Not doing quarantine properly.

[irishheartenglishblood]

DH spoke to a friend earlier who arrived back from France at 4pm on Sat, so 12hrs after quarantine started.
Said friend and family are going to WFH, but are planning on daily trips to the park, a once weekly trip to the supermarket, and to meet up with family next week.
DF firmly believes their behaviour is within keeping of the quarantine rules.

I'm quite torn. On the one hand, it seems quite arbitrary. On the other hand, if everyone who is supposed to be quarantining does this then it probably increases risk. But then they may have been staying in areas where the infection rate was lower than here. I think that was the case for DH's friend.

Thoughts?

Keep your nose out dont get involved. If they want to test the boundaries of quarantine and face a fine possibly in the thousands that's their business leave them too it.

I would think worse of you for making this into an issue that you needed to police.

They are not quarantining.

No it's not following the rules, but if they had arrived home on Friday they'd be free to go out and about as much as they wanted so as you say it is completely arbitrary. I'd stay out of it.

I would report, if I knew who to report to. Local police? And keep clear of friend for 14 days minimum anyway.

It's not okay. It's a matter of public health.

We arrived back from France at 9.00am on Saturday, so 5 hours after quarantine came in. I've not left the house since we got home at about 10.30 that morning. DH and I both WFH, the kids are arguing constantly watching a LOT of telly.

I'm pretty pissed off about it for lots of reasons, but ultimately whilst it's not very pleasant (and the weekend is going to be difficult), it's a pretty minor inconvenience for us, in order to minimise risk for others. The rules might be stupid and arbitrary but they are rules. FWIW we do have a "garden" but you'd be hard-pushed to swing a cat in it (London).

Am at your DH's friends. They are not quarantining.

@Rainb0wDrops

No it's not following the rules, but if they had arrived home on Friday they'd be free to go out and about as much as they wanted so as you say it is completely arbitrary. I'd stay out of it.

Exactly, but it gives some people the warm fuzzies to pretend they are Guardians of Oceania and reporting on others.

If it were a serious threat to public health we'd be in lockdown again. Instead this is just posturing - there isn't the manpower to police this, people who live with the traveller don't have to do anything at all, plenty of people in frontline positions are exempt for quarantining at all (their skin is imbued with magical force field properties), etc.

DF firmly believes their behaviour is within keeping of the quarantine rules.

I agree with you that it's arbitrary, and I'd stay out of it.
But your friend cannot possibly think they are following the rules. Maybe they don't agree with the rules, maybe they don't care, but unless they can't read, how can they believe they aren't breaking them? Their insistence they are following the rules would irritate me far more than the fact that they aren't.

I feel a bit sorry for them, what bad luck. No, they are not quarantining properly, but they will probably get away with it. I certainly wouldn't report them for it.

Well no, clearly they are not quarantining!

If it were a serious threat to public health we'd be in lockdown again.

Parts of the country are.

A friend of mine arrived home from Spain last week and has since tested positive. Probably a good job they didn’t ‘pop to Sainsburys’ huh?

...Idiots

And it's already being lifted again. Lockdowns can't be maintained long-term anymore. But yes, tell everyone! Take out an ad in The Times.

What's stupid is their telling their business.

I'm amazed on MN how many people know someone who's told them they're not going to stick to quarantine or 'the rules', it all harks back to pre-Covid days here when so many knew the minutiae of many peoples' financial and personal lives and had to post about them and get validation for shopping them (they were all benefits cheats back then). We've moved on now.

We can look forward to post-furlough times and associated threads, let's have a guess what those will look like, that then no-deal Brexit ones - my partner's hamster's third cousin twice removed told me they knew where to get illegally imported parsnips, that's against The Rules, should I tell Big Brother? Yes! How dare they. Someone's rabbit is dying due to not having parsnips and other people are selling their children for parsnips, they've got so expensive. DM me, I'll tell you what to do.

At no point in my OP did I mention possibly reporting them. It's more the moral and ethical aspect of it that I'm torn about.

@irishheartenglishblood

At no point in my OP did I mention possibly reporting them. It's more the moral and ethical aspect of it that I'm torn about.

Why are you torn at all? You do you, they do them and authorities do their jobs.

@InDeoEstMeaFiducia it hasn't been lifted. And are you implying that I'm lying? Why would I? It's a friend of DH who's being honest, possibly because he genuinely does think he's following the rules.

In your OP, it wasn't clear what you were torn about. The moral and ethical stand is that what they are doing is selfish and wrong.

You can choose whether to meet them or not. I wouldn't. Additionally, I would tell them why. And I would tell them that if they didn't quarantine properly, I would pass it on to someone in authority.

But that's me. You must do as you think best.

@InDeoEstMeaFiducia it hasn't been lifted.

The one in Leicester is being scaled back.

When is said "I'm torn" I meant whether I feel well it's arbitrary anyway or those are the rules so you should follow them. I'm not going to report them, nor do I have any reason to go near them in the next few weeks!

Quarantine is to stop the disease being widely reimported.

That step so many were calling for back in early March, when low levels in several places were just beginning to take off.

So it's a key step, if we want to avoid local/regional lockdowns. And also to save lives. I have a recently deshielded person in my household. We don't want to go through about 4.5 months of quarantine-strength isolation again because those arriving from certain destinations can't do 14 days

I did quarantine properly after Spain (family visit to Marbella to see elderly relative not a holiday) - not a single person checked I was actually quarantining. I was expecting at least a call!

@InDeoEstMeaFiducia this post is about the France quarantine. The quarantine when returning from France, Spain etc is much tougher and draconian than the general lockdown we went through and what is happening on Leicester now.

And a new lockdown in Oldham may be introduced tomorrow...

@irishheartenglishblood

At no point in my OP did I mention possibly reporting them. It's more the moral and ethical aspect of it that I'm torn about.

If you had no plans to report them why bother getting your knickers in a twist about it? Avoid them for 2 weeks if you want to but other than that forget about it. They are going to do what they want too regardless of whether you secretly feel they are morally or ethically wrong, in fact I'd go as far as too say they couldn't give a shit what you or anyone else thinks of them.