Anyone else think our reprieve might be short lived?

[Lemons1571]

The briefing just seemed so, abrupt today. Suddenly it’s ‘the last ever briefing’, most things are allowed to open up next week, keep your distance, and then a “right we’re off good luck” sort of exit. While there’s still hundreds of deaths a week.

Seems a bit premature - I would’ve thought they would at least do a weekly briefing. I can’t decide if they think taking the briefings off the air will be “out of sight out of mind”, and people will chill out and start spending and going out again. Or whether they’ve run out of steam and need a break before the autumn colds season descends. Whitty seemed sure this wasn’t going anywhere and we’re in for a year plus of this. What do you think?

What do people want lockdown forever ? There may never be a cure or a vaccine so we have to learn to live with it
Its easy for people to not want things to open that doesnt affect their family but what about those families that run these business or work for them and rely on them to put food on the table
People have been happy for supermarket workers to go in day after day
Furlough isnt going to last forever

I’m glad the briefings are going, they are so repetitive and pointless. Politicians bring politicians & not answering questions & telling us info we already know! I do think maybe a weekly one would have been appropriate. But thankgod the daily death toll be gone. There’s a good graph that shows the death rate on the actual day people died (as opposed to reported) & it’s trending very consistently downwards. The ups & downs you see daily are not reflective at all.

What do you want people to do with the date rate? I’m certainly not celebrating deaths but I am really pleased to see less people are dying. That’s good news. Lockdown was to stop the NHS being overwhelmed & able to treat those seriously ill in the hope of saving them. And we’ve achieved it. So what? We stay locked down & destroy people’s lives? Or we move forwards? We also have much better understanding of drugs to help save lives now too.

Opening pubs back up on a Saturday could be an issue, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they get swamped and over crowded esp with our drinking culture. The following Monday may have been a better idea

@sunflower there are two sides to this though what about those who's business have been lost and those who will loose jobs and homes who cannot do anything about it
If your extremly vunerable you can still stay home
What about peoples mental health
There are lots and lots to consider and opening things and monitoring the effect is the only way
You dont have to go to the pub or any of these things

Daily briefings are pointless now. They are just upping sticks and leaving us to it. They will hold briefings as and when major announcements need to be made. Dont really understand why that's an issue, its a sensible thing to do.

Imagine all the time and effort taken to do thise briefings, material to be collated etc. Now is the right time to use that time better as the rate is steadily declining.

Government does not need to hand hold us everyday now

@Bol87 do you have a link to that graph? Sounds good

I sincerely hope there is no second wave. However I'm going to do everything I need to as soon as I can including seeing my mum.

There is one or two restaurants I want to visit to combat my dip in mental health.

My kids are in school now to varring degrees so mixing for us is inevitable.

Re the referrals to children's services - those services couldn't cope before they as well went cope with this. Schools don't generally seem to be engaged with pupil welfare. Not from what I am seeing directly

Actually, I'm not sure that the extremely vulnerable will still be able to stay at home, struggling. Shielding in England is ending at the beginning of August, so people will probably be forced back to work.

I do understand the challenges faced by small businesses, and I have been trying to support some local ones, but I do think we're rushing to open things too soon, and I'm anxious about the likely consequences of this.

@Bol87

I’m glad the briefings are going, they are so repetitive and pointless. Politicians bring politicians & not answering questions & telling us info we already know! I do think maybe a weekly one would have been appropriate. But thankgod the daily death toll be gone. There’s a good graph that shows the death rate on the actual day people died (as opposed to reported) & it’s trending very consistently downwards. The ups & downs you see daily are not reflective at all.

What do you want people to do with the date rate? I’m certainly not celebrating deaths but I am really pleased to see less people are dying. That’s good news. Lockdown was to stop the NHS being overwhelmed & able to treat those seriously ill in the hope of saving them. And we’ve achieved it. So what? We stay locked down & destroy people’s lives? Or we move forwards? We also have much better understanding of drugs to help save lives now too.

Hear hear

It just seems very soon to stop any form of regular government update. There is still no school for the majority of children, we have the third worst death rate in the world and still have plenty of new infections every day. But that’s not bad enough to warrant some kind of formal regular briefing?

I feel they're lifting too much too soon, we don't know the full impact of shops reopening yet, then they basically scrap the 2 metre rule.. surely each stage should be monitored before progressing!

The daily briefings ending feels like they've opened the doors, then done a runner, to avoid any possible come back should the shit hit the fan.

@BanditoShipman

Has anybody else heard this? Saw on CNN today a man (Dr?) saying that A. Even asymptomatic cases can be left with lung damage (up to 60% of people have damage in one lung a lower percentage have damage in both lungs) and B. That they’ve done ‘tests’ and any immunity to covid only last two months??

I have t seen either of these mentioned anywhere else!

Yes, I have heard about the lung damage in asymptomatic cases. Shown in studies in China.

@Lemons1571

It just seems very soon to stop any form of regular government update. There is still no school for the majority of children, we have the third worst death rate in the world and still have plenty of new infections every day. But that’s not bad enough to warrant some kind of formal regular briefing?

Sure we no longer have the 3rd worst death rate in the world? Our wave is currently receding, while in other countries it's just getting going.

We can't remain as we are because of the deaths we were having at the peak two months ago.

In my view, lockdown is being released much too soon. There is still far too much covid around, with thousands of people testing positive every day. A second peak is inevitable .

Completely agree! It really did feel like Boris was saying "right we've done our bit, we are off now, use your common sense because you're on your own now!" Very worrying, and I expect we will be having some sort of restrictions imposed again by mid to late July.

Yes yes, it'll be short lived and everyone will die and we can all go back to being miserable.

15 deaths yesterday. Round the 200 mark today. That does not justify continuing with lockdown. It’s ridiculous that some people think we should remain in lockdown when we have 215 deaths out of 62million population. The government will be able to see when/if figures start rising again, then we will need to review the situation. Getting down to zero deaths and infections will not necessarily mean we are Covid free. It could be lurking somewhere and flare up again.

There's a guy on twitter who takes the daily numbers and puts them into easy to read graphs, his username is rp113. I look at that and will continue to do so.

Personally I think we'll see an increase in cases and deaths, and I think that Boris should do at the very least a weekly briefing.

They’ll just do statements rather than briefings I assume.

I’m in Scotland and feel reassured at the pace of things here but we cannot, as a race, stay in lockdown indefinitely. Our NHS here has not been overwhelmed, they have been pretty amazing in ramping up their response to the extent that the ICUs and Covid wards are very quiet. There may be a second wave. All logic would say so because the virus hasn’t gone away but we cannot live in fear forever. The mental fallout from this will ripple much further than the direct impact of Covid itself.

@BunsyGirl @slimecentury the number of children in care has not got up by 50% at all. There were 720 more foster carers needed during lockdown than there were in the same period in 2019. Not a good situation but certainly not what you said Bunsy girl.

@BunsyGirl

"Have a long, hard think about that."

Since that isn't true then why don't you have a long hard think about spreading misinformation online.

Not to mention that yes, they did just cancel the regular briefings whilst not even mentioning whole industries. Schools still have another 3 months before they fully open, that will be the one big change that helps children. And nothing changed with regards to that today.

The virus has only been suppressed through artificial means, social distancing and face masks. When people return to ‘normal’ it will come back so yes we may be in for many waves to come I think.

Yeah but how many people (out of pop of 67M) die of cancer or sepsis or heart attack even flu etc every day? Yet most people take little or no steps to avoid those things. Is there an argument it’s now at general background risk level?

What is "general background risk level?" 🤣