Chris Whitty in The Times today - don't meet friends and family unnecessarily

[MrsMiaWallis]

"Emergency patients will be turned away from hospitals, causing “avoidable deaths”, unless the public starts obeying the lockdown, England’s chief medical officer warns today.
In a stark intervention designed to shock, Professor Chris Whitty warns that everyone who meets friends and family unnecessarily is a “link in a chain” that threatens the lives of vulnerable people"

Worth noting. I had to pick up a prescription from my local town and was surprised to see so many people - mainly middle aged women, some of whom I know and had always seemed like rational intelligent people - walking around town and chatting on the pavements, unmasked, no social distancing.

Apologies I don't know how to do share tokens.

@notevenat20

Indeed. Only need to look at people vaping to see how far breath travels.

That's a really great point.

wow hadn't thought of it like that

People have lost confidence in the Govt’s ability to manage things & are getting on with their lives by making their own personal risk assessments.

And usually their assessments are stupid.

On the one hand people expect the government to nanny them and clamp down. But on the other, if they lose faith in the government, they adopt silly, risky behaviour, rather than being ultra careful.

Of all my friends, they have all exceeded (in a good way) the rules by not even doing what they are allowed to do.

@MoltenLasagne

How many people are having to go into work because the government refuse to clarify the steps they expect employers to take to enable home working?

How many people are having to send children into school because they only have a right to request furlough for childcare reasons, but not to actually get it?

The vast, vast majority of people are complying with the law but the fact is the government don't want to finance the extra costs that would be required to get enough workers, parents and children staying at home. And I say that as someone with no kids who has been wfh since March.

Exactly

Its the perfect storm of confusion and distrust, lockdown fatigue having set in, total inconsistency from a reactive government combined with a massively infectious variant starting to circulate. The only thing left now is to shut all that is shut-able, enforce the stay at home order and get the vaccine out as quickly as possible. Do I trust the government to do this? Absolutely not.

I have a new game, and you can play it too. Wait until it's dark and cold. Get a torch. Step outside, away from anyone outside your household. Switch your torch on and breathe directly into the beam, and watch how far it goes. See that? It does the same thing in the daylight when you can't see it as well. That's the minimum distance you need. Which isn't happening.

The media has cried wolf too many times and people are just no longer listening. There’s sufficient legitimate doubt too about the statistics we are being fed.

Coupled with the fact that for many people it’s a virus you have to be tested for to know you even have it and for the majority of the rest it’s a mild illness it’s hardly surprising.

I’m meeting a friend later to take our dogs for a walk. Perfectly allowable under the rules but I’m sure some of the police state advocates on here will hate it

@Trickyboy

So frustrating.

1.The government NEEDS to shut down AND IMPOSE furlough on MOST businesses except those which are GENUINELY essential. (I have a friend being forced to work for a well known home furnishing chain who is REQUIRED to continue visiting customers homes to fit curtains . On what planet is a new set of curtains ESSENTIAL? It's this kind of greed over responsibility, that needs to be stopped. Both by the greedy employer and the brain dead customers who are offered the choice ALWAYS put having their curtains fitted above their chances of catching this virus. It's unfathomable . Especially as the customer base is 65-85... she is expected to make up to 5 visits a day. In and out of peoples homes where she stays for 1-2yrs a time.

2.People who are placing kids in school because 'they're entitled to' but don't actually NEED to, need to give their heads a fucking wobble and learn a bit of social responsibility. No you're stress of having kids at home does not trump someone else's right to life.

3.Finally people need to STOP being such childish idiots . Just because there isn't a law doesn't mean you should do something which is obviously going to transmit the virus. !
Surely with over 1k people a day dying , people can make that connection without a law and stop .

“Greedy employers” are just trying to keep their business afloat and people in work.

I’ve seen so many people on social media moaning that they still have to work when their jobs aren’t essential. Clothing retail warehouses, double glazing factories etc. They’d also no doubt moan when their employer agreed and made them redundant.

We do actually still need some level of economic activity to continue to pay for essential services. I can’t believe nearly a year in people can’t see this and still parrot “putting money before lives”, such childish shit.

I do think people should make sure their employers have a H&s risk assesment because the HSE can come into any business if they have a lot of cases .

Personally when I was in I wore a mask all the time
We had a clean down regime
And if people broke bubbles or areas they were bought to task .

We also constantly had to tell people not to share tools ( even when they had their own) Takes a scare sometimes for things to sink in.

I don't recall anyone saying Christmas bubbles were safe.
In fact when they back tracked on theoriginal 5 day window they made it clear that ideally you shouldn't be meeting. The whole Christmas thing was done simply because there would have been riots and drama if they had actually said there is a new law to say you must not celebrate Christmas with anyone else, stay home no matter what. Banning Christmas was never going to happen.
We don't need a rule to cover every situation. Bottom line is as much as we're pissed off to fuck with social distancing, staying at home, not seeing friends and family for months on end etc, we should be doing these things and not finding excuses and reasons not to.
Apathy, bad leadership etc are all reasons why people are flagging on this, have even heard people say "well I've had it" and no doubt soon some vaccinated people will think they are above the guidelines, rules and laws themselves too.

yep, I agree, and there is the new scary strain(s). the only cases I know currently are colleague and christmas related.

