"Just stick to the rules for a bit longer"

[PlantPlant123]

Am I the only one getting sick of hearing this?

We're a year in. As of May, when household mixing is allowed, I won't have legally seen my partner indoors for seven months. Same with my sister, who is preparing to go back to teaching 4 x 30 different groups of teenagers everyday.

It's just so restrictive. I follow the rules as much as I can, but not as much admittedly as my mental health has taken a battering- I was supposed to have a psychiatrist appointment this morning on the phone and they never called me, so now I feel even worse.

I get it's a shit situation. But how long are we going to be asked to do this for? What if the vaccines hadn't worked?

I KNOW I'm just ranting (probably as a result of waiting months to be seen by a psychiatrist who apparently got to phone me) but when other countries with higher rates are allowing household mixing of some
form, even if limited, it just makes me so down. I'd LOVE the rule of six or two households.

I suppose I'd even be so controversial to say that I don't think the government has the right to ban household mixing for almost a year and that it's an overstep and gone on too long, but I guess that makes me "anti-lockdown" and a "covid denier" by some some people's standards

@notrub wow what an incredibly rude post.

I guess Neil Ferguson is a total moron who talks absolute horseshit as well:

From 20 Feb 2021
*“We’re not going to eliminate [Covid] globally so we won’t eliminate it here,” said Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London last week.

“I would like to see this virus become like influenza and managed in similar ways”.*

While we're here

Vaccines can make it VERY easy to maintain a zero covid approach - consider for example Measles - when was the last time you heard of an outbreak of measles in your area??

There were around 900k cases of measles worldwide in 2019. The difference between measles and covid is that measles does not mutate. So you can give everyone one vaccination in childhood and they're good for life. If people enter the UK carrying measles then the UK is safe as pretty much everyone is vaccinated from a young age. You cannot compare this with covid. There will be mass covid outbreaks around the world while billions of people still don't have vaccines and the virus will constantly mutate.

This is why Neil Ferguson is saying we'll need to manage covid like flu. Unless you want to batten down the hatches for as long as it takes for the entire world to be zero covid?

Vaccines can make it VERY easy to maintain a zero covid approach - consider for example Measles - when was the last time you heard of an outbreak of measles in your area?? There's been a handful of small outbreaks in the UK over the last 20 years. Why? Vaccine induced herd-immunity.

It's already been explained by several virologists why measles and COVID19 cannot be handled in the same way.

Measles is a very stable virus, and the vaccine we use today is almost unchanged from the one we used in 1970. You get lifelong immunity from the vaccine, or from an attack of measles. Measles has highly distinctive symptoms which appear in virtually everyone who has it, making it very easy to trace. Asymptomatic transmission is extremely rare. It's nasty enough for kids that parents are strongly motivated to vaccinate them. And there is no animal reservoir. None of these things are true for COVID19. It's unlikely this virus can be controlled in the same way we do for measles.

If we had a time machine taking us back to Jan-Feb 2020 (AND a way to solve the Irish border question), a strategy of "zero COVID and tight borders until we get the vax" would probably be the "least worst" option.

However, we don't have a time machine. The virus is thoroughly seeded in places like hospitals, essential workplaces and households-places where people are allowed to be even in the strictest lockdownsmeaning that even with a very hard lockdown it would be months and months to get down to zero because the bloody thing would just keep circulating. Remember, countries like Oz locked down and closed their borders at a very early stage, when few people had the virus and lockdown was sufficient to completely nail it.

As the vaccine rolls out, the advantages of being zero-COVID are receding, and it may even turn out to be a bit of a nuisance, long-term. Governments who went for zero-COVID have, in effect, staked their reputation on this. This may mean that it's hard for them to allow any community spread at all without suffering loss of face. And the only way to get populations to adhere to the notion of locking down a whole city due to a single case (which is what you'll have to do if you are serious about zero-COVID) is to make people very very afraid of the virus. So populations themselves may not tolerate any spread of the virus whatsoever, and that's going to make opening borders up really tricky and subject to endless goalpost-moving. Some of the experts on China are already starting to wonder what is going to happen--China will probably not be able to get everyone vaxed until the end of 2022, but if they allow even a little bit of COVID, they'll lose face in the eyes of their citizens.

In short, I think zero COVID was a decent idea as a holding strategy, but it seems odd to push for it now when the vaccine is being rolled out and looking really successful.

Yes it is. And illegal to see parents and grandparents. And for kids to play with another kid. All ridiculous. We’ve given up now too, we’re seeing our parents.

@Kokeshi123 excellent post.

I think most people are now mixing outside, I've followed all the rules but am now seeing my parents outside, and see big groups of people all the time. I think they should allow this as its de facto happening anyway and it just makes a mockery of all the other restrictions if they can't be realistic. There really is very little risk in mixing outdoors and rates where I live are under 30 per 100k.

Yes thank you @Kokeshi123 for explaining that in such a detailed way.

China may also be using zero covid as a means to control the population. A close friend of mine lives in Hong Kong and she says it's looking like she won't get a vaccine until the end of this year at the earliest. She says it appears that China is stalling on rolling out the vaccine to HK as a way to control people there. She had to get tested for covid a couple of months ago and told me that if she tested positive she would be separated from her children and taken to a government centre for 2 weeks. It's really scary stuff.

