[Summary paragraph - but the whole piece is worth reading: The way in which issues of adherence have been portrayed and understood during this pandemic have been spectacularly wrong. If anything, the headline stories should not be of “fatigue” and “covidiots”’ and house parties. They should highlight the remarkable and enduring resilience of the great majority of the population – including those who have been most subject to blame such as students and young people in general – even in the absence of adequate support and guidance from government. Indeed, in many ways the narratives of blame serve to project the real frailties of government policy onto the imagined frailties of public psychology.]
'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.'
Ignoring the 'elephant in the room' doesn't help. The new variant was known about in early December (look at the Gov's interactive map to see what was happening in early Dec) - ok, the exact implication may not have been known, but it was known that the virus was spreading faster in the South.
The gov, although it did change its Christmas plans, still persisted with allowing mixing over Christmas in certain tiers.
How on earth does a Gov, that then actively encouraged mixing and travelling to mix, now get a message across that you shouldn't mix at all unless you have to? Not even for outdoor exercise.
Even without the new strain, the original advice to mix was dubious and it was known it would cause a spike.
I think it's telling that Chris Witty is the face of the latest advice not to mix - how can you credibly have Boris or a gov minister now trying to push that advice? I saw Matt H ignore that specific question last night.
The 'new' 'Act as if you had the virus' tagline was originally said by one of the scientists on a Covid briefing before Christmas. Why is it being pushed now, after the damage has been done - the time to push it was before Christmas. But Boris just didn't want to be seen as the Grinch and to cancel Christmas (the accusation he levelled at Starmer) so put politics before sense.
Obviously, the data on the new variant was becoming available way earlier than the 13th Dec (wasn't it detected initially months earlier back in September?).
I'm not saying that cancelling Christmas would have stopped the new variant at all, but if advising against people meeting in a park to socialise now will have an effect, stopping households mixing indoors for hours on Christmas day would surely have had a more pronounced impact?
Oh yes I definitely agree that social distancing works to prevent transmission of viruses but it’s a high price to pay isn’t it? I also think hand washing helps although if it’s done to excess it causes it’s own problems and if masks were worn correctly they would be a factor.
Depends on what the option is. If Covid were like a common cold in effect, then social distancing would be a stupidly high price. But Covid is worse (in transmission rates) than flu and takes up so much resource. So is it really that high a price to stop deaths of people you don't know and who don't know you?
It’s only working when people wear them. Going into a shop without a mask is risking the shop workers’ lives.
Shop workers who won’t wear masks are risking their customers’ lives.
People I know are choosing not to shop where they see shop workers not wearing masks. It may soon have an effect on sales ... shop owners will not want their workers choosing not to wear masks.
A family member is working for a pharmacy ... his boss is insisting that all the staff wear masks all the time in the shop and the staff are happy to comply ... as they say, many/most of the customers in a pharmacy are already vulnerable or will be buying/collecting medicines for someone who is vulnerable. The pharmacy staff see themselves as having a duty of care to their customers.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Wearing of masks indoors is compulsory here in France and has been since the summer. In some towns it is also compulsory in the busier street, even in my own small town where there have been very few cases. It is amazing how quickly you get used to it and it is a small price to pay.
“Coffee. Garden. Coffee. Does a good morning need anything else?” —Betsy Cañas Garmon
I wear a mask (and will continue to wear one), but I'm still not overly convinced by their effectiveness. The SM I use stopped automatically cleaning the handles on the trolleys and set up self clean stations instead. I've seen too many instances of people collecting 'unsafe' trolleys, then putting on or adjusting their masks before cleaning the handles (if they even bother) on the trolleys. People that I see in the SM still constantly touch their masks and then go on to touch produce that they don't always buy and I've lost count of the ones I see that remove their masks by the mask itself and then touch their faces.
When Spain had a spike way back, I recall the travellers coming back to this country saying how safe they felt over there as all the people were wearing masks - totally ignoring the fact that Spain was having a spike despite the mask wearing. Mask wearing is a protocol, not just an action.
Posts
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/07/pandemic-fatigue-how-adherence-to-covid-19-regulations-has-been-misrepresented-and-why-it-matters/
[Summary paragraph - but the whole piece is worth reading:
The way in which issues of adherence have been portrayed and understood during this pandemic have been spectacularly wrong. If anything, the headline stories should not be of “fatigue” and “covidiots”’ and house parties. They should highlight the remarkable and enduring resilience of the great majority of the population – including those who have been most subject to blame such as students and young people in general – even in the absence of adequate support and guidance from government. Indeed, in many ways the narratives of blame serve to project the real frailties of government policy onto the imagined frailties of public psychology.]
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.