BBC news...Matt Hancock says tier 4 could last for months due to this new strain

[ssd]

He must be joking.

Months of this there will be no businesses left

I understand this is testing for so many.
BUT unless you are a scientist or another amazing person who has the answers to this, then please, just do as you are told.

If everyone followed the rules like they were supposed to, we wouldn't be here. The UK is behaving like a bunch of petulant children who dont like the word NO.
Keep your teenagers at home when they should be home, wear the masks, wash your hands and stop thinking you know better because you Googled something. FFS!!!

If everyone followed the rules like they were supposed to, we wouldn't be here.

I disagree. Its spreading in schools and hospitals. Yes there are rule breakers but its spreading where rules are not broken as well

The only way to keep other types of medical care available is not to overwhelm the NHS with Covid patients

I'm truly sorry but I just don't think that washes any more
Countless people have already sacrificed so much to "protect the NHS" and much of it is still unavailable for anything but Covid; it even stayed unavailable over the summer, when case numbers were on the floor

There really is only so much people will keep giving on the basis of a "promise", especially when it's coming from those who've thrown away any chance of being trusted

Tonights late news and newspaper front pages make for grim reading

The Times says that in Early December the reasonable worst case scenario for mid to late Feb was 700,000 cases per week (3 times where we are now), with 20,000 hospitalisations and 5,000 deaths. And they STILL pushed forward with the Christmas Relaxation

AND we've since had this revelation that New Covid is spreading faster than the older strains. (Which might mean that reasonable worst case scenario isn't high enough).

SkyNews are reporting lots more places are going into T4 on the 30th December. (There are definitely suspicious looking rises going on in a couple of places). Think this could come as a shock to a few as I think some T2 places are going straight into T4.

And the Telegraph are reporting that Ministers are considering keeping schools closed for the whole of February.

And even if the port situation is resolved quickly there is likely to be problems until at least Christmas Eve now (not the 48hrs which were said would be the limit at the start).

But it’s clear that countries who have a long history of mask wearing have faired much better than us. I work p/t in hospitality and am amazed the amount of people not wearing mask or just zipping their coat up a bit higher or pulling mask off to ‘talk’. If Boris had laid down firm, coherent rules in the first instance we would have been spared a lot of deaths and sorrow. We could have locked to other countries that dealt with SARS and followed their lead?

Is it the case that we are where we are because of rule breaking? I don’t feel that’s the case but equally don’t know of the science to bear this out

I think it’s a combination of things, but bumbling idiots in charge have not helped.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

The only way to keep other types of medical care available is not to overwhelm the NHS with Covid patients

I'm truly sorry but I just don't think that washes any more
Countless people have already sacrificed so much to "protect the NHS" and much of it is still unavailable for anything but Covid; it even stayed unavailable over the summer, when case numbers were on the floor

There really is only so much people will keep giving on the basis of a "promise", especially when it's coming from those who've thrown away any chance of being trusted

Totally agree with this. The nhs isn’t helping people,with non covid stuff. I’ve been waiting for major surgery for over a year, in serious pain, nothing gets done.

Someone I know has just been diagnosed with with terminal cancer, weeks to live......he’s been getting fobbed off for the last few months, told it was muscle pain, etc. Couldn’t see a dr, then phone appts.

Someone else I know has some sort of immune condition, one symptom is her hair is coming out, weird scalp symptoms. Did actually get a face to face appt but dr wouldn’t come closer than 2m and said he couldn’t examine them!

Isnt T4 just the same as a national lockdown? If so the last one lasted months when it started in March.

Christmas is a day were all people are mad rush about buying over the top gifts,and worrying about one fk day of the year ,people on the news saying I can't see my grandma my dad my whoever it may be ,ffs it's not hard stay home to save life even though you couldn't give dot... admit it to your self you selfish idiots ,if this comes to a end ,you can see you family every day ,just like you could of before covid happened ............... think about it...

@sheridanstar

Isnt T4 just the same as a national lockdown? If so the last one lasted months when it started in March.

Schools weren’t open in the national lockdown, that’s the main difference.

*keeling over !

strivingforjustice. You mention people have lost their rational thought.
You definitely have.

I don't know where to start with @strivingforjustice 's post but please if anyone reading it feels tempted to believe it all, try to do some research of your own as the vast majority is just not true.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime
For the avoidance of any wrangling, this was how the table of cases and deaths in some of the countries of the world today.

Unfortunately (and by saying this I do not intend to stick up for the UK government’s performance) a simple league table which doesn’t take into account other factors such as population density is frankly a waste of time.

And of course you would want to mention Sweden - which you say has “done better” than the UK - but if you compare it more logically with the other Scandinavian countries it has done much worse.

I was about to start providing links to debunk most of that but it’s going to take ages to dig most of them out.

It’s virtually every covid myth, misunderstanding and lie in one post.

strivingforjustice
Thank you.

strivingforjustice you shouldn't post this kind of disinformation. Where is your evidence for at least half of this?

My brother is a frontline NHS worker in critical care and has been for years. He's had colleagues on his team die from Covid-19, most of them quite young, and he's nursed thousands of patients over this last year.

From his point of view, with the first lockdown, they were seeing hardly any of the 'usual' cases - potential appendicitis, possible heart attacks and strokes etc. When we hit August and Covid-19 cases were down, he said the hospital remained like a ghost town, with nobody coming in with the 'usual' ailments. Most of the 'usual' cases that come in will turn out not to be a concern and people are sent home, but obviously there are some who need to be admitted. Where have all these people gone? Whilst it's not a bad thing to lose the time-wasters who rock up to A&E with a toothache, the serious cases not going to hospital must mean that a lot more people are just dying at home. I haven't seen ANY statistics for these kind of deaths, it seems to just pass under the radar.

Anyway, I'm in London, went from tier 2 (which was always stupid for such a huge city) to tier 4 in less than a week. My daughter is still supposed to go college in January, which I think is just absurd - she takes a bus and a tram to get there and the college has 8000 students. How the hell are we going to stop the spread of infection if colleges like this stay open?

We need a proper lockdown - schools and colleges included. Suffer a lot for a short time rather than drag things on and on like this stupid ridiculous tier system has done. What a total failure this government has been, everything too little too late.

Keeping schools open is a priority and teachers should be one of the groups vaccinated first after health care professionals and older folk/ those with health issues.

It doesn’t sound like a massive priority to Boris anymore now he’s stated he can’t guarantee children will be back in January.

Alison20 if we keep schools open, we will never get on top of the virus, especially with this new strain. Scientists are still on the fence about whether this version affects younger people more than the previous one as well. But I agree they should be some of the first in line for a vaccine.

My neighbour has a serious auto-immune condition and was on the original 'shielding' list before they scrapped it. Her husband is a teacher and so is having to go to work and mixing with hundreds of kids then going home to her. The strain on their relationship has been immense.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55406939?xtor=ES-208-[39356_NEWS_NLB_+WK53_Tue_22_Dec]-20201222-[bbcnews_children_newsuk_children]

@Elephant4

What a dick head MH is. The whole government is full of them. Glorious dick heads. Patriotic dick heads. Enormous dick heads. The lot of them.

Spot on

This government have made one bad decision after another. Contrast them with leaders in other less affected countries. They are abysmal. They have caused thousands of people to die.