Well there reports today suggest that going forward there will be no need to go into isolation if you've been double jabbed (just daily tests), school bubbles will end and no covid passports and this is supported by Chris Whitty.
So I guess we will have to see what actually happens but I think there are a lot of people on MN who are going to have a shit fit at restrictions being lifted.
After 19th, we will be reaching a situation where if we continue with restrictions - unless we have particularly difficult issues in the depth of winter - where we will risk more lives indirectly.
That adjustment isn't going to be one that people are going to cope with well. So expect to see a fair amount of talk about this in the next couple of weeks.
And whilst I don't expect restrictions to be lifted earlier, if England do reach the Euros final, I am expecting there to be a half hearted / rather lax attitude about it coming from the top (basically the government know it will be bloody pointless and counter productive to tell people not to be dicks just a week before restrictions are due to be lifted - especially since the data is currently better than they feared would be the case at this point).
I am no where near anti-lockdown etc but I do think there are an awful lot of people who don't get where we are with things and what options are left to us going forward. Unfortunately we are at the point where there is little more that is feasible in terms of government intervention and there is a limit to what will be tolerated in the winter (if we need minor restrictions) if restrictions carry on over the summer.
There isn't much alternative to starting life back up.
I do get the impression that a lot of people haven't clocked or worked out how well vaccinations are working and how the data is good.
Its been said that in the near future the government will have to stop giving daily updates on numbers because its effectively going to fuel anxieties in an unnecessary and counter productive way. Of course this is going to be taken in completely the wrong way.
I really think there needs to be a massive change in the communications strategy because there is a growing gap between what is actually happening and where we are in terms of the pandemic and how it can be managed by intervention and what people understand.
People are not processing the decline in risk in an accurate way. Thats the problem.
It does worry me what the implications of this will be.
The dramatisation about it on MN is off the scale.
No we will not have covid passports. They won't work (for various reasons to do with willingness to comply reducing and prohibitive costs) and there are legal implications which would make it difficult to introduce / enforce without the risk that someone could come along and take it to court and more than likely win.
Its a complete non starter. And the government who looked into this, realised this reality which is part of the reason the whole idea is getting dropped.
But this part of the story seems to have been missed convientantly by those who want passports and by those who want to scare people and spread disinformation that they will be force to have one.
It.is.not.happening.