If next Christmas is like this one will you still be following rules?

[elleps]

Miserable pessimistic post alert. Feel free to hide the thread!

Just wondering who would carry on with following on with these rules if we are in the same boat next year?

I can completely see things staying like this for many months to come. People will say otherwise, that there’s a vaccine and that things are going the right way. But then nobody thought in March that we would be sat like this on Christmas Day. So I don’t hold out much hope.

Things can’t carry on like this beyond March surely, even if the virus is still spreading as it is?

If it’s like this next year il just fly home to my family like for a few weeks/months at a time tbh it’s not a huge deal. I flew back for a month in the summer twice! I’m working from home so can work anywhere! Can do that for Christmas too - loads of my friends did it this year - home for a few weeks in advance, isolate, then free to enjoy the time with your family like normal.

Yes I would if still a great danger to some members of society a year from now but don’t see any reason it will be with vaccinations being rolled out.
I have covid but wouldn’t know it. I’m middle aged approaching 50 but don’t feel any different. Only found out as was offered a test through secondary school. If it wasn’t for that test and ban on mixing at Christmas (tier 4) then I would have seen my parents Xmas day and they could well have been dead within a few weeks.

Makes me glad for the rules until pandemic is under some semblance of control.

@Iootraw1

Yes I would if still a great danger to some members of society a year from now but don’t see any reason it will be with vaccinations being rolled out. I have covid but wouldn’t know it. I’m middle aged approaching 50 but don’t feel any different. Only found out as was offered a test through secondary school. If it wasn’t for that test and ban on mixing at Christmas (tier 4) then I would have seen my parents Xmas day and they could well have been dead within a few weeks. Makes me glad for the rules until pandemic is under some semblance of control.

They’d probably be fine

You could take pneumonia to them another year, do you worry about that?

No I have seen too much mental health suicide etc ... I have followed them and once all vaccinated mask off and everything I can't and won't live on fear for near on 2 years

It's not about Christmas as such, more that it can't go on for another year. If we can't live normal lives this time next year, what about in two years, or three? At some point we have to get on with things and let people manage their own risk.

I don't go to the pub, restaurants, or the theatre that often, but I want to be able to do it when I do want to.
I want young people to be able to go clubbing, or to gigs, or have parties and get on with living their lives, because they are the ones giving up the most for something that most of them have very little risk of suffering badly from.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

Questions like this genuinely make me wonder at how little people seem to understand how the economy works. If rules did carry on at this level for a whole year then covid would be the absolute least of anyone's worries - the country would be so entirely decimated that the main issue would be fucking starvation. Honestly, are people just totally disconnected from reality? Some smug lockdowners are going to get a massive shock when they start to realise in 2021 that they've 'stayed safe' by setting fire to their whole fucking lives.

Totally agree the fall out from this will be worse already good banks are over run there will not be any rules next year

No I wouldn’t but OP you do realise if you’d asked the question ‘if things are like this in 10 years time’ some lockdowners would come out with the same old spiel of ‘absolutely, we all need to stay safe and stop the spread and wait til there’s a vaccination blah blah blah’. I’m pretty sure that some people would feel some sort of warped, deluded righteousness going to their own death beds living under the government’s bleak lockdown rules.

We would, yes; vulnerable DH, none of us have been to a shop in 9/10 months, not seen anyone apart from my elderly mother (support bubble) other than colleagues - I work in a school.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

Questions like this genuinely make me wonder at how little people seem to understand how the economy works. If rules did carry on at this level for a whole year then covid would be the absolute least of anyone's worries - the country would be so entirely decimated that the main issue would be fucking starvation. Honestly, are people just totally disconnected from reality? Some smug lockdowners are going to get a massive shock when they start to realise in 2021 that they've 'stayed safe' by setting fire to their whole fucking lives.

Absolutely. Without a well funded economy, the NHS will collapse. It baffles me how so many pro lockdowners think that by continuing like this, the NHS can possibly survive. The pro lockdowners arguing health comes first..... well until there are no doctors or nurses available anymore.

Nope. Fed up already and dreading the coming months with no childcare again.

If the over 80s in our family have been vaccinated I'm ready to move to seeing them.

I'm not following now 🤷‍♀️

@Chessie678

Not in terms of meeting up with close family and I've seen my parents throughout this year anyway (permitted since they brought in the under 1 support bubble but not always beforehand). Most people I know are seeing close family indoors now in a quiet limited way.

For those who are saying they would stick to the rules for another year, I find the reasoning given a bit mixed up.

Either it's due to the risk to relatives. But on an individual basis it is very easy to reduce that risk down to almost zero. You can get a private covid test now or self isolate or partly self isolate if you are very worried. That would reduce risk down to well below what used to be tolerated in terms of passing on flu to elderly people. Equally, someone who has taken those precautions seeing another person who has taken them is of very minimal risk to anyone else. There's quite a high risk of someone over 70 dying each year and I know my parents and in laws would not want to die without seeing their relatives again.

Or it is due to respect for the law / fear of consequences of breaking it. I understand the former but personally don't think bad laws deserve to be followed and a law which bans you from seeing family for over a year is, in my view, a bad law. I actually don't think banning people seeing their family in their own homes is ever an appropriate strategy for managing a pandemic and it doesn't seem to have been very effective anyway.

I hope it's all academic and the worst of the restrictions end soon, though nothing would surprise me now.

