Lockdown in England from next week **title edited by MNHQ**

[Velvetpeel]

The Times is reporting that we are headed for a month long lockdown until Dec 1st.
No details yet...
Why do they always announce things on the drip feed - makes it all even more stressful

I don’t think it’s so much a lack of beds but lack of staff. The Nightingale hospitals are reopening but there aren’t any extra staff to work in them so it just takes staff away from the existing hospitals.

I agree@Nameandgamechange123. Seeing as cases have risen so quickly since the schools went back surely it would be have better to have done this over an extended half term.

So why don't they have enough staff? Same thing.

The rest of us are, what makes you special?

My family and I are the most important people and the most special people in my life (as I suspect yours are in your life). My choices will reflect this. What you decide to do is up to you.

Agree about half term, we've been out briefly here and there in pouring rain.. It's a novelty once or twice then not!!

Totally wasted and many private pupils get two weeks anyway. So annoying.

We could already be two weeks in and yet with less pain.

Why oh why did the lockdown not start the week before half term. Nobody could really do anything anyway in half term. It felt like a waste of a week. Bad planning in my view

Yes all the kids seemed to be prepared for it. And local business had pulled together to get food parcels set up for people and they already had homework set for the kids so would have tide them over a bit.

If they were gonna do it it made more sense to do it then.

I honestly don't know how they expect people to take things seriously whilst simultaneously being indecisive and waiting days/weeks before implementation. Doesn't give the impression of being particularly urgent does it.

Our local school was as safe as they could make it but one person still tested positive.
Keeping them open means people won't comply with any more rules. What will be the point of another one? I felt safer going for a meal in the pub than I do at work.
May as well not bother and just keep the local postcode ones for now. Saving Christmas is but another soundbite.
It's a nightmare all round.

Keir Starmer, 13 October:

“You can’t keep delaying this and come back to the House of Commons every few weeks with another plan that won’t work. So act now. Break the cycle. If we don’t we could sleepwalk into a long bleak winter.”

@Completmentfille

So why don't they have enough staff? Same thing.

Chronic underfunding.

The extent of our problems will always be worse in this crisis due to how we tax and spent over the last few decades.

Chickens are roosting.

My family and I are the most important people and the most special people in my life (as I suspect yours are in your life). My choices will reflect this. What you decide to do is up to you.

Plenty of people will feel like you. Others may not like it and think it's selfish etc, but that won't stop it.

They need to sort test and trace out so people can see family. Because they will do it anyway.

Also the fact the NHS don't have enough beds is a disgrace in itself. They should have enough. Maybe ask yourselves why they don't

We know, but there isn’t much that can be done about that in a short space of time. Especially when most of the world is facing the same problem.
I know I’d be willing to pay higher taxes in order to increase our per capita bed capacity but how many others would? (Although I’m not sure chucking more money at it would help but that’s a whole other thread!) No governments in my lifetime have really got to grips with this.

It’s a similar reason to why the country grinds to a halt when it snows.

Chronic underfunding.

Precisely my point.

What about workplaces? Will they have essential and non essential workers again?

@Completmentfille

Chronic underfunding.

Precisely my point.

Also not just down to Tory policy but the policies of previous governments and mismanagement then...

@Legooo where does the 8% figure come from?

Last years ONS survey of working families showed there were 8 million households with dependent children - 6.2 million households with couples of which 70% were both working, and 1.8m single parents, of which 69% were working. So that comes to nearly 10m working parents with dependent children?

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/familiesandthelabourmarketengland/2019

Pretty sure this is just England not the UK.
Soon we’ll have Brexit on top of this as well. Good job Brexiteers!

Red, 8.36 agree

The winter df died he was waiting 6 hours to get into a and e in an ambulance, then a and e for too long until he could finally get onto a ward.

I've been with dd on a ward with a shortage of equipment. It's very worrying.
Dd has had orthodontic stuff put off all year and yet its success depends on bone growth!
Dh and myself have all had hospital stuff delayed.

Surely the answer to schools is to have children whose parents can't wfh or are essential workers attend (and vulnerable children), and online school for those whose parents can WFH or are SAHPs.

My husband and I worked full time from home during the first lockdown with our five year old. Yes it was bloody awful but we did it once and we can do it again.

Genuine question. If the estimates that 100,000 a day are currently getting COVID- are we not at herd immunity point (or very close to)?

@Completmentfille you need a lot of training to work in Itu. Staff were looking after patients after a up skull session- it was incredibly stressful.
As for bed- well chronic underfunding and tbf it is unexpected !

@Completmentfille

I agree, test and trace is the single most important thing we’re (still) missing.

I feel the way I do because I come on MN and read people’s posts that literally say:

My child’s education is all that matters, so despite the fact you have no real protection, get back in that school and mix with hundreds of kids. Because you don’t matter, they do. And while your at it, open the windows and doors and sit in the freezing cold all day. Uncomfortable, get some thermals and stop complaining.

What I’m hearing is that I am dispensable; that my worth is just that of childcare; that if I get sick it’s OK; that if I bring a virus home to my family, that’s perfectly acceptable because only other people’s kids matter. That I should be willing to work, work extra, work longer, work harder.

I don’t want to.

Again agree its definitely not just tories.

I had to have a c section with second dc due to fear hospital doors would close under labour. It happened frequently, one hospital was utterly dangerous, women left to birth alone the other just closed its door when full, spilling more women into the one that had failed.

The only way I could guarantee a bed and assistance was by surgery. I have a fear of birth and couldn't risk being turned away in labour.

At the time of my first babies birth, the headlines were constant about labour under funded hospital, not enough mw etc. Chronic state of hospitals.

Sorry to digress, I think NHS needs to lifted out of politics altogether.

@Pootle40

Genuine question. If the estimates that 100,000 a day are currently getting COVID- are we not at herd immunity point (or very close to)?

Assuming a uk population of 66 million It will take approx 462 days (over a year) at a daily infection rate of 100,000 per day for 70% of the population to be exposed

In reality, Daily infection rates have been much lower than 100,000/day so it's likely to take a couple of years. Plus we don't have good data on long term immunity so the virus is likely to continue cycling through the population.

As for bed- well chronic underfunding and tbf it is unexpected

It shouldn't have been unexpected. Pandemic planning and preparedness should have been integral.

Sorry labour and labour that's not clear.
We had had at that point about 10, 11 years of a labour government.... And my hospital wasn't safe enough to give birth in.