Isolating over Christmas to spend new year with family

[Enidblyton1]

Are many people doing this? As our school don’t break up until 18th, our parents don’t want to take the risk of seeing us indoors over Christmas. We are able to completely isolate ourselves from 19th until school starts again on 13th Jan. We work from home, will buy all shopping in advance etc. So the sensible way of having Christmas would be to see family over New Year.
Obviously this is going against ‘the rules’, but it is much more sensible than us meeting on Christmas Day.
Wondering how many people are taking this approach?

Yes we’ve thought the same. DH & I both teachers so not seeing family at Christmas, it just doesn’t feel safe enough. Once we’ve all been at home for 2 weeks though, I feel a lot happier about seeing family.

We’ll see.

I do feel like January is going to be shit (possibly/probably another lockdown) and hate the idea that these stupid 5 days are fine but I’ll be breaking the law by taking a much more (for my personal circumstances) sensible option & waiting till new year. So I have the choice of seeing family and putting them at higher risk, breaking the law, or just not seeing them again until... when... Easter? Because of everyone else’s free for all 5 days of Christmas mixing pushing rates up again.

I do see your point. Mil is very high risk and while we’re hoping she will get the vaccine in the next few weeks she won’t be protected by Xmas so we can’t see her. But maybe by the end of jan she would be protected so it’s stupid we couldn’t go and see her then instead. But then maybe she could be one of the 5% where the vaccine isn’t effective? We haven’t seen her in nearly a year and she’s at an age where I actually think we might never see her again.

No, I'm not. Not seeing family at Christmas either. I'd rather not take the risk, it's only one year.

How have we got to the point where doing something safe is against the law, but doing something unsafe and potentially life threatening is not against the law.

I do think that @Char2015 has got a point in that breaking the New Year law will encourage others to break other laws in Jan and Feb which will also probably push the infection rate up - I wish we were wrong but I don’t think we are.

Easter it is (fingers crossed).

How have we got to the point where doing something safe is against the law, but doing something unsafe and potentially life threatening is not against the law.
This indeed.
Similar to if you were in isolation on Friday you have to do 14days but by Monday you can do 10days.
I'm getting so annoyed with it all now.
Also just let the secondary schools do online learning for next week after it's clear that age group are spreading it. Treat it as a mini school lockdown.
The Gov don't seem to be able to think flexibly and pragmatically.
The only thing I would worry about OP is someone telling on you and getting a fine.

The thing is the vast majority of people will be seeing more people in the fortnight following new year than the fortnight following Xmas. By having the higher risk meet up at the later date you are essentially transferring risk from your family to others which is extremely selfish.

@LegoPandemic
Unless they wanted to close schools for 5 weeks to allow a proper isolation period either side of the Xmas bubbles it is much fairer to place the risk on those choosing to make use of them by having the maximum possible time after the end of the bubbles before schools return (and most people return to work) rather than on the wider public which would be the case if they left insufficient time after the bubbles.

We’re doing exactly this. I think it would have broken elderly parents, after a difficult year for our family, if we’d refused to see them at all (not very local so we do not see them regularly - only twice since lockdown, whereas previously we’d made the effort every fortnight, and this has been very hard on them). I wasn’t prepared to put secondary school aged children (who have to be in school until the 18th) in the same room as vulnerable grandparents over Christmas though, so for the first time in this whole saga we are knowingly breaking the rules and will see family in their home for a meal on the 2nd, having been very careful and not met up with anyone else for the previous 2 weeks. I don’t feel bad about this at all and don’t think it puts anyone outside our family at risk (as grandparents also live a very quiet life).

I guess it depends on your timings. Are you going to isolate for the same amount of time between seeing family and going back to school? Otherwise, it seems unfair to protect your family but not everyone else's. We are not bubbling with anyone for that very reason, so I'm hoping people will not be mixing just before kids go back to school.

Enidblyton1 I’m wondering exactly the same thing. I live in a small town in Dorset where our rate is 40/100000, work in education & have 3 children. It does not feel safe to go & see my dad & sister, at Christmas, even though their rates are far higher & realistically we are more likely to catch something from them. It’s made all the worse by my mum having passed earlier this year, not from covid. I don’t understand how the government is encouraging visiting grandparents so few days after school have finished. Are they trying to get everybody to kill granny? New Year for us would be far safer, but we have made no plans yet either.