Although to be fair we hadn't got 40% of the population vaccinated back in early September.

Don't get me wrong, I think the strategy isn't great - the time in lockdowns could have been spent finding additional buildings/space for schools to use and to bring back some teaching assistants to help reduce class sizes and make social distancing much easier, as well as to improve community test, trace and isolate procedures.

We'll see what happens anyway - 5 weeks before the next end-of-lockdown phase, hopefully we see positive data.

How are you defining ‘everything’ ? Because where I am it’s literally only food shops open.

Though Drakeford will apparently go forward with reopening non essential shops and hairdressers on the 15th. I guess I’d be excited if I had hair.

You don't even have cafe takeaway?

I literally drove across state lines to go to a garden centre - worth it for the discovery that theres a strip of the A111 on the way into Berlin that is de-restricted �� - because f*** all is open in Berlin. Think 75% of the cars in Oranienburg today had Berlin plates ��

I had another chat with my mum today and I’ve resigned myself to the fact she won’t be getting the vaccine....yet. She has reasons , not that I agree with them, but she’s told me she would rather wait to get it in the Autumn when she feels it will be more effective.

Germany is a bit like the US then. I expect in the US loads of people drove from the blue states to the red states that don't generally lock down as much to access services.
I can see why, although I don't agree with declining the current vaccine. Realistically, the current vaccine is likely only a short term control (a few months maybe) which will probably be largely ineffective by later in the summer when the virus will probably have mutated beyond it (especially considering the government hasn't really been effective in stopping new variants entering the UK via foreign travel), and hopefully we will get an update to the vaccine probably after another period of lockdown in late summer/early autumn. But a short term control provided by this current vaccine is better than nothing, it allows a summer with more freedom and where the economy is reopened. So as many people as possible taking the current vaccine is still very important to allow us to have a better summer.

You keep going on about the virus mutating and making the vaccine ineffective and yet at present it doesn’t look like this is the case. It seems very pessimistic and going by your logic perhaps we shouldn’t be getting to vaccine at all because it won’t offer us protection down the line. Surely the vaccines are not done and dusted already and they will still be being worked on in the eventualities of future variants.

I did say that the current vaccine was highly worthwhile to take as it almost certainly offers us protection for the next few months and I will be getting it myself but it doesn't mean like much of the media is suggesting that a return to complete normality in the summer is a good idea. Obviously the risk of cases and hospitalizations rising with new variants by the end of the summer and us having to go back into lockdown in the autumn while we wait for the new vaccine to be rolled out would be less if everyone was still largely social distancing in the summer albeit with the economy largely reopened like last summer but that's probably not going to happen as much of the media has hyped everyone up for 'a complete return to normality' in the summer. The return of foreign holidays especially which most of the newspapers have hyped up bring with it a risk of importing new variants.

I suppose though the recent high vaccine uptake has been on the back of the anticipation of a 'complete return to normality' in the summer including foreign holidays and to deny people that after most people have had the vaccine would undermine vaccine uptake in the autumn when the booster comes around. So it is is a very difficult situation to deal with. Of course if there is spike in Covid hospitalisations and deaths in late summer/early autumn as a result of all the summer festivities and freedom that will also probably undermine confidence in the vaccine in the autumn too.

We have one cafe in my village but I rarely use it. They wouldn’t open much past 4 even normally anyway. We have pub take away too but they tend to be deliveries.

You see, my mum would rather wait until Autumn because she believes the virus to be seasonal and she thinks she will need to protection more at that time of year. I don’t necessarily agree with her but I’m not falling out with her over this, I have enough on my plate and I don’t have the energy. Knowing that she will get vaccinated at some point is enough for me for now. I’ve told her she’ll still face restrictions and she’s ok with that.

You keep going on about the virus mutating and making the vaccine ineffective and yet at present it doesn’t look like this is the case. It seems very pessimistic and going by your logic perhaps we shouldn’t be getting to vaccine at all because it won’t offer us protection down the line. Surely the vaccines are not done and dusted already and they will still be being worked on in the eventualities of future variants.

Germany is a bit like the US then. I expect in the US loads of people drove from the blue states to the red states that don't generally lock down as much to access services.

People are going to need a vaccine to be able to leave the country or possibly even attend a football match, so you're going to see high levels of uptake. The stuff around the new variants is concerning, but there's no point worrying about it, they can tweak the vaccine and I'm sure I've read some pharma companies are not even tweaking the vaccine right now for production as it is still good against the other variants. The likelihood is people will need a booster shot in the Autumn. Covid isn't going away and like the flu we're going to have to learn to live with it and carry an acceptable risk every year. I genuinely don't think we will be in another lockdown again after this one.

The plan is sensible enough, it's given businesses timeframes to aim to which is positive. Of course the major problem is if people take it as fact that we will open up on those dates, but that's a while away yet. Problem is everyone is just itching to get back to normal now. I'm actually amazed the infection numbers are as low as they are tbh.

The German federal structure is modelled off the US, so individual states hold a lot of power and each are having fractional differences. But it’s not so much on political grounds as the SPD lead the coalition govs in both Berlin and Brandenburg and the Greens are part of the coalition in both states too. (Die Linke being the third party in Berlin and CDU in Brandenburg)
I’m not sure there is much cross-state traffic either in the US or DE except for where you have an interlinked population. The same as in the UK. Berlin is surrounded by Brandenburg and a big chunk of Brandenburgs population, including the state capital Potsdam, are basically just “Greater Berlin” as the towns are well integrated with Berlin. Like I went to Oranienburg which is the end of the S1 on the Berlin S-Bahn so not really like if I was going from a blue to a red state in the us.

Yeah what has me worried is these new variants seem to be happening worryingly quickly and unfortunately not making the virus less dangerous to health along with more easily spread like some scientists expected to see happening with virus mutations. Hopefully with mass vaccination, the mutation pace will slow down though.

'Learning to live with it' doesn't sound good when the chance of risking the health of your parents through going to a social gathering is still there as it may be in the summer. You compare it to living with flu but Covid having a significantly higher mortality rate has a higher range of at risk groups of people than flu does and can seriously affect or kill more otherwise relatively healthy people.

The football matches that you mention are at least are outside so the risk of spread is less there. Other mass gatherings inside and especially foreign travel to places where maybe testing for new variants is less than the UK do is more risky.