yard that won't fit six people in, what am I gonna do?

Oh fuck off!

It can also work the other way, where, instead of being overly cautious about one extra person (and pp was spot on about what do they think is going to happen if 7 meet, that a SWAT team turn up? the 7th person explodes etc) they see this as carte blanche to ramp it up.- they don't think there are any restrictions.

I've been invited to see close family. "We can meet up now" says one family member. Turns out, with us there too, there'd be 5 households there, so I'll pass.

This is the house that do everything the PM says as "it's law" so, in the pub that final night when many of us were saying don't go - but is was ok, as BJ said so. I cringe every time they repeat "Boris says.." They think the PM must have some profound wisdom I think.

I do wonder if the curtain twitchers will be counting and reporting though!

It’s a fast changing situation and we’re not really told when the guidance is updated on gov.uk. So it’s understandable that people are now worried that their common sense judgement that came naturally a few months ago, is “against the rules”.

My common sense tells me that if I sit on a bench at the park while my kids run around, and we all use hand sanitiser when we leave, we are unlikely to catch covid nor leave it behind. It does not leap off the bench into our windpipes, nor transfer from my butt to my tongue. The way the virus acts in a laboratory is going to differ from its potential to infect from a bench. But benches were taped up and sitting on them was seen as akin to murder.

Ditto police blowing sirens at people sitting in the park.

The car breakdown services were issuing “helpful” guidance to their customers such as “push your car up and down the drive to stop the brakes seizing up”. And “run the car on the drive for 30 minutes” which could actually be more harmful to a diesel engine than not bothering. My common sense said that a half an hour drive once a week to keep the car roadworthy was essential, after all that’s one less ambulance needed if we had to get to the hospital. But no, there was a police roadblock on the outskirts of our town stopping every single car and asking the driver his destination. Car roadworthiness wasn’t seen as “essential”.

So all this “use your common sense” is actually a turnaround. People are understandably worried that doing so will lead to a fine. I don’t want to be charged £100 for having visitors in the garden 6 hours early, even though my common sense tells me the virus won’t care if it’s 6pm on Sunday or midnight.

Kazzyhoward

"The 'rules' have never been communicated in an easy to understand way."

"yes, the media have been awful throughout with mis-reporting the guidance."

The media were often taking guidance from the Police and the Police got it wrong. So whoever the Police got their guidance from got it wrong. Which went all the way back up to the government.

The media have been shocking. Everyone goes on about Dominic Cummings and how it’s his fault loads of people might now break lockdown. I’m in no way apologising for his actions but it’s actually the MEDIA’S fault isn’t it? They could have published something in 3 months from now saying ‘by the way everyone D.C. broke lockdown rules at its height. He should be sacked!’ (We’d probably all still agree). But no - they publish it NOW (still after the fact) and incite people into breaking lockdown!
It’s a tree falling in a forest surely? If no one knew D.C. had done that then there’s no reason to say ‘well if he broke it so can I!’, but it’s when it’s published with howls of rage that it does the damage. Like I say they could have sat on to the info and still punished him further down the line...
(Sorry, I know that’s slightly off topic but in response to the comments about the media above).

That's ridiculous YouSettheTone. If the government's response had been "DC acted in a way we can't support and therefore we take xyz action" it would have been very clear the rules were important. It's the government response that has made people question just how important the rules are, not the original story.

Somebody was furious about the garden guidance because they live in a flat.

Perhaps the short briefing should have included levitation guidance so flat dwellers with no imagination can invite their family to hover outside their living room window, enjoying refreshments they've brought with them.

@Earnsomething

Common sense, for me if it was only about the health of me and my family, would have been to shield the vulnerable and everyone else carry on as normal. Keeping a distance as much as possible and lots of handwashing, knowing that if we did get it, it was very likely to be a mild illness. It was drummed into people really quite forcibly that that would be akin to murder.

That's common sense for you. For someone shielding common sense might be for us all to get the R number as low as possible so that it's safe for the vulnerable to rejoin society.

That's why we have laws and rules and not a world just governed by common sense. We don't all agree what it looks like and common sense changes over time. My mum smoked to lose weight which was common sense in those days. Common sense is fluid and personal which is it's so hard for us to understand why everyone else won't just use it

Exactly Gales, that's my point. Common Sense makes no sense at all for the common good.

@Earnsomething oops have I think I may have quoted you out of context, sorry. It appears we both have excellent common sense levels, lucky us

@Earnsomething ok yes that’s a good point, I agree. I just feel there’s something slightly off with images of photographers hustling next to each other (and DC), running and shouting questions about why he broke the rules when they’re also breaking the rules and (in the case of click bait media) arguably sometimes writing articles in a way that incite people to think it’s ok to break rules because DC did.
I do agree that the government should have denounced his actions.

Remember you need marker tape and one way signs in your garden!

People need spoon feeding by the government.

We're in a stage of humanity where our every move is governed by the government and it's made some people incapable of suitably risk assessing themselves and their activities appropriately. They would have managed just fine BC (before corona) but now the government is even telling us who we can and cant hug critical thinking and common sense has disappeared.

Sorry, but 'common sense' refers to good judgement. It's not a meaningless amibiguous phrase. Using common sense would be doing something that isn't necessarily in line with specific govt rules, but that nevertheless provides zero or close to zero risk to yourself AND others. Not using your common sense is thinking everything is harmful just because there's no rule specifically spelling out that its ok, or conversely not considering the harm to yourself AND others as part of your risk assessment. Good judgement has some variation, e.g some may be cautious and prefer to stay in, others may have visited a partner knowing both of them are interacting with no one ekse, hence no risk. The more your actions are likely to impact on other people and cause spread, the less your judgement can be called 'good'.

I think the problem is that what constitutes 'common sense' to one person is seen as 'breaking the Rules' by another (even if it doesn't actually break any law). And the latter person may include a police officer.

This. It was never against the law to drive to exercise, but many people were fined in the early weeks for doing exactly that. It was later clarified to the police.

It was always legal to meet with one other person, but that wasn't made clear. Not whether it was or wasn't against guidelines, but people felt they'd gained something once it was publicised that they could meet a friend.

In the early days, 'the rules' seemed to be pieced together from various ministers giving their own interpretation. Eg Gove thinking an hour exercise was more than enough and then being requoted as fact.

In the early days, 'the rules' seemed to be pieced together from various ministers giving their own interpretation.

People could have read the simple English guidance on the Gov.uk website to find out the real guidance. Or even better, the media could have done that and reported the FACTS to the wider public. Gov.uk isn't hidden away - there are links to it wherever your look, especially all over social media. But it seems people prefer to listen to whatever Kuensberg or Peston have a bee in their bonnet about at the time!