You're missing a third huge reason, which is fear of what will happen to your local community or country if covid gets generally out of control. It isn't enough to just be relatively safe individually from covid itself, if there's so much of it about you can't get into hospital if you need it for something else, or if your kids can't do their exams, or if your business has gone bust because no customers want to use it because of the risk they'll catch covid, or if you can't travel to see family because as a country our infection levels are so high there are special flight bans and quarantines for us. Out of control covid is far more than just a risk to the health of some individuals. This is why countries are trying to control it (and why controlling it makes economic sense).

@Hotpinkangel19

Can I ask why people think that once the vaccine is given, it will be over, it doesn't stop people passing it to each other does it? Just reduces the severity of the symptoms of the person who has COVID?

Well what’s the alternative, continue all these rules and restrictions until we completely eliminate Covid? Even though we don’t know how long, if ever, that will take to happen?

Can’t see how rules will continue once the vaccine has been rolled out widely. If enough are vaccinated that the NHS can easily cope with people out mixing normally then priority will be getting the economy/education/lives back to normal. Cant see how continuing lockdowns for years to come would actually be doable.

Based on the 1918 flu many have predicted the winter of 2020 would be worse for COVID than 2019. That’s being borne out. It’s a virus that spreads more easily in cold
weather. The summer made many complacent because cases were lower.

By winter 2021 all vulnerable and hopefully anyone else who wants it will have gotten the vaccine in developed countries. Once people are vaccinated no government will want to keep up restrictions.

There’s a conspiracy theory tinged view around MN that there’s some benefit to a government to mess up the economy and lock everyone indoors forever, I don’t know what it is though.

No chance. I’d follow the rules if I believed in them but it’s such crap. My parents are my childcare and I am their medical representative so I see them all the time yet I’m not supposed to spend Christmas with them? It makes absolutely no sense. Until today I’ve stuck to the restrictions but today was my breaking point and my family were happy that I made the choice.

No way. The only reason we followed the rules this year is because there's covid in the family.

Next year-- fuck that.

I've had covid and I'm not worried about catching it again. It's here to stay. We should just vaccinate the elderly and ECV then go back to normal. If the rules still say we can't then fuck the rules.

Yes.
I know a few people who have said they enjoyed Christmas day for the first time in years.
They haven't had to rush around like headless chickens
or buy mountains of food or drive long distances.
Normally I buy WAY too much crap. 3 or 4 different deserts, starters, a mountain of chocolate, that nobody wants, drink of the baileys variety which is still there 1 yrar later.
Christmas had become too big and commercialised and this year has been an opportunity for us all to tr-set the button.

This year it was just us.
We could have been out of the 1950s.
Mince pies and sherry Christmas eve.
A nice meal on Christmas day. Followed by Christmas pud in the evening. and some chocolates.
That's. It

It's hardly cost us anything, we've enjoyed it and Owe didn't get stomach ache afterwards.

I'd do the same in a heartbeat next year (minus the plague of coutse)

I know a few people who have said they enjoyed Christmas day for the first time in years.

Having a small, contained Christmas has always been an option for people, I wonder a bit about why they needed a global pandemic to achieve it.

@TheKeatingFive

I know a few people who have said they enjoyed Christmas day for the first time in years.

Having a small, contained Christmas has always been an option for people, I wonder a bit about why they needed a global pandemic to achieve it.

Because they enjoy being a martyr as much as they enjoy a small Christmas day. This year has given this particular kind of dreary individual the wonderful chance to do both at once!

Yes - if the rules are there then something serious will have happened. Vaccines will have been potentially rolled out across the whole country. So something about the virus will have changed to make it more virulent or not enough people get the vaccine.

*08:38Hardbackwriter

TheKeatingFive

I know a few people who have said they enjoyed Christmas day for the first time in years.

Having a small, contained Christmas has always been an option for people, I wonder a bit about why they needed a global pandemic to achieve it.

Because they enjoy being a martyr as much as they enjoy a small Christmas day. This year has given this particular kind of dreary individual the wonderful chance to do both at once!*

Definitely! And awaiting the Python-esque martyrdom upmanship! 'Ooh you've not seen family in 9 months or been out for anything other than food?' We've not left the house since March 2020 and not set eyes on a single other person, all our doors have been sealed and we only accept deliveries through a airless hatch access"

No, not one bit.

We have to keep covid under control otherwise there’ll be no hospital space for anything else eg any emergency that involved a child that easily treatable with modern care. Both of mine would have died as babies without hospital care.
This is the true second wave when the virus has mutated. It’s a two year job to get rid of a pandemic, watch that bbc documentary the flu that killed 50 million.
Over 50% of the grant money the government has given businesses is in savings accounts. Unfortunately I can’t remember the source. The high street was in the way out and that process has been speeded up. Many other small businesses will go broke clear their debts and start again under a different name when it’s over. Unfortunately it’s the people who work for the businesses who are jobless and we have UC, if it had still been TC the situation wouldn’t have been as bad.

There are as many winners and losers in this and I only know one person who’s feeling down because of the restrictions. Personally in some aspects of life it’s been devastating and in others the changes it’s has forced have been fantastic.
They’ll tweak the vaccines and if they work on half the population it will make a huge difference to the spread. Compared to previous generations, I’m thinking of my grandmother who was born in 1915 it’s not that bad.