When will this shit end?

[Ozanne]

6 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

I think we really need to be looking at a circuit breaker type action over the half term. I like the idea of a 5 mile travel limit for non-essential journeys during half term.

If they do a circuit breaker there shouldn’t be any exceptions. Why muddy the waters.
 

I really don’t think those triage numbers mean a great deal. The rise in September was probably due to concerned parents and now that’s settled down a bit we are seeing those numbers fall. Case numbers yesterday were over 1,000 up from the same day the week before. 

Edited September 28, 2020 by Ozanne

[steviewevie]

4 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

If they do a circuit breaker there shouldn’t be any exceptions. Why muddy the waters.
 

I really don’t think those triage numbers mean a great deal. The rise in September was probably due to concerned parents and now that’s settled down a bit we are seeing those numbers fall. Case numbers yesterday were over 1,000 up from the same day the week before. 

which means not doubling every 7 days..?

[DeanoL]

 

13 hours ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Yeah when people talk about extended bubbles I just don't get how it would work. Like my partner's parents and my parents would have to be in the same bubble as us, but they've only met once and live miles apart. So that's weird. We'd also likely have to add our siblings' families. If we wanted to add any friends, do we add their families? You either need a really small bubble or a fucking huge one.

It's not a magic bullet - it doesn't let you see everyone you want. We'd all have to make tough choices on who our six people were - do we want to include our parents (and do they want to include us?) and which friends would we want to see. But it's a middle ground between being able to see anyone as long as it's not more than 6 at once, and being able to see no-one.

I think we'll definitely see something like this over Christmas.

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

If they do a circuit breaker there shouldn’t be any exceptions. Why muddy the waters.
 

Because you live more than five miles from the nearest hospital/test centre/supermarket. And key workers.

[squirrelarmy]

7 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

I think we really need to be looking at a circuit breaker type action over the half term. I like the idea of a 5 mile travel limit for non-essential journeys during half term.

How would a travel limit be enforced? Potentially you could use the ANPR system to see if cars are away from the area they are registered in however if the system flagged up every time a car is 5 miles away from their home address there would be easily 10 million hits a day if not more. It would be impossible to check even 1% of those journeys to see if they are genuine. Probably have more chance of winning the lottery than being caught by the system. 
 

It could be a useful deterrent but in reality unenforceable. 

[DeanoL]

The pubs vs household thing:

Schools, workplaces, carehomes - they result in outbreaks. Because the same people go there every day. If one person is carrying asymptomatically, they'll pass it on and others will catch it and it'll go around. That's almost inevitable.

But that one asymptomatic carrier doesn't appear out of nowhere. They caught it from somewhere. But we're not currently tracing those back to find out where. In many cases we won't even know who first infected the group and caused the outbreak to even try.

Pubs and restaurants don't generally have the same people in them every day. And people only go there for a few hours. You could be in the same pub as someone carrying it and not get it, even if they brushed passed you because they were a bit drunk and forgot about social distancing. Equally, you could catch it. Crucially, we don't really know if you did as contact tracing in pubs wasn't compulsory. 

To use the bubbles were talking about as an analogy, you can see the schools and workplaces as giant bubbles. Pubs aren't a bubble - they're a load of random people all together. Different people every night, in different places. Infecting probably not huge amounts of people, but doing so almost entirely at random. That's why they're problematic. Especially if, for example, they infect a dad, who then infects his family, whose kids then infect the school. Could the dad also have got infect from work? Sure. But there's a better chance then of actually tracking the infection and getting him tested before the rest of the family catch it.

[Fuzzy Afro]

10 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

How would a travel limit be enforced? Potentially you could use the ANPR system to see if cars are away from the area they are registered in however if the system flagged up every time a car is 5 miles away from their home address there would be easily 10 million hits a day if not more. It would be impossible to check even 1% of those journeys to see if they are genuine. Probably have more chance of winning the lottery than being caught by the system. 
 

It could be a useful deterrent but in reality unenforceable. 

I mean Wales and Scotland used this in the first lockdown. It’s not really enforceable but as per all restrictions, it’s about reducing transmission not stopping it altogether.

