Close the F-ing boarder!!

[ilovesouthlondon]

Not sure why I'm using AIBU because I've already made up my mind that i'm not, but interested to hear the thoughts of others...my friend is an air stewardess and says she flys to India regularly in an empty plane but comes back with the plane full! I was surprised as I wrongly assumed that with all systems go prepared for the 21st, travel to the UK from India would be banned unless you are returning home to quarantine or had an emergency family/business issue to attend to. WTF is flying in from a scientifically proven covid varient hot spot still allowed when we're preparing to free ourselves from bondage? Also how come the USA is never on the red list (of course we all know why, I'm just being sarcastic). Rant over!!!

@Walkaround

And now, our government is supposedly worried about 12 cases of a possible new variant in Portugal when it wasn’t worried about hospitals actually being overwhelmed and mass panic in India. It’s very hard not to have zero faith in their decision making, really, especially when the UK has identified more cases of this possible new variant already in the UK than in Portugal.

Portugal is behind on its vaccine rollout. I think only 10% of Portuguese are fully vaccinated.

We have a moral responsibility to not go around spreading yet another strain worldwide.

We've already done it once, with the Alpha (UK) strain.

The risks to us will be less from Portugal, and more from large groups (of Brits) mixing in airports and on planes. It's an airborne virus.

you want something else to stew about, did you know that returnees from amber countries who want to make use of the day 5 test to release are able take said test in Boots? So people are wandering out of their houses, mid-quarantine, into town centers and into Boots...

The people you quarantine with also go about their daily business. So while I'm in quarantine (and before and after I stroll to Boots), my husband will continue going out to work and the step kids will go to school 🤷‍♀️

Yes. We don't have real quarantine.
Which is why we have had instead repeated long lockdowns, over 130,000 dead, and many Long Covid sufferers. And a damaged economy.

The UK government prioritised international travel above lives, health - and the economy.

The consequence is we are now the high risk country. Which is why France, Germany, Japan, the US, and others are currently restricting UK entry.

@NannyAndJohn

If Johnson had "followed the science" and closed the borders back in Feb 2020 we'd have been free of restrictions for months now.

Instead we've over 150,000 dead and about to head into another lockdown.

Do you realise just how much accompanied freight we rely upon? Macron closed just one of the UK's borders and the result was chaos.

Do you realise just how much accompanied freight we rely upon? Macron closed just one of the UK's borders and the result was chaos.

That was done with no arrangements made for freight. Unlike this time round.

As we are a high risk country, France (together with many other places) is barring entry from UK. Truly essential travel only.

There's no import or export chaos. That's still going on.

@Anonymous48

Also how come the USA is never on the red list

Really? Maybe because the US is doing much better than the UK. Here in the US we (anyone over the age of 2) wore masks a couple of months before you guys. Covid guidelines are based on actual data rather than arbitrary dates. We never had ridiculous rules such as the "rule of 6". Most importantly anyone over the age of 12 has been able to get vaccinated for several weeks now.

How is the US "doing [present tense] much better than the UK"? The UK's death rate for the last week is a tenth of the US's. The real case rate in the US (once you adjust for differences in testing coverage) is higher than the UK.

The UK's vaccination programme has covered a far greater proportion of the population than the US. The only reason that the US moved down the age groups sooner is because there is more hesitancy there. In short, the US is running out of people willing to be vaccinated.

Well it's not as many people will be travelling to and from the USA. As we are on their list of high risk countries.

And actually just looking at data.

USA has a much larger population than us.

Per million population, it looks like our death rate is higher.

Out of interest, does America include deaths from Covid after 28 days? Lots of patients die after 28 days but we don't include them in our figures in the UK.

@Tealightsandd - something tells me our Government telling Brits not to travel to Portugal while Portugal complains that it wants British people to keep travelling there is not being done by our Government in order to protect Portugal from the UK.

As for large geoups of Brits mixing in airports and planes, the same can be said for large groups of Brits going to the theatre, to nightclubs, pubs, restaurants and cinemas, amongst others. Either we can do this post-vaccination or we can’t - there’s no point pretending not mixing together in Portugal is unsafe for the Portuguese as the reason for stopping British people doing this over there but allowing it over here.

Oh stop it with the facts and balanced information. There are FOREIGNERS in Kent, therefore it must have been the FOREIGNERS - it’s the only explanation.

I assume you are talking about the barracks where there was a massive outbreak of covid around the time of the other varient being discovered? That was my point. It could have easily been brought in that way. But obviously patient zero was identified. Although I cant find any source for this so I'll just carry on with my belief that nobody actually knows.

[quote Walkaround]@Tealightsandd - something tells me our Government telling Brits not to travel to Portugal while Portugal complains that it wants British people to keep travelling there is not being done by our Government in order to protect Portugal from the UK.[/quote]
You're right. That doesn't take away from our moral responsibilities.

