When will this shit end?

[Crazyfool01]

2 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

 

Tomorrow is never promised, whether that be by covid or any other reason. 

If tomorrow wasn’t promised ..and . we didnt have any vaccine news I’d agree ... but we do ... and it is potentially 2 weeks away from a start ... was it not you that posted that link ? 

[xxialac]

7 minutes ago, Punksnotdead said:

My mum, my brother, my daughter & me all live on our own. That's 4 miserable people on xmas day! We've all followed the rules for 9 months. For one day we're prepared to take the risk.

I've had a huge health scare a couple of months ago & I can't say with any certainty how many more Christmas days we'll have together!

It's not just your risk to consider though is it? If you infect each other, you're as a minimum risking the local hospital resources and potentially the wider community.

[zahidf]

on Xmas, regardless of rules, if you want to see your family, just quarantine yourself for 10-14 days before you see them. Thats what my friends do before they meet their vulnerable family. 

Whether or not their are specifc lockdown rules, if you do that, you should minimise the risks considerably. 

[Ryan1984]

2 minutes ago, zahidf said:

on Xmas, regardless of rules, if you want to see your family, just quarantine yourself for 10-14 days before you see them. Thats what my friends do before they meet their vulnerable family. 

Whether or not their are specifc lockdown rules, if you do that, you should minimise the risks considerably. 

Not everyone can quarantine themselves for that long with work etc.

[mattiloy]

Just now, steviewevie said:

In terms of economics Johnson's govt are kind of keynsian, right? Lots of spending. And also he is doing lots of stuff towards going carbon neutral, It's just all the cultural/social stuff that they have shifted to the right..Patel's shtick...and maybe some of that came from Cummings, who knows. The one big problem for Johnson's govt is competency, which I guess is one reason Cummings has gone...but maybe a lot of it is down to JOhnson himself. Anyway, if tories become competent, and do go ahead with all this spending...it's going to be very hard for labour, especially if they're still arguing about corbyn ffs.

The jury is still out but the initial reaction to the downturn was certainly more Keynesian than monetarist, depending largely on fiscal stimulus. But these are special circumstances, at the start of it there was talk of it being like 'war economics' which of course involves a lot of government spending (and borrowing) out of necessity. It will be more interesting to see how they proceed in the tail of the downturn - austerity or continued commitment to government spending.

The green new deal stuff is I'd say a little exaggerated thus far in terms of the scale of spending on it but is welcome. The timing of it makes me a little skeptical though, it was a bit of a life ring in an otherwise very choppy news cycle. But again, we'll see. As a populist, Boris has shown that he is open minded and tends to go whither the wind blows, but tory leaders are quite vulnerable to leadership challenges and he will have to temper his more progressive overtures with the reality of a lot of his party believing fairly rigidly neoclassical economic dogma and all the darwinian consequences of that.

[Fuzzy Afro]

8 minutes ago, Ryan1984 said:

Not everyone can quarantine themselves for that long with work etc.

Get a test? That’s what I’m doing 

[DeanoL]

 

1 hour ago, found home in 2009 said:

It depends how the family have been acting before hand. The only contact me and my girlfriend have with anyone is when we do our food shop. The only contact my parents have with anyone is when they do their food shop.

Is there really much risk of the four of us meeting up? 
 

The issue there is that, as an example, we're in the same situation as you, except both us and our parents get our groceries delivered, so we can have zero contacts two weeks before Christmas, so we're even safer. Maybe we would draw the "what's reasonable line" directly between the two examples. My parents not only get groceries delivered, but wipe everything down with anti-bac wipes before putting it away. Maybe they'll insist we start doing that too to be "safe". 

The thing is if you let everyone decide what is safe, people will always conveniently draw the line just below their current situation. Hence why some rules are required. I don't think a blanket "no household mixing" is the answer though.

29 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

Problem is it wont be just once - "we can't have these round today, so we'll just have to see them on boxing day for fairness" etc and suddenly there has been 3 more gatherings that wouldn't have happened in any other month 

Then make that a rule - you can see family but only one family.

I think a lot of this board still have WFH-itis to be honest. Not going out, not seeing anyone, so to us it's easy to go "Christmas is less important than keeping the pandemic in check". But remember there's a big list of things that the government do consider more important than keeping the pandemic in check:

Factories being open
Schools being open
Construction projects
The summer season for hospitality
Pubs and restaurants getting to open in some way
People going to work 
etc, etc, etc.

If you stop people seeing family at Christmas is not just saying "stopping pandemic > Christmas" it's saying "all of the above > Christmas" also.

Supermarket workers encounter 100s of people each day, and are then told that seeing their mum and dad at Christmas is "too dangerous" - wouldn't your response be "fuck off" ?

I'd say if a supermarket worker goes and spends three days with 5 other family members over Christmas, they're at considerably less risk than if they were working.

The fact is that we're already relaxing rules for loads of stuff. I don't think it's unreasonable that Christmas be one of them - the argument for the nation's mental health is, I think, as compelling as that for kid's education or keeping the retail and hospitality sectors solvent.

(Were we actually properly doing lockdown, don't leave your house, only key workers with permits allowed to travel, all shops closed, food packages delivered nationally, etc approach, then yes, re-opening for Christmas would be silly. But that's not the case.)

[DeanoL]

11 minutes ago, Ryan1984 said:

Not everyone can quarantine themselves for that long with work etc.

Therein lies the dilemma though. Should the rules be written to take into account those who can do that and therefore see family safely, or should everyone be kept in the same boat for the sake of "fairness" ?

(I'm not coming down on one side or the other - I think it's a genuine question that I struggle to answer)

[st dan]

I think what would be a disaster is having pubs, bars, restaurants etc open immediately after Christmas Day. That could potentially really accelerate the spread. 