Unfortunately this could have been all wrapped up by now if all the people who just couldn't wait to see family had stuck to the rules. This is dragging precisely because people aren't doing as they've been asked. That means those of us that do stick to the rules are being punished twice over, firstly we feel jealous of those with less of a conscience and secondly we will have to wait longer because of them.

@Hcolhcsra that's a very simplistic view of why lockdown hasn't fully worked.
I'm sure I read somewhere that 65% of recent infections are coming from hospitals - rather hard to avoid that. Prisons and factories also large contributors currently.
New strains came from people travelling which was allowed at the time.
Yes I'm sure there is some level of infections from those who haven't been following the rules, but not a large percentage.

.....that's a very simplistic view of why lockdown hasn't fully worked.
I'm sure I read somewhere that 65% of recent infections are coming from hospitals - rather hard to avoid that. Prisons and factories also large contributors currently.
New strains came from people travelling which was allowed at the time.
Yes I'm sure there is some level of infections from those who haven't been following the rules, but not a large percentage.

Exactly.

I can’t believe some people think that the reason we are in this mess with such huge death rates is because a small minority of society visited family or friends.

People are literally voting with their feet,meeting up outside in large groups
As a pp said the majority of people seem to be getting it in hospital

@Borntohula

Is it actually still illegal for non cohabiting couples to sleep in the same bed? How ridiculous.

Because we're in a pandemic.

@tootyfruitypickle

I think most people are now mixing outside, I've followed all the rules but am now seeing my parents outside, and see big groups of people all the time. I think they should allow this as its de facto happening anyway and it just makes a mockery of all the other restrictions if they can't be realistic. There really is very little risk in mixing outdoors and rates where I live are under 30 per 100k.

I said at the time that roadmap was self defeating. "in another month you can meet one person outside, in a couple of months rule of 6". So in 1-2 months time you can do what the masses are already doing.

Therefore you'll start to see a lot more household mixing now and garden parties and barbecues once the clocks go forward in a few weeks and the temperatures improve. By the end of March (which is Easter) the only things people won't be doing are things they can't do because they aren't open.

@User133847 yeah, literally everyone knows that...

@Hcolhcsra

Unfortunately this could have been all wrapped up by now if all the people who just couldn't wait to see family had stuck to the rules. This is dragging precisely because people aren't doing as they've been asked. That means those of us that do stick to the rules are being punished twice over, firstly we feel jealous of those with less of a conscience and secondly we will have to wait longer because of them.

You might want to learn some basic science and some facts about this pandemic before spouting shit like that.

I’m seeing my parents indoors in a couple of weeks then my baby is due a couple of days later. You can’t say it’s too dangerous one day and the next day it’s okay as we’ve formed a childcare bubble.

And yes, we will be hugging and they’ll be cuddling the baby.

I'm not saying we'd be at zero but we would be out of lockdown. In my area there are so many people who have never followed the rules and it's evident in local case rates. Yes a lot of transmission is happening in hospitals but its also happening in family homes, only no one is going to admit to that if they've been mixing illegally.

The public will eventually riot if another lockdown happens. Unfortunately thats just how people are. Im 50/50 on the situation, it’s a terrible situation and we hate being restricted and I haven’t been able to see my family. I still have to go to work and put myself and my husband at risk in a hospital full of covid patients. How does that make sense? And to top it all off I have to sit on a packed train and bus with dirty people standing so close to me just to get to and from work. But god forbid I see my family I would be breaking the rules. The joke is the government they haven’t really thought this through have they. But hopefully it will all be worth it soon. Fingers crossed as I don’t think many of us will last another year like this.

@Piinkjuice

The public will eventually riot if another lockdown happens. Unfortunately thats just how people are. Im 50/50 on the situation, it’s a terrible situation and we hate being restricted and I haven’t been able to see my family. I still have to go to work and put myself and my husband at risk in a hospital full of covid patients. How does that make sense? And to top it all off I have to sit on a packed train and bus with dirty people standing so close to me just to get to and from work. But god forbid I see my family I would be breaking the rules. The joke is the government they haven’t really thought this through have they. But hopefully it will all be worth it soon. Fingers crossed as I don’t think many of us will last another year like this.

No they won't.

We were laughed at for protesting in summer last year, or called Covidiots. I'd be delighted if people protested en masse but people like me have given up and accepted we are a tiny minority.

The Speaker of the House of Commons already suggested lockdowns for climate change. No one cares.

I'm just counting down the days until 17th May when I can visit my mum indoors. Seems such a long time since we've had a cuppa and a natter. Hopefully nothing puts a delay on this date.

@DanaScully53

I'm just counting down the days until 17th May when I can visit my mum indoors. Seems such a long time since we've had a cuppa and a natter. Hopefully nothing puts a delay on this date.

Why wait until then? Why is 16th May too dangerous but the 17th is safe?

It’s all such bollocks. Tens of millions vaccinated and I can’t see my mum until the end of may? Fuck off.

Yes what exactly happens at the stroke of midnight on the 16th?

I thought we were supposed to be driven by data and not dates.

It’s also illegal to be drunk in a pub and illegal “to handle a salmon in suspicious circumstances”.

Speaking of protests.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/nhs-pay-protest-fine-manchester-19984620