 

The real aim of it is to prevent staycations to Cornwall/Cleethorpes/the Scottish highlands in half term. Perhaps closing hotels would be a better way to achieve that. 

[Zoo Music Girl]

15 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

 

It's not a magic bullet - it doesn't let you see everyone you want. We'd all have to make tough choices on who our six people were - do we want to include our parents (and do they want to include us?) and which friends would we want to see. But it's a middle ground between being able to see anyone as long as it's not more than 6 at once, and being able to see no-one.

I think we'll definitely see something like this over Christmas.

Because you live more than five miles from the nearest hospital/test centre/supermarket. And key workers.

We probably wouldn't bubble with anyone on that basis then. Both me and my partner have siblings so there would be no way to bubble with both our families if you had to stick to six. Would imagine it would be impossible for most people to do it.

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

5 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

The pubs vs household thing:

Schools, workplaces, carehomes - they result in outbreaks. Because the same people go there every day. If one person is carrying asymptomatically, they'll pass it on and others will catch it and it'll go around. That's almost inevitable.

But that one asymptomatic carrier doesn't appear out of nowhere. They caught it from somewhere. But we're not currently tracing those back to find out where. In many cases we won't even know who first infected the group and caused the outbreak to even try.

Pubs and restaurants don't generally have the same people in them every day. And people only go there for a few hours. You could be in the same pub as someone carrying it and not get it, even if they brushed passed you because they were a bit drunk and forgot about social distancing. Equally, you could catch it. Crucially, we don't really know if you did as contact tracing in pubs wasn't compulsory. 

To use the bubbles were talking about as an analogy, you can see the schools and workplaces as giant bubbles. Pubs aren't a bubble - they're a load of random people all together. Different people every night, in different places. Infecting probably not huge amounts of people, but doing so almost entirely at random. That's why they're problematic. Especially if, for example, they infect a dad, who then infects his family, whose kids then infect the school. Could the dad also have got infect from work? Sure. But there's a better chance then of actually tracking the infection and getting him tested before the rest of the family catch it.

Can you please explain the last sentence? 

[Fuzzy Afro]

1 minute ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

Can you please explain the last sentence? 

I think he means that if you keep your close contacts to people you know (family, friends, work colleagues), as opposed to randoms in the pub, it makes contact tracing way easier. @DeanoL to confirm though. 

[DeanoL]

Regarding household gatherings, I think the government need to pivot on this to try and explain that the "rule of six" isn't a free for all. They can't enforce what people do in their own homes, but that doesn't mean they can't tell us what to do, and if it's reasonable people will listen.

The social distancing guidance needs to be made clear: stay 2m from those not in your household, or 1m+ if everyone is wearing masks.

It needs to be explained what that looks like. And it needs to be explained what 3 people each standing 2m from each other looks like. We need to be encouraged to only have people around our houses if that distancing can be achieved. For many people that's easily possible but they would need to rearrange the seats in their lounges a bit - most are not bothering because there's no emphasis on this. Plus we need to be encouraged to wipe down surfaces after having visitors and other such precautions. People will do this stuff, if it means they're allowed to actually see people.

We also need to fix pubs and restaurants. They need to straight up stop taking bookings or allowing in groups of more than two households. Because they just don't have the space to seat people at tables where 3 different groups are all distanced at 2m from each other (and it needs to be 2m, because we're not wearing masks, because we're eating/drinking). Even if they had huge tables where they could do this, you probably wouldn't be able to hear the other group anyway. Pubs and restaurants need to stop kidding themselves that they can just seat people arriving together how they like, and think they're doing it right. And the government need to stop turning a blind eye.

(The unfortunate reality is that for a lot of pubs/restaurants, this would reduce capacity so much they wouldn't be able to open, but that's a different issue - if we're going to relax the rules so they can still function, it should be done knowingly, not by just ignoring breaches of it)

If we start doing that, people might even start doing similar stuff at home without having to be told. In the same way "I can meet my friends at a pub so I should be able to see them at my home" works, so does "they make me sit 2m from my friends in a pub so I should probably be doing the same thing at home".

