AIBU to think that these are the areas where people are ignoring lockdown

[desperadochilli]

Just 31 councils have a rising covid rate, I guess people aren't doing lockdown as effectively in those areas

So many possible reasons. Very unfair to blame people because they could be catching it at work, hospital or supermarket.

I think most areas where cases are rising have got the new strain late. Kent, London and the SE got it first and numbers are falling massively there. Areas which have had large numbers of serious cases and deaths are often those with large numbers of working poor and loads of people with terrible health in normal times.

A reminder of what an unequal country we live in. Some areas have average life expectancies which are ten years less than other areas.

COVID in some ways is "how long is a piece of string?"

I don't know what else you can do really aside from follow guidelines and get tested with symptoms/if you're offered a test/try to deter people who are being slack/accept a vaccine. We'll pull through this.

What an ill thought out OP, it could be any number of reasons but you choose to blame people not doing lockdown well enough.

I live in one of those areas a huge number of our population work in the NHS. We also have a lot of logistic warehouses and manufacturing industries locally where people are still going to work daily (because the have to). Other sectors which employ a large number of our people are supermarkets and care homes.
My DC’s school still had just under 50% of its children attending. All staff in. People can’t just opt out of this kind of work.

Even my older DCs’ school (secondary) has a huge number of kids in. My Bro’s school (secondary teacher too) has so many in all staff have to work from school. Last week 6 members of staff tested positive, all asymptomatic, but picked up by the flow tests which staff are now being offered.

In a similar way our area also had community testing which is also picking up a large number of asymptotic cases.

So op, what would you advise for the working demographics of my town? Shall our key workers go on strike, because if they did many of the nation’s home deliveries would be fucked, not to mention the NHS in the wider region.

Shall we stop the community testing so all of those asymptomatic positives no longer count in our rising total?

Here we go again!

Pre-december, rates were mostly high in areas of the North and the Midlands. Threads on mumsnet were berating the "ignorant" people who were clearly not following rules.

December - rates rise in Kent, London, spread through the South. Threads on mumsnet horrified about the new variant.

January - after the above areas had a crazy high peak and start to crash downwards, some areas are still rising as the new variant reaches them slowly. Bang on time comes a mumsnet thread saying clearly these people can't be following lockdown rules.

Arrgh!

soundofsilence1 A lot of those areas look rural. I suspect they are just later than the rest of the country in reaching their peak.

This ^^ some of these areas have had very few cases up until now, it is probably their ‘turn’ . Unfortunately it has coincided with a variant which spreads more easily. Why must it all be about people breaking the rules?

People will 'comply' and not comply regardless of where they are.
It's like people who claim Germans are more 'compliant' than us. We aren't dogs.

Then when people beg for this "Chinese style lockdown', have they ever lived in a communist state like China? I don't think so. If they don't follow the rules they will likely 'disappear'.

There doesn't seem to be a lockdown here.
Rammed shops that are open.
Rammed play parks.
Rammed overflowing car parks in the county parks and Forrest areas.

Were not on that list.

I live in one of these areas. Rural, we've been waaay behind the curve all the way through.

Two weeks ago our council joined that scheme where people without the core three symptoms could get a free test. Guess what, new cases have skyrocketed. No shit! If you test more people, you'll find more cases.

Our rate per 100k is basically the same as nationally (440 or thereabouts).

I can't get too worked up about this,

My mum lives in one of these areas. Until now it's not had that many cases, so maybe people did feel a bit invulnerable. But the number one source of infection in town right now seems to be the local hospital. Things are terrible there.

Gyms, libraries, most shops, restaurants, bars, cafés, cinemas, leisure centres, ice rinks, hair and beauty salons, hotels, nightclubs etc. Closed, can't take a holiday anywhere, can't even see anyone, oh and schools mostly closed, most definitely is a lockdown! Essentially you can walk, run or cycle outside, they don't even let you play tennis or golf etc with your own household.

Oh, and we also had a lot of people coming here from tier 4, when we were tier 2, just before the full lockdown. They were going to cafes, wandering round the shops. All perfectly in the rules, apart from they shouldn't have left their tier 4 area.

So we've now got the faster spreading variant doing the rounds which was probably less noticeable in December.

My areas cases have rocketed way above average. It's because we fought to get them down, went to a lower tier then every selfish fucker in a 200 mile radius came to visit from higher tiers because more was open. A local niche but not uncommon type of shop I use chose to close after they discovered people were travelling insane distances to visit from high risk areas.

There was some top honcho from the NHS on tv yesterday.

They are fed up with Boris blaming the public, most of whom are complying. He said ‘The issue isn’t the public being flexible with the rules, it’s the fact that the rules are too far too flexible and this is what is causing the problem. The rules need to be clearer’

He was referring to nurseries being open
Workplaces still being open
Schools having too many kids in as everyone is suddenly a key worker.

These were his 3 main points from what l remember. Schools and nurseries being the main thing.

I saw that ArseInTheCoOpWindow and I agreed.

A lot of retail stores are still offering click and collect which means staff in the store sorting/handling orders and people walking around the shopping centre collecting their orders or collecting several orders at the same time which, even though it means one visit to the shopping centre instead of several, means they're in the centre longer, going into more areas of the centre, encountering more people, and is basically a shopping trip. It should be online only. Tradespeople should only be allowed inside homes and businesses if it is urgent/essential with set criteria for this, local painter and decorator is still advertising in residents group that he is allowed to operate and showing photos of homes he has decorated that week. The list of essential businesses should be reviewed and trimmed down. This would then reduce the number of children in school and nursery.