[quote Raindropsonrosesand]@RedToothBrush - what hints have they dropped about holidays abroad being restricted over summer?
Also, why? Is it because of the new varients? Travel was permitted last summer - although with 2 week quarantine introduced late summer - since the numbers did really drop. Had been very much hoping the same would happen again.
It's not just about holidays, my parents live in Europe and I haven't seen them for a year now. (Despite it being permitted, I wasn't comfortable with the risk of catching it travelling to them and infecting them) I was really hoping it would be possible by late summer if we had all been vaccinated.[/quote]
Why:
new variant in uk means other countries don't want us and since we are now no longer in the EU and a third party its easier to refuse entry to us.
New variants elsewhere are troubling the government hugely. The fear is that one may be more severe or more resistant to the vaccine.
The uk strategy now is vaccination as quickly as possible, whilst hoping this will reduce cases in the process and through lockdown. The government know they have to get the economy back up and working as soon as possible and cannot fuck it up again.
I can well see us not having travel until not just the uk has finished its vaccination programme but also other countries have completed theirs and that also rests on the other country also having strict border controls in place.
I can imagine us having a situation where places which have very low cases and have vaccinated and you can get to by direct flight and are strictly controlling borders are going to be the only places we can visit for a long time.
I think travel to and from south America is possibly off the cards for up to 2 or 3 years. And the same may be true for other areas.
The new variant are a complete gamechanger until they have got on top of things and have the knowledge of how to get new vaccines up and running quickly and have the capacity to both manufacture and administer if necessary. We need to know how long immunity lasts too.
It also means that when we do eventually reopen borders the possibility of new very strict localised lockdowns returns if a new variant is detected in the uk. We are almost certainly going to follow a strategy similar to Australian style management of this from here on in.
Testing if you have a cough or fever is here to stay indefinitely (think multiple years not just 12 months) and that also probably means masks whilst shopping for some considerable time.
Where it leaves mass events like gigs is a very open question too. Its difficult to gauge this one. It may result in seating only gigs with masks for some considerable time even after it seems covid is under control and everything is reopened. No more mosh pit.
The government are acknowledging the realities of covid being around in some form in the world permanently and what that means for going forward.
The prospect of overwhelmed hospitals is something they can not afford to repeat. I don't believe lockdowns are going away for this reason too. Even China which has 'got rid of it' is still having lockdowns. They had one triggered by a single person seemingly infecting 100 via a train trip last week.
I think people need to wrap their heads around the idea that they need to wise up to the importance of the rules and how many rules are going to be here semi-permenantly. (isolate and get tested if you have a cough is the main one and i can see that being around for years particularly if vaccine programmes in the rest of the world fail to reach sufficient parts of the population and we see more uncontrolled outbreaks of more new variants)
We are not going back to normality precovid any time soon. The tier system may be reviewed in terms of its format but its something that will exist for a long time.
When this lockdown ends it is unlikely to be the last for at least some of us.
When Matt Hancock said he was going on holiday in the uk this year and he would advice people not to book holidays abroad, he was doing so with good reason.
Unfortunately i dont think other options are realistically open to us if we are taking things seriously and want at least a degree of otherwise normal life. Nothing else has worked anywhere else in the world and the new variants only serve to reinforce the point.
We need ongoing low caseload, high vaccine uptake, efforts to keep out existing new variants, efforts to prevent new variant outbreaks within the uk, an ability to detect new variants early and the knowledge of how to assess if a new variant poses a particular threat. Government strategy stems from these needs to manage covid going forward and if you follow things through from these goals you can get a reasonable picture of what you might expect the next year, the next couple of years and the next 5 to 10 years to look like in terms of how covid affects our every day lives.
Last night was the very first time the government have been honest about it (possibly with themselves too) and how we need to adjust to this.
I am not a pessimist. I think life will be ok soon enough but some ideas and dreams do need reining in quite a bit and people need to absorb why things will continue to be different on an indefinite basis. The reality is that Covid does not end in 2021. Sadly.