How has the media "cried wolf" ffs? What a pathetic argument to justify selfishness

I do not accept that the current restrictions are taking an unacceptable toll on normal people

So how would you explain away the huge increase in addiction, poor mental health and suicides please?

@teuer

Can we not do this ourselves ?

If not then is it individuals the government needs to target or employers?

@NCstaythefuckathome

Because if 1 in 60 have it, then for every 30 people who meet 30 other people, somebody is going for a walk with a covid positive person, and can they guarantee they will be sufficiently SD over that period that they won’t catch it, given the new strain is easier to catch.

I agree with this. Couldn't be any clearer.

All of us are potential carriers and we just don't know until someone becomes ill.

By which time it's too late.

I don’t know anyone not following the rules where we are. Maybe it’s because the rates are so high. People are meeting a one or two others a week 1 to 1 for a socially distanced walk. But being very careful about it. Earlier in the autumn people were more relaxed.

So Health and safety employees should go in to workplaces rife with covid? Why? Because people are stupid fuckwits, other people should increase their own risk? Or are H&S workers expendable? Jesus.

This culture of the government imposing law which is less onerous than the guidance and then criticising people who are doing things they are allowed to do is really toxic.

I toally agree. It is fucking ridiculous to write a law banning 1, 2, 3 and then criticize people because they do 4, 5, 6.

If meeting one other person socially, outside, is a risk then just bloody remove that exemption. Don't write a law that allows it then send Dementor Witty to tell people off for doing it.

If you want people to wfh (if they can) then make that mandatory - stop giving employers the excuse to call people into offices unnessarily. Don't leave employers to choose and then get pissed when they don't choose what you want them to choose.

If you want people to stay within a mile of their home then fucking well include it in the law. Don't leave it vague and ambiguous so that it becomes a lottery whether or not 5 miles is local or too far.

But, of course, they won't do any of that because laws that strict will face opposition. So they go with saying x but meaning y.

Fuckers.

@Wherediditgo

How many times?? The numbers we are seeing NOW are due to mixing and events that happened AT LEAST 2 weeks ago. We weren’t in lockdown 2 weeks ago. It was Christmas two weeks ago when people were allowed to mix. No amount of locking anything further down is going to stop the case numbers rising RIGHT NOW. We could all live in hazmat suits from this very second and still case numbers will continue to rise for at least another week or two as the lockdown only came in to force 5 days ago!!

agree with this (meant to quote it before hence useless post just now)

@randomer

You are in affect echoing what Boris said about schools . How do you weigh up the risks against benefits. All European governments are in this position.

@Unsure33

In Japan as well they never sit opposite each other and they know what to do to avoid the virus .

They are not virus free but very low figures .

Japan has had a major outbreak recently, putting the Tokyo Olympics in doubt.

Totally agree that employers forcing staff to come into offices unnecessarily are contributing far more than one outdoor walk.

@randomer

I do not accept that the current restrictions are taking an unacceptable toll on normal people

So how would you explain away the huge increase in addiction, poor mental health and suicides please?

Because survival of the fittest applies.

The curtain fitters are a good example. Right now, their employers know they're not essential, but they need the money coming in. It's totally understandable. However, if this virus keeps on spreading, it's going to be people like those curtain fitters who are going to be catching the virus. The curtain fitter's company is going to end up with 1/4 of it's workforce off and the rest self isolating. So are all the other companies like it, and eventually, the sheer amount of people off sick will make people reassess whether or not to keep running. It means, unfortunately, that it's going to get pretty fucking awful out there before things start getting better and that the NHS is almost certainly going to keel over. I'm very worried that we're going to be hearing some horrible stories over the next couple of months and seeing news reels that none of us expected to see in this country.

The alternative is for the government to harvest a lot more money from those magical trees (which can be done, but obviously brings it's own issues). This would require strong leadership and a plan, neither of which I've seen much sign of recently.

If we had had this variant from the get go, the only sensible option would have been to have gone early and hard for zero Covid. At this point, the new variant working from the massive base it has is a runaway train. We can slow it, but we can't stop it, and it very much looks like it's going to win the race against the vaccines. Hopefully, I'm wrong, and the lockdown we have currently is enough to bring R under 1, but I'll be very (pleasantly) surprised if it does.

@GhostPepperTears

But you are saying in affect that the government has over estimated the intelligence of the British public.

And that we can not follow guidance. We need more LAWs.

I think a lot of people will disagree with that .

The increased infectiousness of the new variant probably means that activities which were once okay - walking outside with someone and chatting, not necessarily keeping a large distance - now carry an increased risk. But because there isnt a lot of research into this yet, it hasn’t really been communicated to the public

This ^^ and the effect of the cold weather conditions.