Autonomy and choice

[Orangeblossom7777]

Noticed this today in the Guardian's news feed and thought it made sense. How much of these rules take away people's own choice and common sense?

A World Health Organization special envoy on coronavirus has warned against imposing stricter rules to control behaviour, arguing people must support the restrictions needed to slow the spread.
David Nabarro told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

This war, and I think it’s reasonable to call it a war, against this virus, which is going to go on for the foreseeable future, is not going to be won by creating tougher and tougher rules that attempt to control people’s behaviour.

The only way that we will come out ahead of this virus is if we’re all able to do the right thing in the right place at the right time because we choose to do it.

I think we will get the point, I just hope that it doesn’t require a lot more people to end up in hospital and dying for us all to get the point, that all of us, all of us, have to be rigorous about physical distance, wearing masks, hygiene, isolating when we’re sick and protecting those who are most vulnerable.

@TempsPerdu

One problem with the intial lockdown (which I opposed with every fibre of my being) is that people were led subtly to believe that normal life would resume at the end of it. In fact, most of us are still in the mire, and things are going to become much worse for huge swathes of the population. There will - I hope! - come a point where the majority of people who have complied thus far look at what has been asked of them, look at the result of everything they have done thus far, and see that it is not achieving anything other than to make their own lives poorer, more difficult, and more miserable

This. The ‘New Normal’ we’re told constitutes our existence now is grey, sterile and utterly joyless. All of the fun, playfulness and spontaneity that made life anything more than utilitarian has gone.

To state the obvious, this is a virus; it’s doing, very efficiently, what viruses do. No one (despite what the government would have you believe in all their ‘divide and rule’ political manoeuvring) is ‘to blame’ - not students, not kids in schools, not specific ethnic groups living in multigenerational households - Covid finds a host, any host, and it spreads. Every time we come out of a lockdown, no matter how draconian, it will surge, again and again, until we have a vaccine.

I’ve complied, more or less, with all the restrictions so far. But I’m done, and so are most of my usually very law abiding, middle class professional ‘pillar or society’ friends and family. What are we as a society, and especially the younger generations, actually getting out of all this misery? What do our kids have to look forward to?

Agree 100%. 👏👏👏

If we don't keep kicking it down the road then at some point we face exponential growth to a natural peak of infection. I think the govt genuinely fear the damage that would do to education, the economy, non covid healthcare, security etc will be harder to deal with that the damage from the restrictions.

Kicking the can more than once is pointless there has to be a exit plan

@TempsPerdu

One problem with the intial lockdown (which I opposed with every fibre of my being) is that people were led subtly to believe that normal life would resume at the end of it. In fact, most of us are still in the mire, and things are going to become much worse for huge swathes of the population. There will - I hope! - come a point where the majority of people who have complied thus far look at what has been asked of them, look at the result of everything they have done thus far, and see that it is not achieving anything other than to make their own lives poorer, more difficult, and more miserable

This. The ‘New Normal’ we’re told constitutes our existence now is grey, sterile and utterly joyless. All of the fun, playfulness and spontaneity that made life anything more than utilitarian has gone.

To state the obvious, this is a virus; it’s doing, very efficiently, what viruses do. No one (despite what the government would have you believe in all their ‘divide and rule’ political manoeuvring) is ‘to blame’ - not students, not kids in schools, not specific ethnic groups living in multigenerational households - Covid finds a host, any host, and it spreads. Every time we come out of a lockdown, no matter how draconian, it will surge, again and again, until we have a vaccine.

I’ve complied, more or less, with all the restrictions so far. But I’m done, and so are most of my usually very law abiding, middle class professional ‘pillar or society’ friends and family. What are we as a society, and especially the younger generations, actually getting out of all this misery? What do our kids have to look forward to?

I agree with this.

Broadly people have complied with the restrictions to a much greater degree than expected. Some people seem to have got into the mindset that if people are doing things which are allowed or going to places which are "covid-secure" they can't spread the virus and that all the spread comes from "rule-breakers". I suspect that most of the spread is from people doing things which are allowed (e.g. going to school), though I'm in no way suggesting that we stop children going to school.

That said, it was always unrealistic to expect people to comply with restrictions like not seeing close family for over a year or putting themselves under house arrest without pay in order to potentially protect strangers from a disease which is generally relatively mild. Some people will but the coronavirus forum on mumsnet isn't representative in this respect because it is full of people who are particularly worried about coronavirus.

It was always completely inevitable that the virus would spread again when things opened up - if it didn't we wouldn't have needed to lockdown in the first place. This is the issue with lockdowns. Other countries which are similar to the UK have found the same.

When people are upset or angry they look for someone to blame and the government has encouraged this.

The government scared people into the first lockdown. Now people are a bit less scared the government seems to be going down the route of more draconian enforcement measures - so we'll have untrained "covid marshals" using "reasonable force" to make people wear masks and stop them seeing their family and, if the government are really serious about enforcement, bringing the army in to prevent people taking part in completely normal human behaviour. I'm much more scared of these effects on society than the virus.