Christmas is saved

[MiaMarshmallows]

So happy that my partner and big family can all be together this year. We are all really close and get on brilliantly. So pleased at the news today!

I don't know who these phantom economic experts are but I certainly know that you are naive, ignorant and arrogantly clueless when you dismiss the effect of lockdowns on the economy and say glibly that we can do without foreign holidays for a year.

Which experts should I have faith in? The ones that agree with you are the ones that agree with me?

I hope for all our sake's that the vaccine turns out to be a miracle cure. If not we will have devastated the economy and millions of people's lives for nothing.

so 5 days of mixing as you like a week before all the kids go back to school and start spreading it about? What a great plan! Despite the government plan many people on MN are choosing not to mix just because they are ‘allowed’ to do so, myself included

@Lifeispassingby

so 5 days of mixing as you like a week before all the kids go back to school and start spreading it about? What a great plan! Despite the government plan many people on MN are choosing not to mix just because they are ‘allowed’ to do so, myself included

You don’t win a prize for not mixing. It doesn’t make you better then the people that will be mixing.

I personally won’t be taking advantage and spending it with my large family. Just remember they are doing it because it’s Christmas and the NHS has beds free for you (due to current lockdown and lowering numbers), not because it’s gone away / we will all have the vaccine by then.

@Alexafrost
We just need to shield the most vulnerable
Who are they and how do we shield them?

You don’t win a prize for not mixing. It doesn’t make you better then the people that will be mixing.

Spectacularly misses the point. 🤣

No one wants a prize for not mixing but I will be happy that I didn’t contribute to the death of a friend or relative.

@Alexafrost

"I have seen so many hundreds of posts, setting out these arguments. The question I ask, which never seems to get answered, is why then has almost the whole of Europe, with its access to the best expert advice, gone down the lockdown route, despite the damage they cause? What are all these governments and their advisers missing that you and other posters aren't?"

I cannot answer that question because I do not know why governments have taken leave of their senses and adopted one suicidal approach as a religion. However, it's not as if I am alone in despairing of their madness.

Plenty of scientists are opposed to the gross overreaction to Covid and many have pointed out the false figures the UK government and its medical advisers are still using to push through these authoritarian laws. Possibly fear of being seen to have killed people indirectly through not doing enough to protect people made politicians panic. Once one country adopted the measure it became a trend and now no-one is prepared to admit they overreacted and they double down to save face.

Politicians can always blame all the deaths caused by lockdown and the economic depression on Covid, not their own terrible policies. At this point I think they are desperately betting on an effective vaccine which is very high stakes gambling. Lethally high.

It is well known, even among lockdown advocates that they won't magically cure the virus. They were instigated to protect health services based on grossly inflated predictions of the death rate. Added to that few countries acted to shield the genuinely vulnerable. Even Sweden which didn't lockdown let the care homes be devastated just as we did and Spain did which had more stringent restrictions than us.

You only have to look at the advice to wear masks to realise that people don't know what they are talking about. Cloth masks will not stop you contracting a virus. Scientists have known that masks don't stop viruses for decades and this has recently been reconfirmed by the recent US study. So why are we mandated to wear them?

Well if you don't know the answer to my question, I would suggest that it's a case of Occam's Razor that so many governments locked down did so because they concluded that it is the least worst option.

Every single one of the arguments you have mooted on this thread about lockdown have been put forward by tons of other posters, and as usual without providing any real back up or evidence base. Sweden did have restrictions btw.

SAGE Scrooge warns PM's three-home Christmas bubbles plan risks 'snatching defeat from the jaws of victory' by sparking a THIRD wave - as he urges families to delay get-togethers until Easter after PM gave Britons five days of festive freedom

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8984443/SAGE-Scrooge-warns-Christmas-bubbles-recipe-regret-throw-fuel-Covid-fire.html

Sage scrooge

Only in the DM

Well, bully for you, OP! My DF is locked in a nursing home, DS is temporarily living with inlaws so will be absorbed into their 3 household bubble, so Christmas will be no different from anything we could have done through lockdown. No way is Christmas saved.

And the fact that it's "saved" for you doesn't make me feel any less pissed off.

It would be good if the people mixing (as you are obviously allowed to do) are still really careful with hand washing, distance, windows open etc. It's great that people can see eachother and it would be nice if things didn't go backwards in terms of the spread in January too. Then we can have a good Christmas and new year.

"Well if you don't know the answer to my question, I would suggest that it's a case of Occam's Razor that so many governments locked down did so because they concluded that it is the least worst option."

It was an option but as to being least worst obviously that is highly debatable, among the scientific community in particular. You have a touching faith in the sense and wisdom of politicians not shared by me and many others.

Yours is ultimately an unanswerable question. Who can ever say why people act foolishly or are very stupid?

Time is usually the best way to expose hysteria, mistaken herd thinking and blind folly for everyone to see. After all, many believed in the dossier on WMD at the time despite the contrary evidence. Many in Salem also regretted hanging 'witches' and apologised for doing so, although it was too late by then, as it is for many who have had their cancer diagnosis delayed, their business destroyed or has lost their job and maybe their house as a result of lockdown.

"Every single one of the arguments you have mooted on this thread about lockdown have been put forward by tons of other posters, and as usual without providing any real back up or evidence base. Sweden did have restrictions btw."

And every argument for the lockdown has also been put forward without any real back up or evidence base, although scientists on both sides have put forward their case and given evidence. My position is based on simple logic and the death rate.

Sweden had largely voluntary restrictions but certainly didn't shut down their economy or remove the most basic civil liberties in the way we have done.

"We just need to shield the most vulnerable - who are they and how do we shield them?"