One of the leading experts wrote about this the other day. Explained it well. The more travelling around the world that goes on, the more risk that it spreads into the most vulnerable countries. Not Portugal (although we shouldn't spread it there) but countries in the developing world, who have limited funds and health infrastructure to deal with the widespread outbreaks, deaths, Long Covid, and damage to the economy that we have had here.

Btw there's a difference between what the Portuguese government (and it's tourism industry) say they want, and what everyday Portuguese do. Many do not want to welcome inflected Brits.

Same as here. Polls consistently show majority of UK public choose restricted borders over many avoidable deaths, long term disability, and long repeated lockdowns. Yet our government claims we want to keep on importing (and exporting) any and all new strains (and let them spread)...

Of course all this not hopping over to other countries will be forgotten when the football starts and it is being played in umpteen different countries across Europe and the semis and final are at Wembley. But heyho, no worries as its the football.

I assume you are talking about the barracks where there was a massive outbreak of covid around the time of the other varient being discovered? That was my point. It could have easily been brought in that way. But obviously patient zero was identified. Although I cant find any source for this so I'll just carry on with my belief that nobody actually knows.

No, I’m not talking about any barracks. You are. You’ve insinuated in several comments that you think the Kent variant was imported by migrants.

@Tealightsandd - Poor countries cannot afford to be cut off by the rest of the world pretending to be protecting them, whilst simultaneously not providing them with vaccines or humanitarian or economic aid. It is quite simplistic, imvho, to argue that all borders should be firmly closed and that this is a morally superior stance to take - unless you actually then start letting those borders have considerable leaks for aid, trade and basic humanity.

@MissChanandlerBong90 It's just a theory. I dont know why you didnt just say if you knew what I was insinuating. I'm sure the people from Kent weren't too impressed being accused of being out raving during lockdown. Either way noone can say for sure, hence the use of 'Kent'

I'm also very aware of the conditions of the barracks so it's no surprise it spread so quickly in there.

Goodness. People again and again keep on confusing truly essential travel - like food and medical imports - with all other!

As has been explained by other posters on various threads, it's much easier to keep track of, isolate, test, manage, and/or contain cases when it's the small number of genuinely essential travel only.

Poor countries cannot afford to be cut off by the rest of the world pretending to be protecting them, whilst simultaneously not providing them with vaccines or humanitarian or economic aid.

I must have missed it... Did someone suggest upthread banning essential travel?

The only country in the world with completely closed borders is North Korea.

Many others have restricted travel - to genuinely essential only. With real quarantine.

@Tealightsandd - easier, not easy. And no, people do not confuse essential and non-essential travel, it’s just that some people try to glide over what they actually think counts as essential so as not to come up against the fact others may view their definition of essential as lacking in humanity or understanding of how a globalised world functions. Lots of poor countries have been well and truly dumped in it and this is not just, or even remotely mainly, as a result of foreigners importing covid.

It's really very simple walkaround
And something managed by many other countries. Including those poorer countries you say you care about. They choose to control their borders (it wasn't imposed on them) - because they may be poorer but they're not children who can't make their own (sensible) decisions.

Food, medicine, military, humanitarian, refugee. All examples of essential travel.

Holidays, business meetings that can be conducted by zoom or other modern technology, and football are not.

Not that simple, apparently, @Tealightsandd - plenty think cutting back on the humanitarian side, physically and financially, is the way to go. And I am not the one claiming to take the moral high ground. You are the one appearing to think other countries (and you?) have actually achieved that by closing their borders (no references made to anything else they may or may not have done at the same time, because you seem to have a blinkered focus on border control without providing any commentary on other behaviours and their potential effects).

Expert epidemiologist, Professor Deepti Gurdasani is absolutely right:

Gurdasani said the UK was "not only importing" variants but "exporting across the globe" and suggested that the UK allowed a third wave to be exported to other parts of the world.

"We're happy to send that with people on holidays to expose to people in other countries who don't have the same access to vaccines.

"To me that's completely unethical."

@Tealightsandd - South Africa, India, Nepal, Brazil, all doing the same. With or without tourism, essential travel means that, ultimately, these variants end up everywhere. Tourism really doesn’t help and isn’t necessary if you replace lost income with massive financial aid or poverty, but do you really think the Indian variant spread around the world because British people went on holiday there?

It was the Alpha (UK) strain that we spread around the world.

We are now at risk of doing the same with the Delta (Indian) variant.

There's a reason why lots of countries include us on their red or barred entry list.

We are a high risk country that others need to keep out.

And here’s something: Australia let its citizens go to India for essential family visits, then when it decided India was too dangerous for its liking, refused to let them come straight home again, even to quarantine. Was that ethical? Does it help India to inflict extra people on it that could go home to wealthier countries if those countries had plenty of spare aeroplanes to repatriate them? Was it wrong to let people with family in need in India to go and provide help to their own families, or should they have been told to stay in India and leave their families to suffer alone? When did helping family cease to be essential travel?

The Alpha (UK) strain was responsible for a lot of India's problems. Their outbreak was originally fuelled by the Alpha strain.