The outcome of the government's terrible messaging re Xmas mixing.

[dangermouselovespeanutbutter]

I read this article this morning. It's really sad. I was so angry at the government's approach to Xmas. Indoor mixing was always going to be a huge risk. There was no way to make it safe. BoJo flipped and flopped anc just confused people.
Unfortunately there are lots of people out there, like the family in this article, who take the view that if the government say it's safe then it must be safe.
It's hard to understand how a family could go from shielding to mixing with several households in one fell swoop. But I do believe that they thought it would be ok because they'd been told that it would be (and it's interesting that his wife said she missed the updates. Not everyone reads / watches the news each day).
So so sad.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/06/james-mcallister-was-a-much-loved-family-man-did-the-christmas-mixing-confusion-cause-his-death?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

@fizbosshoes

A prime example for me is I didn't go to shops like B and M or the range despite being open in January when our case numbers were 700/100k.

B and M bargains sells essential stuff like food, groceries, cleaning products, toiletries and san pro. It also sells some non essential stuff . Just like a supermarket.
But half of MN seem to hold B and M responsible for spreading covid...

I didn't say that at all! I said I didn't need to visit those shops even though open so didn't just because I could.

But now I do because I can because the risks are much lower.

I don't need to go to B and M for my fabulosa cleaning products! I like them but I could buy equally good products when I do my shop at Aldi!

Now I go to B and M for what I like - rather than buy alternatives because it's just what I need!

What people don't seem to realise is that a lot of things that have been allowed to do during the pandemic are relaxations so that people can have some semblance of normality and the country as a whole can keep going, in some respect.

Ideally everyone would have sat at home and had contact with nobody and the pandemic would have been over months ago. But obviously we still need basic services (food, medical, police, heat, light and communications etc) to continue, so people are allowed to go to work, but not socialise and should minimise contact with other people, as far as possible.

But just because people are allowed to do these things doesn't make it safe, and any contact with other people carries a risk, but that risk is balanced against the detriment if there had been no power, no police, no medical services, no food, etc etc.

So at Christmas, just because people were allowed to mix on Christmas Day, it wasn't because it was suddenly safe, it's just that the government knew that people would do it anyway, so they gave guidance on how to minimise the risk while having something of a Christmas. The initial 3 households/5 days relaxation was obviously far too generous with rising cases and new variants, hence why it was scaled back.

But it was fairly obvious what was going to happen. Millions of people mixing indoors with family was bound to cause some tragedies like this, it was inevitable. As illustrated on this thread from mid November last year, when we were in lockdown 2 and talking about what we thought would happen about Christmas.

I said, and it has pretty much played out as such:

*Shops open again 3rd December.

Pubs and restaurants open a week or two later.

Schools closed for 3-4 weeks between mid Dec and early Jan.

Restrictions eased completely from Christmas Eve to NY Day with the warning 'be careful'. Everyone spends the entire Christmas period as if covid doesn't exist.

Huge spike in cases early January, back to full lockdown and sad face stories in the tabloids in late January about families with multiple bereavements because they had mass gatherings at Christmas because they were allowed to*

And here we are.

I didn't find the government's message at Xmas "terrible". I understood it clearly.

Like others have said, people need to take some personal responsibility for their actions.

That was a very sad article to read but I am shocked that the wife and not one single member of the wider family saw the rule change though - if people deliberately chose to meet up during that time, they can't really blame the government despite the government's many failures.

Unless doing the ultimate low risk of no one leaves the house and everything is delivered and sanitised there is a risk of catching it. Some will get it through doing legal things, others from breaking the rules. The virus doesn’t distinguish between the two.

When non essential shops, pubs and restaurants opened there were still risks so some took them and others didn’t.

The government was under enormous pressure to cancel Christmas. Even if she was rushing round and missed the rule change, she must have been aware of the rapid numbers increase and the calls to cancel. These were well before 19th December.

And what about her dh? He was shielding and in heart failure so I imagine he had all the time in the world to research what was going on.

Additionally, he showed symptoms very quickly. Isn’t it usually longer? It is feasible he contracted it prior to 23rd.

I cannot stand BJ but there are a lot of holes here. I understand she wants to hit out. But yes, personal responsibility. If you were previously shielding, you check and double check that it’s ‘safe’, surely? Realistically, nothing is ever 100% safe.

My take is they were excited, maybe he felt pressured to go etc or really wanted to go and ignored the rising numbers.

It’s very sad, but are we going to gloss over the fact that when they met and started dating she was 16 and he was 29. I couldn’t read anymore after that.

Mylovely
I missed that as I only scanned the article for salient points. Wow. No. Not to be ignored.

Very sad.
But I didn’t get the message it was safe. I got the message you could do it, but beware of the risks.
Lots of thing ‘we can do’ that we don’t. Ie we don’t bubble with my elderly mum. We didn’t go on holiday last year.
People have to take responsibility for their risk.

The huge case numbers and bad situation in hospitals was very underreported in December. It is almost as if the media were purposefully focusing on the Christmas storyline and the massive surge in cases and rapidly rising graphs were left until early January, when the media suddenly started highlighting the totally shit situation we were in. This was probably a nudge prompted by the government so that we all understood that lockdown was coming and why it was needed.
It would have much more responsible of the government and media to be accurately reporting the catastrophe that was already clearly developing in December and change the Christmas storyline to one of not mixing households. Both are responsible for the Christmas Covid cases. It wasn't a surprise to most people that the situation in early January was the peak pandemic and by then we had the worse death rate in the world. That didn't happen overnight - the situation had been gradually worsening throughout December. The lockdown in November should never have been lifted. But apparently 72 noisy right-wing MPs were able to dictate that their opinions were more important than the health of the country and the lockdown was ridiculously lifted in early December and the graphs clearly show that this was a very irresponsible decision.

