@Lua
Some people in this thread seems to think that stopping restrictions due to covid will improve the treatment of other diseases, business, etc. Why is that?
The more peole with covid, the more people with serious infections have to wait, the harder it is for people with serious disease to go see the Gp or hospital.
Also, from what I hear a lot of restaurants and bars a loosing a lot of money because they have to close due to lack of staff....
Careful what you wish for...
I don't think you realise just how much the current restrictions have still be hampering trade/business.
Take a funeral. Because fewer people can attend, that's fewer flowers, loss of business for the cafes/restaurants/pubs that usually do wakes, fewer people using public transport or taxis or their cars as they travel for the funeral, fewer people using hotels when a funeral is a long way from home, etc etc. Then what about the anciliary services used by the taxi firms, hotels, cafes, etc., such as their accountants, book-keepers, solicitor, website designer, etc etc. Not to mention the lack of spending by the business owner, over 3 million of whom have been excluded from the govt covid support and so don't have money to spend on luxuries, maybe not even money to spend on essentials. So you see the knock on effect on limiting funeral attendees goes right through several sectors of the economy. That's a massive loss of tax revenues (VAT, income tax, NIC, corporation tax) and cost to the Govt of unemployment benefits and other state support, etc. That can't go on a single moment longer.
I run a small accountancy practice. In theory we've been "unaffected" as we have been able to trade throughout by working from home, social distancing, etc. In reality, our client numbers (and therefore income/profits) are down by over half, due to the sheer number of our small business clients who've had to close or curtail their activities, meaning less work for us to do for them. We were heavily into small non food shops, B&Bs, freelancers, etc - the types of business most affected by the restrictions.