Is the government preparing is for a New Zealand scenario?

[lockdownbreakdown]

Does anyone else think we are going to be locked down until the majority are vaccinated and then the borders are going to be closed indefinitely to prevent new strains? I definitely get this vibe from all the stuff leaked in the press. It seems to be the only way we can stop new variant from ruining the vaccination programme as we cant vaccinate the kids if we let in new strains from abroad we will be going back into lockdown indefinitely. Thoughts?

@Thedramasummer some are some are not, some have a traffic light system and some have people on the door , challenging mask wearing and people shopping in couples .
Its so cold at moment that I guess long ques outside are not great, I personally do click and collect so just do online and collect all at once .
Although not possible everywhere to get slots but if all that can do then it would help.

Interesting to see Israel has stopped all passenger flights. Considering they’re doing so well with vax it seems odd to me. They’re saying until the end of the month for now...

@Thewiseoneincognito

Interesting to see Israel has stopped all passenger flights. Considering they’re doing so well with vax it seems odd to me. They’re saying until the end of the month for now...

Makes sense re new variants?

@Thedramasummer

Can I check are supermarkets now the Uk ( and whatever other shops that are open) limiting the number of people in store at the same time?

I can remember seeing photos from my Uk friends and Uk media first time round of people queueing to get into them, but haven’t seen anything this lockdown.

Is this because it’s not happening, or is it because it’s common now?

Still queues in London one when busy

@Thewiseoneincognito

Interesting to see Israel has stopped all passenger flights. Considering they’re doing so well with vax it seems odd to me. They’re saying until the end of the month for now...

I've seen reports today that they have identified the Uk variant, the South African variant and a new Californian variant being present in Israel which seems to have come as something as a shock. There was also suggestion that despite being under lockdown and doing well with vaccinating, cases haven't reduced and its possibly as a result of these variants increasing the R rate and making the current restrictions they have in place insufficient to bring cases down.

Eric Feigl-Ding was doing some retweets about it earlier today.

(As a side note I've not seen much about the New Californian variant yet - but its different to the UK, SA and Brasilian ones - but there is concern that it too is more transmittable and part of the reason California has had particular problems in recent weeks.)

It makes sense to me too. If you're vaccinating at speed, and normality seems within grasping distance, why would you risk undoing all that effort with a vaccine-resistant variant?

@Circumlocutious

It makes sense to me too. If you're vaccinating at speed, and normality seems within grasping distance, why would you risk undoing all that effort with a vaccine-resistant variant?

Trouble is those restrictions have to remain in place AFTER you've completed vaccinating for exactly that reason because of whats going on in the rest of the world.

Following the story about proper covid hotels in the UK, it sounds much more unlikely that it did eariler.

On the one hand you have Patel and Hancock who really want to do it, and on the other other hand Shapps and Sunak who are against it.

But the Telegraph is reporting that rather than internal Tory infighting on the matter, the real problem sound like its sheer numbers who are currently still coming into the UK daily. The newspapers are suggesting its in the region of 10,000 at Heathrow daily and there are only 10,000 hotel rooms in the immediate area Heathrow. Which creates a bit of a logistics issue. How do you guard all these hotels to preven people leaving as proposed and if you've not enough hotel rooms nearby, how do you move them to rooms further afield? And how much of a risk is involved in doing so?

That then begs the question of whether you have to go further to restrict numbers coming in, in the first place.

The Guardian is also reporting that the number of cases in the UK is not reducing as quickly as had been hoped. So that does make you wonder whether we might see another tighting of restrictions yet elsewhere.

I do think that we may see some more interesting developments in policy in the next fortnight.

Close the borders to all people Those who work abroad will just have to zoom or furlough like the rest of the people whose work has been impacted..

Sorry but here we go again (it starting to feel like whack a mole)..

Not all jobs can be done remotely.

Not all jobs can be delayed until furlough ends.

Many niche technical jobs can't be done by somebody "in country"

Consequently even the likes of NZ have an essential worker exemption in their current quarantine regulations.

Even if you just want something as non-technical as freight brought into the UK- freight which often includes medical supplies right through to food for the supermarket you have to allow all those people who work cross border, involved with delivery of the same, into/out of the UK.

I'd echo a comment made earlier along the lines that people really need to think way beyond their own work situations.

How rude! We last met our parents in April 2019, our best friends who live 5 miles away in March 2020, spent almost 12 weeks in absolute lockdown and we are still here. Don’t get us wrong, we love people down in NZ but your travel hub isn’t the same as ours. Almost 50% of the population has work/family/business relation with mainland Europe which means we can’t really close the border forever.

@RedToothBrush

The newspapers are suggesting its in the region of 10,000 at Heathrow daily and there are only 10,000 hotel rooms in the immediate area Heathrow. Which creates a bit of a logistics issue. How do you guard all these hotels to preven people leaving as proposed and if you've not enough hotel rooms nearby, how do you move them to rooms further afield? And how much of a risk is involved in doing so?

Those familiar with the Heathrow landscape know the idea of multiple day, managed quarantine for everybody arriving into LHR has always looked unmanageable with the current numbers..and even less possible at other points of entry into the UK which don't benefit from the density of hotels you have around the Heathrow perimeter (I'm thinking of the likes Manchester and also the likes of Dover and the Euro tunnel/Eurostar terminals).

As I see it HMG either have to accept the consequences of reducing the numbers even further from the already massively reduced levels we are already seeing coming into the UK, or instead accept they will have to introduce a less rigidly managed process (tagging?).