They are the elderly and/or those with chronic conditions. In other words, it's the vast majority of those who have died from the disease and not everyone else, especially those in care homes who took the hardest hit of all.

We could put them up in first class hotels and have dedicated carers in protective gear and that would still be much cheaper and less destructive to the economy as well as civil liberties than our two lockdowns, particularly the first. The second has been less strict and less strictly adhered to as more people have seen through the lies and exaggerations. It is more a matter of adding insult to injury and another nail in the coffin of freedom and prosperity.

"No one wants a prize for not mixing but I will be happy that I didn’t contribute to the death of a friend or relative."

Are you also going to lock yourself away in self righteous isolation when the next wave of the flu virus comes along to protect your friends and relatives or are they all immune to catching a disease which frequently kills tens of thousands in the UK every year?

@Alexafrost

"We just need to shield the most vulnerable - who are they and how do we shield them?"

They are the elderly and/or those with chronic conditions. In other words, it's the vast majority of those who have died from the disease and not everyone else, especially those in care homes who took the hardest hit of all.

We could put them up in first class hotels and have dedicated carers in protective gear and that would still be much cheaper and less destructive to the economy as well as civil liberties than our two lockdowns, particularly the first. The second has been less strict and less strictly adhered to as more people have seen through the lies and exaggerations. It is more a matter of adding insult to injury and another nail in the coffin of freedom and prosperity.

Well I for one don't think I would be very happy about my husband being locked into a hotel away from me and cared for by strangers. What about those vulnerable people who have children and jobs? What about those vulnerable people who are children, should they be separated from their parents?

What you are suggesting is a huge infringement of civil liberies.

Sweden had largely voluntary restrictions but certainly didn't shut down their economy or remove the most basic civil liberties in the way we have done

Sweden's economy is completely different to the UK's, it is not largely service based in the way the UK's is. That's why it is a bit pointless to compare the two.

I think we will have to agree to differ Alexafrost. You are not going to change my mind and vice versa. Enjoy your Christmas, however you choose to celebrate it.

We could put them up in first class hotels and have dedicated carers in protective gear and that would still be much cheaper and less destructive to the economy
Ok, so I guess that would be me and ds being put up in the hotel. Dh would have to carry on working, and looking after the dds - hopefully his work will be flexible with hours. Of course it would be a fucking nightmare separating ds from the rest of the family, and we may have to tweak his home learning a bit, oh and sort out remote therapists etc, but im sure we'll manage...as long as the rest of you can crack on, it'll be worth it.

Are you also going to lock yourself away in self righteous isolation when the next wave of the flu virus comes along to protect your friends and relatives or are they all immune to catching a disease which frequently kills tens of thousands in the UK every year?

Well, hopefully most people who may be vulnerable will have their flu vaccination. I also hope that people will be sensible about not going out and about when they have the flu (easier to do this with flu than Covid, as the symptoms of flu are pretty obvious and it doesn't present as a highly contagious virus which can appear as very mild or non existent symptoms). Of course there will still be people like ds, who we have to try and be extra cautious with regards to the above, as there is always the risk of more severe effects.

Ive seen Matt Hancock say hes having his FIL over for Christmas and Govey said he is driving up to Scotland.

It's not the same though as the flu
You're right it's not...
From the CDC

If a person has COVID-19, it could take them longer to develop symptoms than if they had flu. Typically, a person develops symptoms anywhere from1 to 4 days after infection. (making it easier to be contagious whilst asymptomatic)
If a person has COVID-19, they may be contagious for a longer period of time than if they had flu. Most people with flu are contagious for about 1 day before they show symptoms. Older children and adults with flu appear to be most contagious during the initial 3-4 days of their illness but many remain contagious for about 7 days. Infants and people with weakened immune systems can be contagious for even longer. Making contagion easier

COVID-19 is more contagious among certain populations and age groups than flu. Also, COVID-19 has been observed to have more superspreading events than flu. This means the virus that causes COVID-19 can quickly and easily spread to a lot of people and result in continuous spreading among people as time progresses.

COVID-19 seems to spread more easily than flu and causes more serious illnesses in some people. It can also take longer before people show symptoms and people can be contagious for longer. Another important difference is there is a vaccine to protect against flu.

As I said - my son has the flu vaccine, people tend not to be coming into school with the flu and Covid 19 is, as you say, different to the flu.

Including me and my husband, we are a family of 6 adults in our house, some blood related, some not. I have another adult child who lives near by with their spouse and our gorgeous Grandchild.
Two of our resident family members have other close family who live nearby, and who they normally see at Christmas. My other adult child's spouse has their close family near by. So altogether, if we all saw who we wanted to see in these temporary bubbles, we would have 5 immediate family bubbles, but even then they wouldn't keep to those 5 bubbles, because due to remarriages those bubbles between them also want to see at least 5 different bubbles, and those bubbles will almost certainly have other people in their bubbles who they will be intent on seeing!
I don't believe for one minute that everyone will want to stick to whatever 3 bubbles are most important to me etc They will have us 6 as one bubble and then each different family will have another 2 bubbles of other people, therefore my other 2 bubbles would easily actually mean cross contact with at least 6 other families, and probably more. I am reasonably sure that this is not what the Government mean, but it is what a lot of people will do (and they have 5 days to accomplish it, so that will make it easy for all the ones in my family to do so, and I am sure it would for many others too). So the 6 of us in this house will not be seeing anyone else over Christmas - and yes, we are lucky to have so many of us in one bubble, but even if it was just the 2 of us, we would not be risking it when we are so close to having the vaccine. If they said we would never have a vaccine, or it was 5 years away, that would be a very different scenario. Sorry this is so long, I hope it makes some kind of sense!