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

All this victim blaming. Johnson should have put his big girl pants on and said no mixing at all. He can't escape blame for this. More than half the people who died of covid, died since Xmas.

I know two people who have had covid since Christmas and neither of them mixed at Christmas. The second wave was not solely due to christmas mixing and its a bit disingenuous to imply it was. Boris and co have have screwed up at every turn it's true, but surely everyone in the country has been aware of this and should have made their own assessment. That's not really victim blaming I don't think but pointing out that people chose their own level of risk.

It’s very sad, but are we going to gloss over the fact that when they met and started dating she was 16 and he was 29. I couldn’t read anymore after that.

I couldnt see why that was included tbh, it had no relevance to the story.

We were lucky.
We’d planned to meet with my family but my daughter took a LFT on Xmas day before people we due to come over and it was positive. Her full test was also positive. She’d just started a new job at the local hospital. She likely caught it there but she wouldn’t have had access to the LFT without being there either. She had no symptoms when she took the test
and when she did get symptoms a few days later it was mild enough to have ignored as a bit of a cold. She has no temp or cough. She finally lost smell and taste. That was five days after the test had flagged up and she’d have been out and working until that point otherwise.

I didn’t catch it but her sisters did (all very mild). It could have been a different story had we mixed Xmas
day with my mum who has COPD.

@MimiPigeon

Sad as it is for this family it was made abundantly clear that just because you could mix that didn't mean you should. You can't pick and choose which half of the message you hear especially when you know you're vunerable I have to say though, some people did only hear half of the message. They heard what they wanted to hear. My MIL wanted to have us and SIL for Xmas, she literally only heard “it’s permitted” and went Yay! So when I said nope, not gonna happen because I’m CEV, she absolutely kicked off and blocked me for ruining her Xmas, and I’m still blocked.

Quite, people were listening to a message of "you may have a three-way extended household for five days" and decided that it meant "you can see three different households each day".

I don't for a moment believe that he caught it on the 23rd if he was already symptomatic by the 25th. Neither do I believe that not one of them heard that rules were being tightened. When people say "I don't understand the rules", I wonder if they have actually tried. If I don't understand something I err on the side of caution.

It's a tragic loss for the family but the government isn't to blame for the decisions individuals make. If you want to go down that road, you'll only invite totalitarianism as governments take complete control of our lives to make sure that individual decisions never become a problem again.

@longestlurkerever

This is such a bizarre attitude to take. I'm no Boris fan and was livid over the Christmas flip flopping but we can't have "there's been a Covid death, it's the Government's fault for not banning mixing". That way madness lies. Well never be free to take a calculated risk with our own safety ever again

I agree. And even more ridiculous, "there's been a covid death because someone didn't follow the government advice, its the government's fault for not banning mixing"

We mixed within the rules. We knew it was a risk. Three of us got Covid, one in hospital but fortunately only on oxygen and home within a week. We shouldn’t have mixed. We were lucky.
I’m surprised the family didn’t know about the one day rule though especially with someone shielding.

For every sad story like this, I bet there's a tale of a family that chose not to get together for Christmas and subsequently lost a loved one to the various things people die of and now wish they'd taken the opportunity.

@bookworm1632 This couple made the journey on the 23rd though? So even if you take that into account, they still travelled when the advice was to shield again.

Like you just said yourself, you need to take some responsibility. If you are concerned that someone is particularly susceptible to something you watch the news, you watch the numbers, you keep up to date with what is going on.

@Temp023

I’m guessing that there are people out there with MH problems who are alive today because they were allowed to see their families at Christmas.

It was a gamble, it is very sad but they weighed the odds and lost!

Exactly that.

@Constance11

That was a very sad article to read but I am shocked that the wife and not one single member of the wider family saw the rule change though - if people deliberately chose to meet up during that time, they can't really blame the government despite the government's many failures.

Yes I find that very hard to believe.

The government have handled this terribly, especially round Christmas. But this family made some terrible decisions, they didn't actually check the rules and then mixed even though family members were feeling unwell... I'm sorry for their loss.

The truth is I don't believe for 1 second the didn't get the messages and didn't know the risks.

I think this is survivors guilt.

They took a risk beyond what they should have done and are now trying to transfer their pain and guilt and blaming the government.

And that's from someone who had been a crisis of Boris and his handling of this quite loudly!

@Buzzinwithbez

We (weeks in advance) had chosen not to see an elderly aunt that we normally see at xmas. Covid had been ripping through DS school like wildfire and we didnt want to put them at risk. We also chose not to see the IL (before it was actually not permitted) and planned to have a delayed family Christmas at easter.
MIL was diagnosed with cancer in mid January and died 7 weeks later

@Exhausteddog I'm so sorry to hear this.

Things are just not black and white enough during this pandemic. We've all been weighing up different levels of risk, to various factors and not just to covid.

In the past, I've lost two family members suddenly and long before their time and this has always nagged away at the back of my mind while making decisions to not see my loved ones.

The the usual Guardian government bashing pretending to be something else. God forbid anyone show some personal responsibility! God forbid anyone make decisions for themselves after weighing up the evidence! God forbid that a family that has been ultra-careful for 9 months actually bothers to risk assess whether getting together over Christmas with two other families is a good idea when one of them is CEV! No, the government has to think for everyone and then somehow communicate with them when they don't bother to watch the news