14 days is just too long

[Jourdain11]

I understand the reason why the quarantine period was increased, but at the same time, I wonder if compliance wouldn't be much better if it was 7 days (or even 10) rather than 14.

Apparently compliance is only at about 18% - so, if you had a 7 day quarantine instead and compliance was say, 50%, surely the overall impact of quarantining would be better?

14 days is long - if your primary-age child is put into quarantine that's 2 weeks that a parent has to take off work. 2 weeks that a student has to stay cooped up in their room in halls. 2 weeks that an asymptomatic person who is feeling perfectly healthy and well has to sit inside the 4 walls of their home and can't take any exercise (which can't be good for health...).

I just wonder if a shorter quarantine period would be seen as more manageable, and therefore more people would actually make an effort to manage it.

@Parker231

I wonder how long it’s going to take for everyone to realise that the longer they don’t follow the quarantine periods, mask wearing and social distancing, the longer we will have restrictions to our lives.

Agree with this.

It’s the same as 500,000 people packing themselves onto Bournemouth beach on one day.

I can’t imagine there were many people who walked down to the beach, saw the lack of space or ability to properly distance and then went home. Those people ‘weren’t doing anything wrong’. They were within the guidance. The issue is we are reliant on people taking responsibility for their own actions. We are reliant on people doing the right thing.

Unfortunately there will be people who don’t isolate for the full 14 days but it will be because of those people that this will just continue to drag on and on.

I spent 3 years in isolation in a rural village in Bangladesh, between the ages of 9 to 12. No school, no friends, no shopping, no pets, no television, no internet etc.

Somehow I survived. Everyone having to spend 14 days isolating will too.

As well as mean and median incubation times, they look at the instances of how many people you might release back into the community still infected.

At 7 days there is a risk of 21.2 people per 10,000, this drops to 1 per 10,000 at 14 days.

So yes, you could drop the quarantine to 7 days, but not without risk - not something the scientists/government want to do whilst cases are rising as they are right now.

My God, the selfishness. You're seriously advocating that an asymptomatic person infected with covid should be able to go out and spread it to all and sundry, potentially killing someone

It’s only selfish if the OP is talking about herself (the clue is in the name). It’s quite clear that the OP isn’t saying that she doesn’t want to stay in for 14 days so it should be reduced, she’s talking about whether on a population level it would be a more effective strategy.

The 14 days is 14 days because that's how long it can take to develop symptoms. There's no way around that I'm afraid

Yes it can take that long, but in most cases it's 5-7. I am with the OP, we need to balance risk with the benefit of people sticking to the rules and I would also say we go with 7 days. Maybe 10 as a compromise and first step.

You do realise that 'asymptomatic' meant they have it and can still spread it but unlikely, as by definition, if you're not coughing and spluttering everywhere, you are unlikely to give it anyone else.

My God, the selfishness

My God! The way everyone on MN loves to call everyone else selfish! Just quit with the personal attacks and make reasoned arguments which people may listen to.

It’s the same as 500,000 people packing themselves onto Bournemouth beach on one day

which led to precisely how many extra cases?

If say 90% people develop symptoms in 5 days and 10% take up to 14 days. Then if the quarantine period was 7 days and people complied with it as it's reasonable, we could catch 90% cases. Instead we could have 14 day period (to catch those extra 10% cases) but then only 50% comply, this is actually a worse situation to be in.

Exactly. Sometimes it's better to be pragmatic than idealistic. I think it's highly likely that FEWER people would be infected if the isolation period was a week. Because more people would follow the instruction and actually isolate for that time.

Nz has an outbreak either from a post 14d asymptomatic man or failure at quarantine centre.
I think a q is how many of the school outbreaks were from travel. How many didnt quarantine. The holidays are only 5w so 1/5 families would return on school opening date. More than 50% would have been abroad and needing more time to do quarantine than they had left. Ive only seen 1 child not return due to quarantine

Yes - because it's all very well to say "everyone should just follow the rules", but we know there are some people who won't. And some of them will have compelling reasons for not doing so.

I agree with you OP.

I understand that in an ideal world people should be sticking to the 14 day rule, as that minimises the chance of a "slow incubator" releasing themselves too early, but as you've pointed out, compliance is very low. It doesn't seem obvious that doubling down on this requirement is the best way of minimising the number of symptomatic and immediately pre-symptomatic people infecting others. Surely it is better to stop some of these infections by increasing compliance, rather than insisting on a really difficult thing that would be more effective but no-one does! Balancing risk and benefit as pp have said.

