Mandatory hotel quarantine in the UK

[Circumlocutious]

There was the New Zealand thread which touched on this, but I thought it’s helpful to have a more targeted discussion. Mandatory hotel quarantine for all UK arrivals, likely to be signed off on tomorrow.

Twitter thread from FT journalist discussing some of the complex aspects involved:

mobile.twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1353657496716660737

Do you think it’ll ‘work’? (presumably its main purpose is to stop new covid variants from coming in). Why / why not?

Depends how you define 'come into' holiday.
People who will stay at least 3 days, at least 3 months, people in transit (hauliers), people going to oil rigs, students?

How have they not learnt that half measures are the worst of both worlds by now? Damage to the economy in restricting movement, but likely little to no effect on mutant strains arriving here, which means more long term damage to the economy and lives lost.

This is so true @MyHeartIsNeverOnTime The half-arsed non-initiatives of this incompetent ship of fools we call a government is just condemning us to longer, more dreary restrictions, with no real effect.

I'm coming to think that our government's 'incompetence' is not bumbling - it's entirely deliberate and ideological. Get rid of the old, the obese, the disabled ... save a lot of money. It's inhuman.

@DenisetheMenace In the last couple of weeks, we’ve gone into full lockdown and measures being tightened further within the last couple of days. The numbers are suddenly v high, feeling v anxious and the thought of possibly not seeing my parents is really shitty. They could go home and would isolate in their own home for two weeks and would have had the vaccine by then plus could pay for tests. I really don’t understand why people can’t be tested before getting on the plane and when they land, how will I ever see them again.

So sorry to read that Twirlywoo, Portugal had been doing comparatively really well hadn’t it?
Such good news that your parents have had their vaccinations though. Hang on in there. My parents are in the same country but because of their ages and CEV husband, I haven’t been able to see them since 20th December 2019 either. Mum had her first dose just yesterday, stepdad should be done in next couple of weeks. Such relief!
Hang on in there. The vaccine is the way out for all of us. In 6 months we’ll be in a very different place.
Know just how you feel, though ❤️

@DenisetheMenace Thank you 💓it is really hard and crazy to be in the same country and to not have seen them 😢
They’ve not had the vaccine yet but should have by when they’ve booked to come-July/August.
It’s was doing so well here, has been very sudden.

*It

Sorry Twirlywooooo, not only did I misread your post but I got your name wrong 🥴
The vaccine really is the way out. I’m feeling confident that travel will be realistic by August.
I know, so fast. Friends sent us pictures of their (adult) kids visiting just before Christmas and eating out together!
All you can all do is take great care and project forward to your reunion in the summer. We’ve written a couple of letters back and forth recently. Not something we usually do but I think it’s helped us both.

@StartupRepair

Noone in Australia will be travelling abroad for a holiday for at least the next 18 months. It is completely off the table. A handful are leaving for compassionate and rarely work reasons. The people flying into Australia are Australian citizens who have been trying for months to get onto flights. We have had various combinations of hard border closures between the states for months. In Melbourne's lockdown we had a 'ring of steel' solid police guard around the city for months. 4 million people were unable to leave the city.

I’m also Australian and you are not quite correct. Travel is not completely off the table for 18 months. There will always be a conversation around it because at some point you need to open up.

Only around 50-60% of people returning to Australia are Australian citizens. That’s why there are so many struggling to get home, because quarantine places are taken by people coming here for work. On MN I’ve seen a few Aussie expats talking about having come back for a holiday to see their families. If you have money for business or first class flights you can come. You have to do hotel quarantine of course but you are not stopped from coming.

And leaving the country for work reasons is definitely allowed. I don’t think it is helpful to paint Australia as some kind of covid utopia where everything is fair and everybody falls into line. That’s incorrect. The rich and powerful have advantages here just as they do everywhere. And the reason we need hotel quarantine is because half of returned travellers were not isolating at home as they had been instructed to do. So we are no better than any other country in that regard.

I think the main reason people in Australia support hotel quarantine is because it allows us to live a normal life. It’s much much harder to introduce it in a country that is already suffering and in lockdown.

But as an outsider it does feel like something needs to be done to convince UK residents to stop travelling. All of our comments sections here are filled with people asking “why do they keep going on holidays?” When you are watching from afar it is really difficult to understand. If people keep rewarding themselves with holidays after every lockdown when will the pandemic end?

