Pet peeves during pandemic - when people are on public transport and they go to the trouble of putting a face mask on but have it hanging down round their chin, may as well just remove it mate

That, and when people wear masks in shops so they’re allowed in, then don’t cover their nose. Kind of misses the point.

Pet peeves during pandemic - when people are on public transport and they go to the trouble of putting a face mask on but have it hanging down round their chin, may as well just remove it mate

Folk were doing that on the bus yesterday I just don’t see the f***ing point. Why bother at all if it’s gonna be a chin strap you look like a twat.

 

Contributing to the cities ever climbing number of cases. It’s a joke how selfish some folk are being

I was gonna smack him seriously how much do you have to get it through people’s thick skulls

@1316039051607236609

 

Hospital admissions continue to climb...

@1316039051607236609

 

Hospital admissions continue to climb...

 

Starmer has gone on record now of saying we need a 2-3 week circuit breaker. I feel at this stage it is inevitable and it is probably wise.

 

I'm not a fan of the restrictions at all and I do agree we need to try and find some normality, but it's clear that we have zero control over the virus at all and all the measures being put in place will have naff all effect. It's better to re-group now and buy ourselves some time until the end of 2020 at least.

 

I think I remember when the leaks about the circuit breaker came out firstly, Rishi said he would resign and that is what ultimately swayed Johnson

I think it's a bad idea. It'll show the rates yes but we'll be right back to where we were beforehand as soon as its over. A buying time strategy for a silver bullet vaccine which may never come is ludicrous. Not to mention it'll kill off all the remaining businesses within the hospitality industry.

I think it is just delaying the inevitable yes, and indeed may delay the second peak into the heart of winter and toward Christmas. The trouble is however, it may become forced upon the government when the capacity of the NHS is pushed to breaking point.

 

Quite a smart move from Starmer politically however!

I’ve been seeing the new restrictions as excessive but that death figure IS scary and makes you think. I’ve accepted the new Scottish restrictions are sensible (although central belt restaurants could be kept open outdoors imo) but nothing really seems to be working. A circuit breaker lockdown (provided it is JUST two/three weeks) might be the only option especially with the school holidays.

 

They really should’ve kept the first lockdown a few weeks longer in the first place

Edited October 13, 20204 yr by Hallo'Riheen

I'm also not at all sure people will be so compliant with another full-scale lockdown. Of course closing pubs etc. limits peoples ability to mix but there's definitely a lot of covid burnout now so people will continue to flout the rules and as has been said, you can't put a police officer on every street and we certainly don't want to turn into a snitch culture.

I think it's a bad idea. It'll show the rates yes but we'll be right back to where we were beforehand as soon as its over. A buying time strategy for a silver bullet vaccine which may never come is ludicrous. Not to mention it'll kill off all the remaining businesses within the hospitality industry.

 

They have to do something though, the new measures are terrible and if carry on the current trajectory we will be choosing who lives and who dies. I think the problem is that if look at the data and think proactively, most of the country will end up in a very similar state to Merseyside. Whether there is a vaccine or not, there will be something be it mass testing etc. which China are using to control outbreaks. The new tier system will already cripple hospitality, it just doesn't know it yet.

Problem is the government don’t understand how a virus works. They just don’t go away that fast. Instead of using the time bought in the Spring through the first lockdown to come up with ways we can live with the virus, they just assumed as numbers went down that we were ‘defeating’ it. Now it looks like all that time was wasted as numbers soar.

 

I know I’m becoming boring because I just bang on about schools but they had five months to come up with a strategy for schools to return and did nothing- shoved us all in again at close range, a few flimsy rules about masks and sanitisers and then parroted that schools were safe. And I was convinced before the numbers started rising again.

 

I think they will keep schools open even in a national lockdown so I will barely see the effects of it-except for only having work as a privilege and nothing else. Due to keeping staff safe, the education the children are receiving is less effective as I can no longer monitor their work during lessons. Perhaps if the government had invested money into schools we could be working technology based and this wouldn’t be a problem. But we have had to use our existing budgets for PPE so that wouldn’t have happened.

 

Currently, I’m glad work is keeping me too busy to pay close attention to the news.

Not only do they seem to have little understanding of how viruses work, they don't seem to understand how schools work either. As you say, monitoring students is an important part of teaching. You can't do that if you have to keep at least two metres away from them. Even having a quiet conversation with an individual is impossible at that distance.

