11.000 cases missing from Wales figures this week as work was being done on computers. One of our nightingale hospitals reopened just five miles from me. Cases very high in the whole of Wales especially this area.
Our plans haven't changed as we weren't going to see my family anyway. We've bought most presents and have the food we need. My sister can't see her daughter, my sil cant see her mum. All OK, though sad. But Tier 4 is about much more than that. It need never have come to this, but the mixed messages from the government, the bluster in the face of evidence, the grandstanding, the incessant gaslighting has pushed us into this mess. Apart from anything else we now know LOADS of people who have tested positive. We know lots of teachers who have busted a gut all term and have now caught COVID and can't spend the little downtime they get with their own families but are isolating in one room over Christmas. Other teachers who are utterly exhausted but now have to organise the secondary school testing with no extra budget or facilities, to start on 4 January. Local shops who had everything in place for safe shopping to try to claw back a little of what they've lost this year, now closed. And the list goes on. It's just depressing.
'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.'
I don't think that's fair @Lyn! We were planning to visit our daughter and her family but now we'll stay home. According to a BBC survey 78% of people are changing their plans and only 11% plan to ignore the new rules.
As I said ‘probably’ and judging by the roads out of London and the packed trains, many dud just that.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
@LG and everyone else interested in this thread. Here in France : Bars, restaurants and sports centres are closed. School cantines and sports facilities are open to school groups. We live near a swimming pool complex with 2 or 3 busloads of kids a day - the water may be over chlorinated but the dressing rooms would be rabid!! And then the kids can see granny parents at Christmas! Terribly terribly worrying.
Not shell-shocked @Lizzie27 as it was all so predictable. New variation of Covid which is is much more infectious. Asymptomatic transmission going on. Hospitals overloaded. Countries like Germany, Italy and The Netherlands announcing severe restrictions even at Xmas. Not rocket science then.
Here in France, as @tuikowhai34 says, we have all bars, restaurants and cafés closed and gatherings limited to 6 people in one house or 10 people outside in the open but everyone indoors from 8pm to 6am. None of my patch group ladies is planning to stretch the rules. All prefer to have people safe but not everyone will feel that way and there are no travel restrictions within France so I foresee some unlovely spikes in infections and mortality after Xmas.
It's hard but better to be safe than sorry and none of has the right to let our own selfishness put carers and other essential services at risk.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
And that is exactly the point @Obelixx ... we may bd prepared to risk our own health, but if we spread the virus who will do those jobs that no one else can do ... skilled nursing care for the most vulnerable in our society.
As Gandhi said, ‘a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members’ ... and that means we will also be judged by how well we respect the wellbeing of those who care for the most vulnerable.
The folk who selfishly or carelessly spread the virus are saying that in their world the weak and vulnerable, and those who care for them, are expendable.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
No change of plans here. We'd already decided no visitors, no visiting. OH will drop off a Christmas cake to his stepdad tomorrow (that's his Christmas gift, made by me, as I do every year), but he won't go inside.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
There still seems to be this odd disconnect with many people "It's terrible, very worrying and I'm very concerned. But I'm still going to have my Christmas because I've been very careful. All those irresponsible people who just carry on as normal will be sorry. But I'll be fine" My neighbours are perfectly nice, reasonable people who apparently think it's fine that their son and his girlfriend drove down from London last night to avoid the 'curfew' and will stay with them now for over a week, oblivious to the rules. I just don't get why they don't see it as a problem that they will spend hours indoors with them and then pop into the village to do their Christmas food shopping. If they manage to infect the entire village with the new strain of virus, will they recognise it was them or will they just tut and say 'gosh isn't it terrible'?
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
@raisingirl , I totally agree, it is the sheer stupidity of some people that I just don't get. I am so angry about it all. Several weeks ago several of my colleagues and I resigned from a government advisory group, because of the decisions they were going to make about Christmas. If they had made the correct decisions then, people would would have had much more time to alter their plans.
How can you lie there and think of England When you don't even know who's in the team
Dropped off presents today and didn't go inside anyone's house. Was the first time I've seen my mother since the lockdown.
We'll be spending Christmas at home, just us for the first time ever and we're in our mid 40s. It does feel a bit sad but we feel better doing it this way, it's not a great sacrifice on the grand scheme of things.
Just hoping against prior knowledge that people are as careful as possible and Christmas doesn't result in extra harm.
Posts
Here in France, as @tuikowhai34 says, we have all bars, restaurants and cafés closed and gatherings limited to 6 people in one house or 10 people outside in the open but everyone indoors from 8pm to 6am. None of my patch group ladies is planning to stretch the rules. All prefer to have people safe but not everyone will feel that way and there are no travel restrictions within France so I foresee some unlovely spikes in infections and mortality after Xmas.
It's hard but better to be safe than sorry and none of has the right to let our own selfishness put carers and other essential services at risk.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
My neighbours are perfectly nice, reasonable people who apparently think it's fine that their son and his girlfriend drove down from London last night to avoid the 'curfew' and will stay with them now for over a week, oblivious to the rules. I just don't get why they don't see it as a problem that they will spend hours indoors with them and then pop into the village to do their Christmas food shopping. If they manage to infect the entire village with the new strain of virus, will they recognise it was them or will they just tut and say 'gosh isn't it terrible'?
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I am so angry about it all. Several weeks ago several of my colleagues and I resigned from a government advisory group, because of the decisions they were going to make about Christmas.
If they had made the correct decisions then, people would would have had much more time to alter their plans.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
We'll be spending Christmas at home, just us for the first time ever and we're in our mid 40s. It does feel a bit sad but we feel better doing it this way, it's not a great sacrifice on the grand scheme of things.
Just hoping against prior knowledge that people are as careful as possible and Christmas doesn't result in extra harm.