But as an outsider it does feel like something needs to be done to convince UK residents to stop travelling. All of our comments sections here are filled with people asking “why do they keep going on holidays?” When you are watching from afar it is really difficult to understand. If people keep rewarding themselves with holidays after every lockdown when will the pandemic end?

Very few Brits have gone abroad on holiday since the summer, and even then numbers were a very small fraction of the usual. Airports are practically empty. It's simply not true that large numbers of people "keep rewarding themselves with holidays after every lockdown".

Thanks @Remaker. Certainly not painting Australia as a Utopia. But I do think having strong clear leadership in most of the states has helped. We have had changes but they have been largely science based and not the constant dithering of Bojo.

I know its on a smaller scale but the principle is the same so i have to point out that the Government mandated face masks but the public have to pay for them.

The Government mandates hotel quarantine but the public have to pay for it.
If they can get away with the former it stands to reason that they can get away with the latter.
YY i know face masks are cheaper than hotel quarantine but not if you can only wear disposable ones and are on a low income.

@IcedPurple but the summer was post lockdown was it not? We have DH’s entire family in the UK, plus dozens of friends. Everyone we know other than the elderly went on holiday, most on multiple holidays and many went abroad. Not just in the summer either, SIL ended up testing positive while on holiday in the autumn. So to us it looks like: big lockdown, party all summer long, travel as much as possible, oh shit, lockdown again.

And now I read threads on MN with people planning holidays abroad during 2021. It’s just so odd to us. Once of the first things we were told was no overseas holidays for a long time and the vast majority of people accept it. I have family in the US as well so it is a hardship but I think if you are upfront with people and give them the hard facts early instead of faffing around it is easier to get them onboard.

British people will stop planning overseas holidays if they are not allowed to go. Government has thus far been very half hearted on this and I find it hard to blame people for thinking its a possibility when "social media influencers" were off to Dubai at Christmas time, whilst the rest of us were in lockdown.

@Twirlywooooo depending on exactly what rules come in, an option to avoid the Portugal quarantine rules could be for your parents to spend two weeks in a third country of their choice before returning to the UK. The quarantine in England would then be at home.

@TierFourTears That will cost a fortune, they just want to see us, not even have a holiday, this is making me panicky as how long will this last. Surely by summer things will be a little easier, I mean with the vaccines

Why do people try and get round the rules when the rules are to try and stop the virus spreading and a new variant causing the death and destruction the Kent variant has.

@Twirlywooooo
I’m in the reverse situation, my elderly parents live in Portugal (Algarve) and I’m desperate to see them (I’m in the UK) they haven’t heard about their vaccine yet and I can’t quarantine in a hotel with three small children if we could even fly. I’m really hoping that by August/September things will feel different and because of the vaccine and testing either end it will be possible to see them. I’ve truly taken for granted in the past the ease of travel so although they are in a different country it’s never felt so far away as it does now x

@Twirlywooooo can't they drive across the border and fly from Western Spain?

Ethics aside, this seems logistically possible.

@Thischarmlessgirl I know 😞it’s so difficult isn’t it, it could feel a long way away at times but you could always jump on a plane and get to one another, no it’s seeming impossible. It’s their highlight to come to us and see their granddaughter, we need things to get better.

@DenisetheMenace I really hope so 🙏

[quote QuentinInQuarantino]@Twirlywooooo can't they drive across the border and fly from Western Spain?

Ethics aside, this seems logistically possible.[/quote]
They’d have to spend two weeks in Spain first before flying to the UK to get around it.

I just don’t understand the reason for two weeks quarantine if you were to arrive in the U.K. and have a negative test? Am I being thick here, arrive & quarantine, test straightaway, if test is negative, go home 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Twirlywooooo do you also not understand the reason for self isolating if you are a contact of someone who has tested positive?

Just because you test negative doesn’t mean you aren’t harbouring the virus

Something will go wrong with the quarantine, like everything else.
I didnt use to be a cynic of the UK handling of things.

@Twirlywooooo

I just don’t understand the reason for two weeks quarantine if you were to arrive in the U.K. and have a negative test? Am I being thick here, arrive & quarantine, test straightaway, if test is negative, go home 🤷🏻‍♀️

Because the incubation period is longer than a day. Someone could be tested the day they fly home and the next day test positive. Bad if it’s one of the usual covid strains, but much worse if it’s one of the new strains circulating more in these at risk countries. We need to stop people coming in from these countries.