[DeanoL]

4 minutes ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

Can you please explain the last sentence? 

If there's an asymptomatic person at work, and they infect say, three people, and you're one of them, but you also don't have any symptoms, but the other two infected people do, they will tell their workplace, and the workplace will inform everyone and suggest people be cautious. If someone knows they've been in relatively close contact with the colleagues affected, they could then take greater care at home, potentially isolate themselves, and in theory get tested (although obviously not at the moment). If they caught it in a pub there's a decent chance they would never even know about it.

[DeanoL]

8 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

We probably wouldn't bubble with anyone on that basis then. Both me and my partner have siblings so there would be no way to bubble with both our families if you had to stick to six. Would imagine it would be impossible for most people to do it.

Then bubble with some friends instead. Or just bubble with one family. Or as you say, worst case you bubble with no-one, which is what the original lockdown was anyway, so you'd be no worse off.

Sort of depends on how important the social contact is to people versus the awkwardness of having to choose people. If you're perfectly content with the two of you for a few months choosing no-one isn't a bad idea. If it's horrendously hitting your mental health (or you need help with childcare, or you have to look after parents, etc) it gives an alternative.

[Ozanne]

25 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

 

It's not a magic bullet - it doesn't let you see everyone you want. We'd all have to make tough choices on who our six people were - do we want to include our parents (and do they want to include us?) and which friends would we want to see. But it's a middle ground between being able to see anyone as long as it's not more than 6 at once, and being able to see no-one.

I think we'll definitely see something like this over Christmas.

Because you live more than five miles from the nearest hospital/test centre/supermarket. And key workers.

The full on lockdown we had didn’t have a 5 mile radius and those people could still go to hospital and a supermarket. A 5 mile radius will be ignored and is entirely unenforceable.

 

It’s not really a bubble of you can have several people from different households in it. The point of the bubble is to keep it limited and also aid people that currently live on their own.

[Zoo Music Girl]

2 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Then bubble with some friends instead. Or just bubble with one family. Or as you say, worst case you bubble with no-one, which is what the original lockdown was anyway, so you'd be no worse off.

Sort of depends on how important the social contact is to people versus the awkwardness of having to choose people. If you're perfectly content with the two of you for a few months choosing no-one isn't a bad idea. If it's horrendously hitting your mental health (or you need help with childcare, or you have to look after parents, etc) it gives an alternative.

I just think six is a weird number given most people's set-up in terms of families. But yeah we would just stick to ourselves in that situation. Any of our friends would likely choose family and having to decide which set of parents to bin off would be too political! 

[squirrelarmy]

16 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

The real aim of it is to prevent staycations to Cornwall/Cleethorpes/the Scottish highlands in half term. Perhaps closing hotels would be a better way to achieve that.

You could monitor certain roads like M5, M6, M1, A1 & A64 and that would limit the amount of hits the system would get. Anyone seen towing a caravan should get an automatic fine. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

14 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Regarding household gatherings, I think the government need to pivot on this to try and explain that the "rule of six" isn't a free for all. They can't enforce what people do in their own homes, but that doesn't mean they can't tell us what to do, and if it's reasonable people will listen.

The social distancing guidance needs to be made clear: stay 2m from those not in your household, or 1m+ if everyone is wearing masks.

It needs to be explained what that looks like. And it needs to be explained what 3 people each standing 2m from each other looks like. We need to be encouraged to only have people around our houses if that distancing can be achieved. For many people that's easily possible but they would need to rearrange the seats in their lounges a bit - most are not bothering because there's no emphasis on this. Plus we need to be encouraged to wipe down surfaces after having visitors and other such precautions. People will do this stuff, if it means they're allowed to actually see people.

We also need to fix pubs and restaurants. They need to straight up stop taking bookings or allowing in groups of more than two households. Because they just don't have the space to seat people at tables where 3 different groups are all distanced at 2m from each other (and it needs to be 2m, because we're not wearing masks, because we're eating/drinking). Even if they had huge tables where they could do this, you probably wouldn't be able to hear the other group anyway. Pubs and restaurants need to stop kidding themselves that they can just seat people arriving together how they like, and think they're doing it right. And the government need to stop turning a blind eye.