 

They wasted a lot of the lockdown time throwing huge sums of money at a track and trace system that they were told by numerous experts wouldn't work. They finally had to admit it wouldn't work - for the very reason all those experts gave. They finally delivered a privatised app the, misleadingly, carries an NHS label. Initially, that wouldn't accept codes from NHS tests. How on Earth did that get through testing? Testing all formats of data that can be entered is about as basic as it gets.

 

We all accept that no government is going to get everything right at a time like this. This government has got very little right; all too frequently, the mistakes were easy to avoid if they'd bothered to speak to people with knowledge of the subject/

How long are we giving it until we’re in full national lockdown then?

 

I say one week

I really hope we don't enter a new total national lockdown here. It was hard enough the first time around, especially when you live on your own, and I do worry about how such a full lockdown will affect the mental state of a lot of people - I know I found it hard, and if it wasn't for calls with my family & finding someone during the lockdown I don't think I could have coped. I'm all for mandatory masks & stronger sanctions on those who don't wear masks and keep to social distancing, but I hope that it's not another lockdown.

I don't think a short lockdown will solve the problem ultimately, but I'm not sure what else they can do at this point. It's the only way to make people take it seriously again as these new restrictions are doing sod all. Something like Scotland's restrictions on pubs and restaurants seems like the sort of thing that they should be aiming for, it's got to come to a compromise.

 

Realistically, Universities should've either closed Halls and had online lectures or massively limited living capacities this year, that really was the ultimate problem and yet ofc. they just went with what would keep the landlords happy. Schools certainly had to go back, but again, it could've been planned a lot better.

 

(Totally agree on the public transport thing btw, especially here in London! I just can't fathom anyone still refusing to wear a mask when they can at this stage)

How long are we giving it until we’re in full national lockdown then?

 

I say one week

 

I don't think there will be a full national lockdown, we can't afford one. However if we are smart, we could have a 2-3 week circuit breaker with half term which would allow us to re-group. Clearly the major problem is with Test and Trace. We aren't delivering results quick enough and we don't have the the resource to enforce people that are waiting for test results to self isolate.

 

Honestly, as brutal as it is, if we are serious about controlling the virus we HAVE to lock people down when they are self-isolating. I've seen numerous stories from friends where one person is waiting on a result, still visits the pub and people, ends up spreading to 15-20 people.

 

I have defended the Government lots of times on here, but the discontent they have given to football/sports fans (can't have 1,000 people in an open air stadium but we can open the Palladium inside, fuking ridiculous), awarding private contracts to Donors instead of utilising PHE and quite frankly not using the summer months to plan effectively for the winter - it's a complete joke. No one is saying it is an easy job as it's not and I can forgive a few errors made at the start as fatal as they turned out to be, but there have been so many daft decisons made that its really going to bite them on their arse.

Here's how I would do a lockdown.

 

Local lockdowns only.

 

Pubs, bars, restaurants, gyms, leisure centres, non-essential shops, public sport, garages, museums, libraries ie. all close.

 

Schools, universities, colleges and churches remain open.

 

Sport continues behind closed doors.

 

People must not leave the area in question unless it is a reasonable excuse.

 

Restrictions can only be lifted when the areas have gone right down to zero cases, it could take months at least but imo it is the only way.

Edited October 13, 20204 yr by zenon

After a say 3 week lockdown will that not mean cases will increase again afterwards? Seems a bit pointless.

 

The fact the government didn’t get a proper test and trace app sorted quicker is a disgrace for me.

 

So we have 143 deaths in 24 hours and increasing hospitalisations each day, so is there going to be another 40k deaths over the next few months, I can’t bare thinking about this.

The main problem as I see it is that due to ideaology/chumocracy/corruption the Government have ignored better judgement that would have seen investment in a more regional and local test and trace programme, and instead wasted huge sums of money on their mates in the private sector to run an inadequate test and trace operation that can hardly be described as “world-beating”. Because of this even if people did take the advice about self-isolating seriously it would have only a little impact, but as it stands only around 1/5 are.

 

If that doesn't change, having a national lockdown will not solve anything and potentially cause greater unintended harm. However, because we may at some point move dangerously close to exceeding capacity in the NHS it may become unavoidable.

 

We can probably manage with a low level of virus in circulation within the community BUT strict adherence to social distancing, working from home, masks etc. and University tuition should have been entirely remote for 2020/21 with NO students in campuses. But like the article I posted in the University funding thread... the rentier interests took priority over health and education; the virus has exposed brutually what has ALWAYS been the case.