Just an idea - 2 weeks on / 2 weeks off?

[TingTastic]

Hi

I’ve been getting more and more concerned that we seem to have opened up the country again too early

Has anyone ever proposed a rolling lockdown, whereby the whole country is on proper lockdown for 2 weeks but then relaxed again for 2 weeks and so on? The 2 weeks lockdown would hopefully mean a lot of transmissions are avoided. Whereas the 2 weeks relax would allow businesses to maintain some presence but also allow schools etc to prepare for the (known) upcoming 2 weeks lockdown. Not ideal but surely has to be better than where we are at the moment with cases creeping up and lots of our contemporaries seeing second waves

I have also been wondering why something like this hasn't been proposed. Or at least a 2 week lockdown before schools open so that hopefully the majority of children would be Covid free before term started again.
I'd actually like a 3 week strict worldwide lockdown but obviously that could never happen.

Even in the 2-weekly approach the NHS needs to keep going, people will shop etc, presumably you just mean closing non-essential shops, childcare etc. It's an interesting idea, but people don't seem able to handle even the slight ambiguity in the current status. Every rule becomes "oh, but it doesn't make sense because...". It'll become "Oh but it's much safer this week than last week anyway, and it's MY birthday this week, so I'm inviting people over this week." and nobody will ever know what date is which, they will have "forgotten and thought it was next/last week".

With hindsight, if we'd done 2 weeks lockdown in early March, 2 more in April - that could have been good. We still come back to the complexities of lockdowns though; building sites had to be made safe for the long-term, people panic-buy, there needs to be extra cleaning to open up again etc.

The biggest stumbling block to any strategy at all is people.

We need the majority to be on the same page and we’re just not, from the very top CEO’s to Betty at number 4. We’ve all got different priorities and there is a distinct lack of critical thinking and people who think their opinion is as valid as fact or at least experienced professional opinion .

There is a balance that can be achieved between community needs and economy needs but extremists at either end are making it much harder than it theoretically needs to be. From my observations this is mostly due to some people’s inability to see further than the end of they’re own nose.

Plus expectations are wildly out of kilter with reality. Things can and will change at short notice because we’re still learning about covid and how it behaves. Our government (who I am no fan of btw) are restricted to being reactive because of this and that’s just how it is - there’s nothing to debate in this regard because it’s the only certainty we actually have.

In summary, IMHO, people are too spoiled and selfish to support and comply with something as complex as you’re proposing. On paper it’s simple, in real life it would be met by a billion ‘what about’s’.

*they’re = their