(The unfortunate reality is that for a lot of pubs/restaurants, this would reduce capacity so much they wouldn't be able to open, but that's a different issue - if we're going to relax the rules so they can still function, it should be done knowingly, not by just ignoring breaches of it)

If we start doing that, people might even start doing similar stuff at home without having to be told. In the same way "I can meet my friends at a pub so I should be able to see them at my home" works, so does "they make me sit 2m from my friends in a pub so I should probably be doing the same thing at home".

This is a good post. A really good post.

 

I was saying on here last week that my boss went to Wagamama’s with his brother who he doesn’t live with and they had provisions for distancing between different households in the same group (1m between the seats, and a Perspex screen between them).

 

I’m surprised how much of a free for all pubs and restaurants have become. You can just get a normal table at most places for your whole group. It allows for social distancing between tables, but not between people who turn up together but don’t live together. 

[Homer]

Supposed to go to the Cotswolds for a uni catchup weekend then to Mykonos on Monday. Cotswolds cancelled as 3/6 of our party are coming from Cardiff/Swansea and if London lockdown comes in, that's foreign travel out.

Mykonos flights cancelled but am considering Turkey as an alternative. Bit morally dubious about going abroad, but have got so far ahead with work already, if i don't go away, not sure how I can justify having no work to do for two weeks.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Homer

[Fuzzy Afro]

1 minute ago, Homer said:

Supposed to go to the Cotswolds for a uni catchup weekend then to Mykonos on Monday. Cotswolds cancelled as 3/6 of our party are coming from Cardiff/Swansea and if London lockdown comes in, that's foreign travel out.

Mykonos flights cancelled but am considering Turkey as an alternative. Bit morally dubious about going abroad, but have got so far ahead with work already, if i don't go away, not sure how I can justify having no work to do for two weeks.

Going to Turkey is no more dangerous than just hanging around in the UK for a couple of weeks. It’s not on the isolation list for a reason.

 

As long as you follow social distancing whilst you’re out there then I don’t see the moral concern  

[Fuzzy Afro]

There’s a u-turn on the parliamentary exemption from 10pm curfew 

[mcshed]

15 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Then bubble with some friends instead. Or just bubble with one family. Or as you say, worst case you bubble with no-one, which is what the original lockdown was anyway, so you'd be no worse off.

You can't just bubble with some friends or some family as you please you can only bubble with one single person household or with the household of your partner if that is applicable.

[squirrelarmy]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

There’s a u-turn on the parliamentary exemption from 10pm curfew 

A U-turn from this government? 
 

The 10pm curfew is likely to be scrapped soon anyway so won’t make much difference to the MP’s drinking habits. 

[Ozanne]

6 minutes ago, Homer said:

Supposed to go to the Cotswolds for a uni catchup weekend then to Mykonos on Monday. Cotswolds cancelled as 3/6 of our party are coming from Cardiff/Swansea and if London lockdown comes in, that's foreign travel out.

Mykonos flights cancelled but am considering Turkey as an alternative. Bit morally dubious about going abroad, but have got so far ahead with work already, if i don't go away, not sure how I can justify having no work to do for two weeks.

I don’t meant to scare you but this was just published by the ONS.

[Homer]

2 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Going to Turkey is no more dangerous than just hanging around in the UK for a couple of weeks. It’s not on the isolation list for a reason.

 

As long as you follow social distancing whilst you’re out there then I don’t see the moral concern  

Yeah, you're prob right ta. Turkey is very much the place to go apparently. I understand that we will have to wear a mask everywhere, even the beach, but not around the hotel. Looks like we will stay in a hotel for two weeks and barely leave the pool bar the evenings. May even go half-board. This is very much not the sort of holiday I am used to!

[Gilb]

10 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Anyone seen towing a caravan should get an automatic fine. 

This rule should be in place with or without a virus

[Fuzzy Afro]

Just now, Gilb said:

This rule should be in place with or without a virus

So should Birmingham being locked down 😂