Do people think it’s over now?

[SpookyNoise]

I’m surprised at how many people seem to think the lockdown is over and there is no threat from the virus. I’ve had a friend ask us over for dinner in their house, and my son has had a friend ask him over to play. We declined both invites, obviously. Has anyone else got friends who think it’s all over?

@rosie39forever

For all those who are just going back to normal and think it's all over, honest answer do you not care about infecting other people, or does it not cross your minds? I'm genuinely curious.

I've had a positive antibody test, and whilst it's not a 100% guarantee that this protects me, it's sure enough as we can get at the moment for me to start getting my life back on track for what is normal to me

For all those who are just going back to normal and think it's all over, honest answer do you not care about infecting other people, or does it not cross your minds? I'm genuinely curious
genuinely doesn't cross my mind.
I assume people who are at high risk will be inside/ shielding.
The people out and about have done a personal risk assessment and decided the benefits of getting back to life outweighs the risks

rosie I think very few people have gone back to pre-lockdown normal.
It’s just not possible - even if they want to. Or they lived a life with very little interaction anyway - in which case they are unlikely to cause a huge problem.

Most of us, even if we have relaxed some rules, are not even close to normal.

I only pose a risk to other people when I go to the shops or leave my rubbish for the bin men tbh. I walk or drive and I'm the oldest in this household at age 42.

My biggest "risk " is my son who has worked through the pandemic and he's not had any colleagues get infected or hospitalized either. He generally works on the pharmacy counter and sometimes does deliveries but has access to masks and gloves and showers when he gets in from work which seems to have worked so far.

I’m back to work in July (thank god) I will go to pubs when they open and gyms and swimming too. I was one of those terrible idiots that went to the beach too...although there was way more than 2m between our group and other family groups. It really helped my autistic son.
I hope we can implement the 1m rule in clinic, as even though they started back 2 weeks ago. They normally see well over 100 people a day in the cancer clinics. My colleague said they saw 13 a day last week and one senior oncologist said it will take years and lots of deaths to get out of this backlog.
Many of my clients who I’m managing to talk to online are desperate to get back out there. They are not selfish they accept the risks to themselves and their families. They have cancer, they may survive many years they may not. What they do know is that they want to make the best of what they have left.
If people don’t want to face that risk then they can choose to take measures to protect themselves.m

I guess the current government will have no problems with any rewriting of human rights law, seeing that not only are people accepting this, they are actively encouraging its implementation. This is what I found incredibly scary about the whole thing: the public so readily accepting (and indeed clamouring for) our rights being taken away in one swoop, with barely a shred of protest. I wonder when the laws will be rewritten back to their rightful state, if ever? We should be angry about this, and watching very carefully.

Meanwhile, I'm sure the government actually wants us to be taking the roolz into our own hands, by breaking them, so that we forget that being a houseguest is a criminal offence, and so that we can use ourselves as test cases to see if it is safe to officially relax restrictions, and if it goes wrong later they can later shrug and say "not our fault, we didn't allow you to do it yet". And yes, if people think there might be a fabled second wave, some people will start thinking "I'm going to have fun now, rather than merely exist, while the summer's here". Many of those who were concerned for the greater good twelve weeks ago have had enough. Boris said "we can turn this around in twelve weeks" - it's been longer than that now.

And I'm very much of the view that the forthcoming mental health and obesity crisis are going to be much bigger than those clamouring for us to be forcibly imprisoned think. Children and teenagers especially have been forced to sacrifice a lot, while being barely affected themselves: they are the future workers, voters, and lifeblood of the country: the government would do well to remember that, in their neglect of the young's mental health.

@IcedPurple

Doesn’t going into someone’s house go against current guidelines?

Not if you stay in the garden.

Even so, 'guidelines' are somewhat arbitrary and very rarely enforced. Unless you've particular reason to believe you and/or your friends are infected, the chances of you catching Covid from them at this stage are very low.

Going into someone’s house is not the same as going into the garden.

For all those who are just going back to normal and think it's all over, honest answer do you not care about infecting other people, or does it not cross your minds? I'm genuinely curious.

I don't think anyone thinks it is all over, but more that it is at manageable point. The number of people infected at present is relatively low and even lower in the community. We need to live with it, at some point the balance needs to tip back in favour of other health and care issues. That point is probably now.

Cleaners and nannies can go in houses and you're allowed to go in if you have a single-person-bubble arrangement or somebody needs cared for.

In the park round the corner from me there were a couple of hundred people having some kind of party last night, it was completely rammed and with a massive sound system and still going strong past midnight. The police knew and were sat in a van on the corner of the street watching as more people arrived. I presume they thought it was more trouble than it's worth trying to break it up. Apparently it's been quite a regular thing for the past few weeks and the council stopped locking the park at night at some point because there's been damage to the plants with people climbing over the railings if they do. I think this stopped a long time ago for a lot of people, including those meant to be enforcing it.

