Again I think where we are at is a point where the public have unrealistic expectations and don't understand the situation.
We may have initially been persuing a zero covid strategy once a lockdown was announced. I think it became obvious by about 1st August last year when Manchester was put into higher levels of restrictions that was going to be near impossible. The first lockdown hadn't worked. Yes natural herd immunity may have been an early strategy but that certain was already off the cards by Easter.
It become clear by the first week in September that our capacity to trace and detect cases through testing wasn't sufficient. We couldn't force people to isolate / test if people didn't want to and we didn't have the ability to test all the people who wanted to be anyway.
At this point, the idea of zero covid was gone. People who have clinged to it haven't understood the problem.
It strikes me that the effectiveness of vaccines may have been misunderstood by the public at this juncture and who are now going, well whats the point of having being vaccinated if I still might get ill or even die. Its always been said that the vaccine wouldn't work in every case. The penny is dropping that, this might be a lot of people in practice.
The other thing I don't think a lot of people fully get is the health and socioeconomic issues (and subsequent knock effect to health again) from lockdown. We've almost conditioned ourselves to only see covid.
What I'm seeing now from scientists is a shift from covid being the sole issue, to it being balanced off against other health issues. And the public not understanding this.
Politically we are getting from labour talk of needing to continue restrictions whilst simulataneously refusing to properly acknowledge the link between economic hardship and covid. Throwing a few quid at people to isolate or to furlough them indefinitely, doesn't really help. There is a point where this becomes harmful - people sat at home doing nothing isn't good for them psychically or mentally. Avoiding covid is only sustainable for a finate period regardless of your political pursuasions.
I do think we are at the cross roads point where we have to have difficult conversations over people's expectations, what they thought the aim of restrictions was and the degree to which governments can reasonably stop the tide. Ultimately I think its a little like King Knut sat on the beach, and its only just beginning to dawn on a lot of people that once vaccinations reach a certain level, beyond that intervention by the authorities can only carry on to a certain degree and in the most extreme situations
Where that cut off point is, is the only real debate.
Masks I would have liked to have continued regulated. My suspicion is you would be unwise to bin them all though.
The heavy hints in the press conference were there - they would keep things advisory as much as possible and would strengthen these advisories if needed but they reserved the right to bring in restrictions again if circumstances dictated it. From the mouth of Johnson himself.
But again these restrictions are only going to be able preventing the collaspe of the health service not preventing death.
Mistakes have been made on this by just about every government in the world. We have had some real strengths and weaknesses - like other countries. But ultimately we don't live in isolation. What mistakes were made in China rippled, then Italy, then the UK, then India and so on. Even Australia which has performed really well in the eyes of many is now in a really dangerous situation because of failures.
The public expectation that our government should be infaliable in the face of such unknowns is off the scale bonkers. Yet there are plenty of people who fall into this bracket.
How we got here is one for the public enquiry years done the line. It makes no difference to the situation we are now in.
How much is realistic to protect the clinical vulnerable - without producing even more clincally vulnerable? Thats the issue. Restrictions themselves run the risk of potentially creating more vulnerable. Its not just covid that can do harm.
We have to balance these things. And I think at a time where binary thought processes are amplified and promoted by social media and critical thinking is in crisis and not encouraged as much as it should be, I don't think enough people fully understand whats going on and why / how / what we need to balance.
We are stuck in a land of one dimensional thinking lacking in nuance.