I'm not sure why people aren't complying, but there are presumably financial, practical and psychological barriers. Some people may just object in principle to self isolating... these people may rebel by going on a pub crawl, which is immensely unhelpful, but they would do this regardless of the time period.

However, some people may not be able to afford not to work, so they may at present carry on going to work (maybe paying more attention to masks/distancing, or maybe not). If a 7 day isolation was brought in, they may feel more able to suck up the smaller loss of income, and decide not to do that (or it would be cheaper for the government to support that loss of income rather than 14 days, if that route is taken). Some people may just not feel able to stay inside for 14 days, so go out to do a bit of exercise, pop to get a pint of milk or so on. These are probably less "dangerous", but even so, 7 days rather than 14 could seem more manageable without them resorting to these activities.

I think a 7 day isolation could seem fairer for "lower risk" contacts. For example, non-household close contacts of an infected person who almost certainly aren't infected (entire year groups of children self isolating for a single positive case at a school for example). They are effectively taking one for the team, and 14 days is a loooong time not to leave the house at all, for no benefit to themselves (though possibly considerable financial loss to them or their family) and likely no benefit to society either, assuming they aren't infected. Even symptomatic people get let out after 10 days!

If 7 days was the required period (though saying 14 days was preferable if possible, and maybe required for close contacts within a household) I think there would be higher compliance overall, and more cases would be "caught" overall, even if some went on to develop symptoms. Obviously, for those that wanted to isolate for longer there should be protections in place employment-wise.

Let’s be honest here - a lot of people can’t even follow the 48-hr rule for D&V, so...

The holidays are only 5w so 1/5 families would return on school opening date. More than 50% would have been abroad and needing more time to do quarantine than they had left

1. That presumes that every family goes on holiday. From what I can tell, a large number at our school didn’t.
2. It also assumes that the holidays taken were evenly spread across the 5 weeks.
3. Our summer holidays were 6 weeks, not 5
4. 50% abroad? None of my DC’s friends in primary went abroad this year (across 2 classes). Actually no 1 did, they went to Switzerland to see a family member, which wasn’t on the quarantine list.

Troll or eejit 🤔

@Cocklepops

Troll or eejit 🤔

Really not.

It’s a valid question when it comes to behaviour and effectiveness.

It is a valid question
But, behavioural factors and compliance will have been factored into the decision.

Maybe it wouldn’t swing that much with 7 or 10

It is low though

7 would be pointless without a proper test and trace system. By the time the positive person had recognised symptoms, managed to get a test, get the result, the test and trace acted on the result - that is probably taking more than 7 days!

The thing is imo, if (numbers picked out of thin air) 50% of those isolating do the full 14days, that doesn't say how many are doing 12 days; it could be as high as (say) 75%. However if you cut the time down to 10 days to encourage compliance, the people isolating the full time might raise to 60%, but that's still lower than those not complying with the higher time. Iyswim?

That's a good point beyonds. The article posted earlier suggested that of the 70% intending to isolate with symptoms, only 18% did for the full 10 days. The most common reason for not was "shopping for groceries", and also "medical appointment" suggesting that many people did largely comply, but went out for certain urgent things, rather than brazenly defying the guidance. So with support they may actually have been OK for the 14 days. (The "symptoms went away" crowd may need a bit of reeducation, granted). For "close contacts", only 11% were self isolating, but I don't think they provided the breakdown of why. So you may be right that people did 12 or 13 days isolation and then gave up. But still, 30% of people didn't intend to do any, even with symptoms, which is pretty shocking!

I wonder, with that 30%, if some of them just thought "14 days is impossible, I'm not doing it." Whereas, if the period was shorter (say 7-10 days), some of them might feel more inclined to give it a go. I know that's pretty illogical - why wouldn't they do 7 days out of 14 if they couldn't manage 14? - but I still feel like there might be something in it.

@Bupkis

It would be better if people just followed the fucking rules!

This.

@Jourdain11

I wonder, with that 30%, if some of them just thought "14 days is impossible, I'm not doing it." Whereas, if the period was shorter (say 7-10 days), some of them might feel more inclined to give it a go. I know that's pretty illogical - why wouldn't they do 7 days out of 14 if they couldn't manage 14? - but I still feel like there might be something in it.

I maintain that a large number of people don’t isolate in full because of employment/financial commitments. Fourteen or seven days don’t make much difference if your job is under threat and it happens multiple times. The more people you live with the more chances you have of being asked to isolate.

The government are the only ones who can legislate for pressure on employers to protect jobs and provide financial support.

I would like to think that the people not completing isolation is due to them having no other choice and not because of the hardships of having a couple of weeks at home.