I can see where you’re coming from. I know it’s unprecedented blah blah but there seems to be a lot of disjointed thinking, particularly in the U.K. government. A lack of common sense. It’s no wonder people are confused by what helps and what doesn’t or have become bored and do their own thing anyway.This isn't really the same thing to be fair. Convincing a significant number of people they should actually leave their house and go to work isn't really the same as trying to convince them not to vote tory. People voted for Brexit and Boris because they wanted to. No one wants to be stuck in their home for the rest of time, but I have intelligent friends who seem to be behaving as if the air outside is poisoness and anyone who leaves their home is endangering the future of the human race.
A majority of people still don't even seem to understand that lockdown is designed to control the peak of the virus, not get rid of it. You only have to go on any social media platform or read some posts in this thread to see that. People seem to think if we all stay indoors long enough it will just go away, which is just a factual impossibility.
The little differences between a tiny percentage of people going back to work or allowing people out to sunbathe and meet each other actually make a very tiny difference to anything...and I suspect the science is going to make that irrefutable before too long and all these harsher lock down measures are going to seem pointless. The biggest factor where we fecked up with our lockdown was waiting too long to do it. We could have done it 2 weeks earlier with meaures closer to what we have from this week and probably saved a lot of lives.
Yeah it doesn't make much sense to me either as things like chicken pox seem to go around schools very easily...but apparently with a pandemic in general opening or closing schools makes little difference, and with this one in particular kids are much less likely to become infected.
Also every time I've been out running or due to work, to be fair there are kids and teenagers just out playing and mixing with each other anyway. If them being in a school is a problem I don't understand why so many parents are fine with letting them play or hang around together, or think this is somehow any different.
It's definitely not going to be as straight forward as the government seem to want it to be though. I mean for example my boss's kid is meant to be going back to school next month, but his wife is pregnant and on the vulnerable list, so unless they just tell everyone it's ok not to isolate within the next 2-3 weeks, they can't exactly let their kid go back to school and be around hundreds of others, plus have to drop them off and pick them up each day...and I don't see how we're at a stage yet where they can tell people on the at risk list to just go out and about all they want.
To be honest though Geebs I've not seen anything remotely scientific or convincing that tells you any of the harsher lockdown measures have that much impact. The whole thing seems quite bizarre to me still. There's not much consistency to anything. Not letting people near each other outside but then bottle necking them into supermarkets.
ultimately though I do believe short term lockdowns stop the death count from being higher. The trick is when to open up again.
I suspect it’s going to be a game of open-close tennis with the virus until it dies out. Disruption for portions of the next 18 months at least.