The feeling now seems to be that we know what we're dealing with, we can't go in and out of lockdown forever so lets just get on with it. I think the UK Government are blind to this and as restrictions continue to tighten I believe we might see a nasty pushback. Not just from loony radical idiots from the first lockdown who thinks Covid is a hoax, but from your average Joe.
That's the worry I've got. In part I'm looking at the Manchester story - local extra measures that started at the end of July, particularly around household mixing and on-demand testing in the hotspots.
The first half of that just proved to be impractical or emotionally impossible - which encouraged rulebending. The second part just told a lot of people there was a problem, but didn't give them a solution if people in their household needed to keep working, or if they were informal carers themselves. It certainly didn't help the infected ones get themselves out of a crowded house before they infected everyone else. The slow turnround on results made a lot of it "after the horse had bolted," anyway.
The mask rules didn't help either, rules for staff that seemed to contradict what shoppers were told. Rules in pubs that let people wander around indoors without masks that didn't seem to match shopping rules. Instead of encouraging the routine, people started picking and choosing when to wear them, and were getting visual confirmation that others were doing the same.
I'm not going to excuse the covidiots. I will say that once normal people start breaking a rule because it's too onerous, or because it's inconsistent, or merely uncomfortable and unenforced - then it tends to escalate. Suddenly you're back to being the odd one out wearing a mask, or feeling like a mug (or a monster) because you still haven't sat your new grand-kid on your knee to say hello.