However if we stay in some form of lockdown until Monday 4th Jan (a lot of people will be off work until then and schools are still closed) then I think it would be possible to have small gatherings without causing too much wide scale spreading of the virus. 

[xxialac]

Rules that are complicated don't get followed. People use the ambiguity to bend the rules to their own end.

I think what we need is simple rules and hard love.

The vaccine is here, knuckle down and good times are ahead.

Or come up with something half-baked and prolong the pain.

We will do the latter...

[Crazyfool01]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Supermarket workers encounter 100s of people each day, and are then told that seeing their mum and dad at Christmas is "too dangerous" - wouldn't your response be "fuck off" ?

I'd say if a supermarket worker goes and spends three days with 5 other family members over Christmas, they're at considerably less risk than if they were working.

Contact time is minimal in a supermarket and a majority are masked ... anecdotal evidence I know but in my workforce of around 400 we have had 4 confirmed cases over both peaks ... so close contact with family over a period of days I would say might be riskier ? That’s my personal assessment of it ... and we could easily have had many more asymptomatic cases .. 

[DeanoL]

2 minutes ago, xxialac said:

Rules that are complicated don't get followed. People use the ambiguity to bend the rules to their own end.

I think what we need is simple rules and hard love.

The vaccine is here, knuckle down and good times are ahead.

Or come up with something half-baked and prolong the pain.

We will do the latter...

Rules that are too draconian and have no viable way to be enforced also don't get followed.

[ace56blaa]

1 minute ago, st dan said:

I think what would be a disaster is having pubs, bars, restaurants etc open immediately after Christmas Day. That could potentially really accelerate the spread. 

However if we stay in some form of lockdown until Monday 4th Jan (a lot of people will be off work until then and schools are still closed) then I think it would be possible to have small gatherings without causing too much wide scale spreading of the virus. 

That's the thing, I think now we know how much pub and restaurants contributed to the second wave, we shouldn't be considering opening them for xmas. We should only open them when infections are low enough. A lot of places end up bending rules or doing the 1 metre plus thing without the necessary restrictions. - Because it is hard to financially viable with social distancing, especially in winter. - I can just imagine christmas eve and boxing day at the pubs being packed and no one policing it, because its christmas and it being a nightmare for infections, especially in the south, where I've noticed most don't realise that we are slowly rising to the same state the north was in when lockdown started. 

 

[xxialac]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Rules that are too draconian and have no viable way to be enforced also don't get followed.

I dunno. You can't really enforce the paying of the TV License and yet most people cough up for it.

A respected government with good, clear communcation and nudge techniques could have achieved a high level of compliance on covid.

[Fuzzy Afro]

2 minutes ago, xxialac said:

I dunno. You can't really enforce the paying of the TV License and yet most people cough up for it.

A respected government with good, clear communcation and nudge techniques could have achieved a high level of compliance on covid.

You realise 10% of all convictions in the UK are for TV licence avoidance? It absolutely is enforced 

[eFestivals]

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

You realise 10% of all convictions in the UK are for TV licence avoidance? It absolutely is enforced 

My mistake, apologies.

[Ozanne]

5 minutes ago, xxialac said:

I dunno. You can't really enforce the paying of the TV License and yet most people cough up for it.

A respected government with good, clear communcation and nudge techniques could have achieved a high level of compliance on covid.

The vast majority followed the strictest form of lockdown we had until Cummings decided to breach it. He’s now going so it’s an ideal time for the government to put a strong message out there.

[xxialac]

Just now, Ozanne said:

The vast majority followed the strictest form of lockdown we had until Cummings decided to breach it. He’s now going so it’s an ideal time for the government to put a strong message out there.

Totally agree.

[DeanoL]

 

6 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

You realise 10% of all convictions in the UK are for TV licence avoidance? It absolutely is enforced 

Nor do most people consider the TV license to be "draconian"!

There's a legit point there though - that some will actually follow the rules, so stricter rules for those that will follow them could offset infections generated by those who entirely ignore them. Again, that could be an effective approach but where do we start to concern ourselves with what's fair?

[squirrelarmy]

Maybe they need some drink driving style advertising. Show a family celebrating xmas then cut to the same family a few weeks later at a video based funeral. 
 

The message being, celebrate Christmas if you want but you risk costing the lives of those same family members. 
 

I know it’s a harsh message and probably disturbing to some but this is what it may take to get the message across. 

[xxialac]

I'd argue it's more draconian to insist people must pay to watch a television (even if a commercial broadcaster), leading to a criminal record, than insist they don't behave in a way which spreads a fatal virus during a global pandemic!

[Ozanne]

9 minutes ago, xxialac said:

I'd argue it's more draconian to insist people must pay to watch a television (even if a commercial broadcaster), leading to a criminal record, than insist they don't behave in a way which spreads a fatal virus during a global pandemic!

Boris is looking at making that a civil offence so no jail time. 

[philipsteak]

33 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

 

 

Supermarket workers encounter 100s of people each day, and are then told that seeing their mum and dad at Christmas is "too dangerous" - wouldn't your response be "fuck off" ?

I'd say if a supermarket worker goes and spends three days with 5 other family members over Christmas, they're at considerably less risk than if they were working.

 

Hospitality rather than supermarket but I was encountering hundreds of people a day whilst we were open and I made the choice not to visit my mum during that time because of the danger to her. It had nothing to do with the risk to me, that was all coming from my workplace and I didn't want to risk potentially catching and passing on the virus to her

[xxialac]

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Boris is looking at making that a civil offence so no jail time. 

They've actually delayed that.

And the goal is to weaken the BBC and bend it to the government's will, not to help people avoid going to jail!