It is farcical that the change in guidance for these areas was not communicated to the council/MP and the wider community. How they can then expect people to follow their guidance is beyond me. Yet more incompetence. They sit on their hands too long after a problem emerges in some cases (e.g. allowing travel from India for over a week after it became obvious there was a problem, during which time home isolation was allowed rather than mandatory hotel quarantine), and don’t make what they actually want to happen clear in others (such as here or over the amber destinations in their traffic light system).
Other than the vaccine programme, which has largely been a success, there has been some truly shambolic incompetence. Foreign travel last summer was partly responsible for the rise in cases towards the end of summer and the autumn. We know that asking people to self-quarantine at home is ineffective- data suggests that at some points last summer less than 40% of those who returned home and were supposed to quarantine at home did so. Yet, they persist with the idea that people will do it this year. Also, if they really think it is unsafe people to go to these amber countries, then surely the government should take appropriate action. The same with these restrictions- if they want this done they should make it mandatory and they definitely should communicate that to the people affected.
However, despite the general incompetence of the handling of the problem, I do agree that we need to be careful even though the vaccine does provide good protection for those who have had it- the issue is it that it is not just a case of monitoring admissions and deaths (though these are very important), transmission rates are still important and of concern. It is true that younger people are more likely to have no, or mild symptoms, they can still develop long covid with all those implications. Just as importantly, we know that the more rapid the spread of the virus the more likely new mutations will occur. With each mutation, there is a risk of escape from the vaccine so high level of transmission = higher rates of mutation = higher risk of a mutation which escapes one (or more) of our vaccines.
Vaccines provide protection from infection, but also means those who do still contract the virus do not seem to harbour a high viral load (so no serious illness) but also less likely to transmit to as many people. This lowers community transmission rates, So, ideally, until we have most people vaccinated if there is highly infectious strain we want this well controlled, regardless of the hospital admission rates or deaths. There is a tipping point, where the number of people vaccinated means that transmission rates are so low that we worry less about mutation rates (still needs monitoring and vigilance, but not such a concern).
I feel very sorry for people affected by any rise in restrictions (or failure to come out of them, as has happened in Glasgow) and I do think these areas have not always been supported as best they might. But then, look at Glasgow- 50% of appointments at surge vaccination centres across the city were missed- not rearranged, just missed. Huge waste of resource. So I do think some people in our communities need to take responsibility too. We don’t have the resources to do a home visit for everyone (twice) and if we start doing it for some areas (rather than a very well defined patient sub-group- such as those patients who are housebound, who have been vaccinated by the district nurse team in our area), the problem is that a substantial minority of people who could and would go to the vaccination centre won’t because it is more convenient to have it done at home. We know this from local experience of our vaccination programme and I was surprised at how many people took this attitude.