Whatever happens I'm sure the likes of G4S and some of the hotel chain CEOs will be keen on the idea.

notimagain hence my comments somewhere upthread that despite efforts i think we will discover we are not NZ and geography being important to the UK.

Being so much physically closer to other countries and making ourselves a global hub is completely different to the situation in NZ.

What is feasible in the UK is different to elsewhere.

I'd also argue from a political point of view the UK is perhaps more reliant on the rest of the world cacking its pants over our new variant and preventing travel to the uk, rather than us banning it...

I have a sense that despite the success so far of the vaccination programme in the uk, there is a rising sense of panic in the uk government about our number of cases and the implications of that and what the new variant may mean. They seem to be rather more worried and concerned than I'm comfortable with. Im just getting a certain sense of all not being quite as well as it should be.

@RedToothBrush

Interesting. My expectation guess is that if the policy was announced, we would quickly see the numbers of arrivals significantly reduce - people wouldn’t fly to the UK, or wouldn’t fly out of the UK, knowing that a quarantine would be properly enforced and at their own expense.

[quote Circumlocutious]@RedToothBrush

Interesting. My expectation guess is that if the policy was announced, we would quickly see the numbers of arrivals significantly reduce - people wouldn’t fly to the UK, or wouldn’t fly out of the UK, knowing that a quarantine would be properly enforced and at their own expense.[/quote]
Definitely this^

Thing is though that anyone still travelling probably can afford the money and time. If they are going somewhere they have to be staying somewhere and its not exactly easy to do in a great many places without being termed as essential already.

@RedToothBrush

Thing is though that anyone still travelling probably can afford the money and time. If they are going somewhere they have to be staying somewhere and its not exactly easy to do in a great many places without being termed as essential already.

I’m not so sure about that. My brother quarantined in Australia and it was a soulless, utterly miserable experience - not allowed to leave your room, food delivered on a table three times a day by someone who scampers off immediately... I don’t know if that’s what it would look like here but I can certainly see people wanting to avoid that.

I think that other countries also impose caps on the number of arrivals in order to ease pressure on quarantine facilities.

@donewithitalltodayandxmas and @MarshaBradyo thank you for answering my question. So it’s more that it’s just no longer newsworthy.

@RedToothBrush

notimagain hence my comments somewhere upthread that despite efforts i think we will discover we are not NZ and geography being important to the UK.

Being so much physically closer to other countries and making ourselves a global hub is completely different to the situation in NZ.

What is feasible in the UK is different to elsewhere.

I'd also argue from a political point of view the UK is perhaps more reliant on the rest of the world cacking its pants over our new variant and preventing travel to the uk, rather than us banning it...

I have a sense that despite the success so far of the vaccination programme in the uk, there is a rising sense of panic in the uk government about our number of cases and the implications of that and what the new variant may mean. They seem to be rather more worried and concerned than I'm comfortable with. Im just getting a certain sense of all not being quite as well as it should be.

I’m with you on that. Something has them spooked. The tone and wording is quite different to say two months ago.

Hypothetically speaking, if one of the variants was to evade the vaccines how soon do you think it would be between tweaking and redoing the whole thing again? It’s all well and good saying we can adjust the recipe but surely they would have to test how those who have had both doses would react to another formulation being introduced? Thoughts?

I think a lot of the tennis players that came over for the the open had a bit of a shock to the system with how strict the quarantine actually is in Australia.

Australia strict Q and still had covid + cases which apparantly was connected with security guards working in the hotels sleeping with some of the detainees. So workers in the quarantine lodgings go home at night. Senceless idea and unworkable. Some will be Q exempt business travellers which defeats whole purpose

@Radyward

Australia strict Q and still had covid + cases which apparantly was connected with security guards working in the hotels sleeping with some of the detainees. So workers in the quarantine lodgings go home at night. Senceless idea and unworkable. Some will be Q exempt business travellers which defeats whole purpose

@radyward

That was months ago.

NOBODY is exempt. Only the ultra wealthy are allowed to quarantine out of designated facilities (think less than 10 in a year).

We do have positive cases but 99% of these come from people in quarantine facilities.

We differentiate between community transmission and quarantine transmission.

This is the next step

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-25/wagners-flag-covid-quarantine-facility-west-of-brisbane/13087738

Our borders should have been shut end of Feb. We let everyone in, no checks, even the Chinese. We would have been like NZ now if we had. FFS we are an island. We wouldn't be in a lockdown, our economy would be much better, many many people would not have died.

Those familiar with the Heathrow landscape know the idea of multiple day, managed quarantine for everybody arriving into LHR has always looked unmanageable with the current numbers..and even less possible at other points of entry into the UK which don't benefit from the density of hotels you have around the Heathrow perimeter (I'm thinking of the likes Manchester and also the likes of Dover and the Euro tunnel/Eurostar terminals).

Exactly, the plan for blanket hotel quarantine makes no sense whatsoever given the scale. It only works in Australia because they cap arrivals at 8,000 per week, and they have a backlog of ten of thousands of people wanting to come home. I don't think arrivals would necessarily reduce that drastically, because I don't think most travellers are returning from holiday. So at the end of the first 2 weeks you are potentially looking at 140,000 people in hotel quarantine- you'll be driving people from LHR to hotels up north at that rate! Not to mention the Chunnel and ferries- do you park your car in a massive car park before being put on a coach and then get driven back to it at the end? And then there is the back door via Dublin and the NI border, allowing you to evade hotel quarantine entirely.

I think it's possible that they might try this, but is suspect it will quickly fall apart if they do. I think everyone would be much better off with closer monitoring of home quarantine.

I wish they would my friends in New Zealand and living an almost normal life now