Tbh I've used my mum as childcare from the start whilst I worked, my oh has been working all along and his job involves going into peoples homes so the risk has always been there. I'm pregnant, been to the beach, gone shopping etc my grandad is dying in hospital (non COVID) and whilst no one can visit him because of lockdown, the pubs will be opening and protests with thousands of people go ahead.

I assume those high risk (like my other grandparents) will be shielding so I don't think about passing it on and before COVID when did people really think about passing stuff onto other strangers

I don't think it's 'all over' and I'll continue to take precautions, but I'm looking forward to getting back to reasonably normal quite soon. Given the currently low rates of community spread and the fact that I've observed lockdown for the past 3 months, I would say it's very unlikely I could infect anyone, though of course it's impossible to be 100% sure.

Those who feel that any form of public interaction poses too great a risk to them may continue to stay at home, but others will assess the risks differently.

My colleague said they saw 13 a day last week and one senior oncologist said it will take years and lots of deaths to get out of this backlog.

Not covid: Doesn't matter.

I don't mean to be flippant with that, but unless it is covid it is currently having to take a back seat. People forget that getting back to normal includes those of us working with other sections and if we don't things will get a whole lot worse.

It absolutely breaks me that we are failing huge numbers of people at present.

People don't necessarily think it's over, but while we can meet up outside and infection levels relatively low, risk is relatively low.

C19 doesn't exist in a miasma around infected people that instantly infects anyone they walk past, and it's really pretty hard to catch outdoors, so seeing people etc in gardens, pub gardens, walks etc is not (ie, it's been over a month sinces those D-Day parties everyone was saying were going to cause a huge spike).

I'm still not going to hang out inside someone's house and as the weather cools down and meeting outside becomes harder, I'm prepared to accept seeing other people less because it'll be riskier.

Hopefully by autumn we may have some more understanding of risks from opening schools etc from other countries and it may be possible to open schools with less or no distancing if it looks like kids are low risk for spreading, for example.

But this autumn and winter will be the toughest bit, I reckon. Hopefully from spring, even without a vaccine, things will start looking up as the outside expectation for disruption is late next year, and we've shown the spring/summer and being outdoors definitely helps.

For all those who are just going back to normal and think it's all over, honest answer do you not care about infecting other people, or does it not cross your minds? I'm genuinely curious.

It doesn’t cross my mind. I’m just getting in with my life and doing the stuff that I need to do.

@rosie39forever

I care the same level I've cared my whole life about infecting others.

Before covid, every time I visited a grandparent there was always a risk I could pass something on to them. I cant live my life always thinking I'm possibly infecting someone with something otherwise I'd never see anyone. The risk is low now , so at what point am I not a biological weapon out to kill granny?

Plus every member of my family I've met where we didnt socially distance has made it clear they felt the same way. I would always respect peoples views if they wanted to SD from me. It's not like I force my family to stand next to me, come in my house.

No. Everyone I know thinks a second peak is likely.

I actually can’t believe the number of people who are now acting as if the virus has just miraculously disappeared.
No more lockdown for them, no more social distancing, large gatherings back in full swing...well, it’s gone now hasn’t it? Except it hasn’t....

I work in a supermarket it's free 4 all in there now and no one queueing as they took barriers down

For all those who are just going back to normal and think it's all over, honest answer do you not care about infecting other people, or does it not cross your minds? I'm genuinely curious.

It doesn't cross my mind at all. HTH.

I think it's difficult for front line workers to accept that they're mixing with hundreds of people a day with zero distancing, but can't meet up with 7 people outdoors.

Rosie - my children know that social distancing is polite but I am not bothered if they hug their friends (assuming they are happy to be hugged back too) They know that gatherings are supposed to be 6 but it would not bother me if they hung out in bigger groups. They aren't the type to go to a rave or house party but we live in an area where it's easy to find a field or similar.

honest answer do you not care about infecting other people

Surely you can only infect people if they are out there letting themselves be infected. I'm not purposely walking into people or coughing on them, but I'm not overzealously wiping things or washing my hands or diving into the road. If people are concerned about getting ill from things I've handled in Poundland, they're free to use sanitiser too you know. Me and my family don't care about getting infected so are happy to possibly infect each other.

I am also of the assumption that if you're out shopping in Primark, you're not that bothered, so I don't worry about infecting people no. If you're terrified about being infected and dying then you should be indoors, not telling everyone else to stay indoors for you (and sacrifice their livelihoods/mental health) - that's quite selfish and entitled.

Boudicabooandbulldogs best wishes for your return to work. It must be heartbreaking for the people who have real worries that are sat around waiting for their appointments to continue again whilst the fit and healthy (but scared and ridiculous) out there assume that people who are getting on with their lives (limited time for some) are not taking care and risk assessing themselves and then call them stupid.

The paranoid ones can stay home and do anything they like including washing shopping but why do they have to do all their hand wringing paranoid bulls**t on MN? You know the ones - today I was out XYZ and people did XYZ .... yawn