The local rugby, tennis, football and cricket clubs have been brilliant here. All making special effort to run kids clubs. The high school is running after school sports too. The only sports thing thats proving particularly difficult around here to my knowledge is swimming.
Scouts, cubs and beavers have been running since the day they were allowed to (End of March). Again they are pulling out all the stops. In terms of expense they are cheap but spaces limited. If you weren't on the waiting list before you won't get in. Dance classes running. Brownies running.
DS's primary is running sports day. The parents were upset because the plan wouldn't allow parents even though it was after the 21st June as the DFE hadn't green lit it yet. In the event it doesn't matter now. They are also going ahead with school trips for every year group and unusually at the cost of just £2 per child.
Literally everything that people can do here, people are trying to pull the stops out for kids and provide reduced cost / free places for those struggling. The main barrier is the will to get these up and running in the face of regulations not the regulations themselves. So places are not as determined to do this as others - why I don't know. So its possible to do these things under the regulations and indeed its being encouraged by government and youth groups. The stage in lockdown we are at has this factored in.
As it goes yougov did a survey about how people felt about the 4 week delay. 71% support it and 24% oppose it. Thats much better than I feared.
In terms of the growth of the virus, the point is its expenatial. That means that even though its small numbers now it has the potential to explode very quickly.
There was a key point Chris Whitty made - on the 19th July - even with this delay - the number of cases will be higher than now. They aren't trying to stop this dead like before. The delay is to get jabs in arms and maintain the current rate of growth rather than allow it to accelerate.
This is something thats crucial to understand.
The government are now saying 'we have accepted a certain number of deaths as inevitable and on balance more restrictions would do more harm'.
Part of this reasoning is we have to realise that vaccination only give so much protection and this wave will pass through regardless. If we delay it too much we run into the winter which would cause additional problems (eg immunity may be on decline at the same point the most vulnerable need 3rd doses). We actually need the wave to be over by the autumn so the window of opportunity to manage the situation is limited.
Whether this will work is another matter but only time will tell.