Why was it easier to travel last summer than now?

[Honey12346]

Considering we have most vulnerable vaxxed now as opposed to last summer when vaccines weren't even developed yet?

Govt barely put any new countries on the green list which means it will take at least 3 more weeks before people can travel to popular holiday destinations without isolating and taking 3 tests on return...

This time last year you did not have to get tested to travel at all and there were plenty of countries on the green list

Rates were extremely low last summer. Is that why?

They’re rising now rapidly.

The government was a bit naive last year. They didn’t believe in a second wave, third wave, they didn’t believe in variants. Tbh I thought myself at some point that we’re nearly the end.

Last summer everyone naively thought the crisis was over. With hindsight, all those people travelling for their summer holidays brought back multiple new cases and then we ended up with the huge second wave of Sept/Oct onwards. At least this year they're trying to preserve some of what we've gained through vaccinations

Last summer we weren’t contending with the variants that we have now.

Travel is going to become more of a nightmare as more variants start cropping up.

Also as PP said, the government naively believed we were out of the woods. When you start mixing more you are far more likely to concoct a new strain which is what will probably happen this summer if anyone’s daft enough to let us Brits in.

Having said that variants can form anywhere so there’s no reason a German couldn’t pick up a strain from say Italy, that’s why international travel needs to be curbed as much as possible to minimise the risk of us creating and spreading a bad strain.

What everyone else has said.

Also it's harder to ignore the impact of Long Covid now. Although sufferers are still struggling to get taken seriously by their doctors (which means the true number of cases is likely to be much higher than the current estimate of 2 million).

www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/long-covid-bad-struggle-talk-doctors-dismissed-psychosomatic/amp/

She has life threatening clots in her lungs (caused by Long Covid) that were missed by standard scans.

I remember loads of people declaring we were on the home straight this time last year. Everything was goi g to be normal for Christmas, let's all eat out to help out all of August, by the time the kids get back to school in September there won't be rise in numbers.

I remember that being the general mood of the country. Cases declined, partially, because it was summer. And we knew less about it all.

But holidays were chaos last year though. Lots of people going, but not thinking about what happens of their destination switches lists while they are away.

I an a Uk passport holder. Living in Switzerland. I bitterly regret not visiting my parents, in-laws, family last summer. I didn’t bring my teenage boys over because of various reasons including everything being shut.
Now we can’t visit without a ridiculously expensive quarantine and cost of tests.
It was much easier last summer.
And the new rules spoken about today refer to British Residents being quarantine free. So that doesn’t help either.
It’s so upsetting. Frustrating and the goal posts change all the time. Two years since my husband last saw his parents and they saw their grandchildren.

Yeah it all worked out so well last year.

@Serenschintte - me too. I’m really kicking myself for not going back last year. I need to bite the bullet now because my dad is ill. The guidance from the Swiss government yesterday was no quarantine if vaccinated, but my kids are primary… so not vaccinated….

The EU countries are largely realising the latest mistake Mr Johnson made in not putting India on the red list when Pakistan and Bangladesh were.

@Dustyboots

Rates were extremely low last summer. Is that why?

They’re rising now rapidly.

I think it's largely due to volume of testing we do now, the numbers were probably the same

@Thewiseoneincognito

Last summer we weren’t contending with the variants that we have now.

Travel is going to become more of a nightmare as more variants start cropping up.

Aren't there hundreds of variants? I think the Delta variant is politically convenient

Don’t know but I’m super glad we nipped to france last July before rates went up.
Have learnt with this it’s good to grab opportunities and do stuff when you can

@Pootle40 how so? I agree it’s certainly driving the vaccine campaign and encouraging people to get jabbed so it does appear convenient. Aside from that it’s going to be a nightmare for the gov as the backdrop to Freedom day when our daily cases will be so high...

Do you think India could the delta variant "convenient " too @Pootle40?

1. The consensus from Joe Public last summer was "it's over" and the government were ignoring the scientists warning them about a Second Wave.

2. We now have Delta (and Delta+!) and cases are rising exponentially.

Because last summer Boris and his dimwits thought the virus had pretty much disappeared. Then we got a wave and they realised they fucked up. Hence not wanting to make that mistake again so quickly

There's two sides to this. Its not just the UK government side but also other governments.

12 months ago we were still in EU transition. This made it harder for other countries to stop us travelling. So there's a political element to this which isn't much talked about. Eu countries are, in part, not opening up to the uk because we are now a third party outside the EU.

Other countries also were allowing more travel last year - up to point where it became apparent that the Kent variant was a problem. Then things changed both here and abroad. Variants are an issue which didn't exist last year.

When it realised that it wasn't just about having covid but having a different type of covid that was problematic things changed. There was a tightening of rules everywhere.

Cases last year appeared to be at lower levels than they actually were as our testing wasn't as good so we had a false sense of security which is now gone. Plus we have the means to check this. But again this is a two way thing - not just our government. You have to have both exit and entry tests and documentation to travel.

There were a number of outbreaks last summer connected with being sat in a sealed metal tin for several hours with a couple of hundred other people with only a mask (if people even bothered properly with one or had an effective one in the first place)

Basically we didn't have a fucking clue last year. But we weren't exactly alone on this.

It was the Kent variant that screwed everything up, not people holidaying actually. As the conspiracy theorists say, do your research!

Look for any thread on MN ranting about "Close the Boarders!"