Neighbour has Grandson with her on Easter Sunday .

We have neighbours who have seen their grand children all weekend and it makes me so mad. The news is so scary yet they carry on like this. My mam would say “Hell mend them” .

The rules are do not meet up with others who are not in your household even other family members. That includes sitting together in your garden for the afternoon. Waving from a window after someone dropped off the shopping is one thing, organising a garden meet up is another. It maybe that Valerie did not make any drinks or food for her “guests” and they didn’t enter the house to use the loo, they all wore gloves and masks and washed their hands immediately before and after entering the garden, and they were never within 3 meters of each other, but the point is, if everyone thought it was ok to organise a family garden get together, we all know before long there would be bbqs, drinking, kids playing together etc. That’s why it’s a blanket rule.

vegan - excellent points. Can I also add no unnecessary car journeys which could potentially require breakdown assistance or the emergency services? Every single unnecessary journey increases the risk of that happening.

I am amazed at some people, their idea of lockdown is not mine.
I have not seen anybody since the last week of February, see and talk to the family on Skype.

What's the difference between social distancing in the street and social distancing in a garden? We have a communal garden. We sit outside and chat to our neighbours who share the garden. We sit at least 2m apart.

What's the difference between dropping off groceries and standing 2m from the doorstep for a chat and standing in the garden waving through the window?

As long as the distances are kept there is no more risk than walking in the street and probably less then being in a supermarket.

Vegan’s last post explains it. If you all have your own seat and don’t share anything or touch the same surfaces then you’re probably OK, but anything beyond that must be avoided.

What's the difference between social distancing in the street and social distancing in a garden? We have a communal garden. We sit outside and chat to our neighbours who share the garden. We sit at least 2m apart....

The trouble is someone sees somebody else doing something like this and they they think oh if they are doing that then I can do it and so it escalates.
Not every family sitting in the garden with extended family or friends is going to sit there with masks on or not touch anything are they.
Vegan is spot on!

I stand by my statement that we shouldn't be ringing the police about these infringements although if it is a huge gathering I think I would. If you feel you must inform somebody (I get that it is infuriating if you are one of the people who is conforming like me) then check your police website/social media pages and inform them that way. Ringing them clogs up the system and doesn't help the police to do their job.
I live 3 doors from my mother and the other day I heard her shouting my name. I was concerned that she had fallen but she was just wanting to attract my attention. I stood at the gate and asked if she was alright before pointing out that I was in the middle of doing something and would ring her later. She followed me up the road. She sat in my front garden on her walker and chatted for 10 minutes whilst I stood inside my van many metres away. Eventually I said I wanted to go eat my lunch so would see her home. She walked in front, I followed behind, again several meters behind until she got to her front door. I watched her go in and went home. I desperately wanted to say, "Go away," but at 78 she would be very hurt. I've been social distancing, so has she. She didn't touch anything of mine, I didn't touch anything of hers and any instruction to do anything is a waste of time because she is PDA. To clarify, neither of us has been out of our properties for at least a fortnight. I stopped going out before lockdown and so did she but I did have an urgent hospital appointment during lockdown which was over a fortnight ago.
Had anybody called the police, it would have been a complete waste of their time because within 24 hours she probably wouldn't even remember what she'd done.
Should we be vilified? I don't think so. I am more than happy to act in the spirit of the lockdown and I want people to do so too but I think the following is very useful in order to avoid considerable personal stress (copyright to
Made with my own lilywhite hand)s:

Sorry, image is at the top, not following my verbal diarrhoea!

This really annoys me as I'm confirming to lockdown but my dd and bf who lives with me and has a baby went to his parents on Easter Sunday, came back and told me and acted like I was in the wrong for getting upset! I understand why they did it but it isn't our judgement call to make, we not scientist or medics, we only know what the government wants to tell us

My neighbour just got on the bus with her son.

They're travelling ten miles to go to her other sons for dinner, but will be calling in to see her daughter as well.

for the image you posted and your "verbal diarrhoea" icanhandthemback.

A virus will undoubtedly just go right through the population despite best efforts at social distancing..... the question is why have we really been asked to social distance?

The virus won’t go through the whole population and social distancing will slow it down, reduce the numbers infected and maintain capacity within the health service. This has been made very clear for weeks now.

It has been explained in the news media time and again, Gran52.

However, Sweden is trying a different strategy, ie no lockdown, so it will be interesting to see what happens there.

The whole strategy (well, the one in use at present - not the one they started out with), is to spread out the number of people getting this virus at any one time, so that those that require medical health, will have more of a chance of obtaining this.
There is no way, at present, of stopping this virus from affecting the larger proportion of the population, it is a very high infection rate virus (fortunately, a small percentage of morbitity).
Do think too many people are under the illusion that when lock-down end, they will come out slowly, and be safe. Not the case.....people leaving isolation are going to be just as likely to get the virus as they ever were. Hopefully, by then there will be medical space and facilities to treat those who will need it. On the other hand, the majority of people catching this virus do not require any sort of medical help, and recover within a week or two themselves.
Until such time as a vaccine is in place, this virus is going to be around, whatever we do.
Sweden started off with a far greater ability to cope with those who would require medical intervention, they had not had a decade of severe cut-backs to their social and medical services.
Yes, it will be very interesting to see if they - who alone are trying a different method - have a much higher death rate than the other countries who went into lockdown. Obviously, they will be the only country who is likely to come out of this without severe austerity, unemployment and recession

It’s a myth that it’s ‘business as usual’ in Sweden.Its much more nuanced than that
www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/can-you-beat-covid-19-without-a-lockdown-sweden-is-trying

What's the difference between social distancing in the street and social distancing in a garden? We have a communal garden. We sit outside and chat to our neighbours who share the garden. We sit at least 2m apart....

It seems incredible that this needs to be spelled out to some. The difference is timescale: social distancing is TRANSIENT contact. Sitting still in a garden, everyone soon builds up their cloud of exhaled air, litres and litres of it. Anyone who is incubating the virus in their lungs WILL pass it on to others without touching anyone present.
And for those who don't know the difference between 6 feet and 6 metres........... there is no hope.

There’s a really interesting article about the situation in Sweden - certainly not as rosy as some would like to believe www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronavirus-death-toll-reaches-1000

The myth about Sweden is really quite dangerous - it’s being peddled all over the place by people who just think there’s a magic answer to the crisis

Have friends in Sweden and they are very worried/frightened (one is a senior nurse).

Franbern is correct. I’m seeing so many people on sites thinking that when lockdown ends we’ll be back to normal. The lockdown is only to slow down the rate at which people get ill, so that the NHS can cope. Just this morning I saw people saying their foreign holiday isn’t till the middle of May, so they’re looking forward to going.

Sitting still in a garden, everyone soon builds up their cloud of exhaled air, litres and litres of it.

If that happened I'd be sitting in a cloud of carbon dioxide and die. When you're outside the air is constantly on the move. And no we weren't sitting up or down wind of each other.

If you walked rather than drove to the garden, didn’t touch anything that someone else touched or was likely to touch, didn’t cough or sneeze and stayed at least 2m away from the other people then you might be OK.

Anything else - forget it.

Something Franbern said about coming out of lockdown has made me think about being safe when this happens.
If others are like myself and have been doing constant hand washing
using Dettol, disinfectants, bleach, surface top wipe cloths and basically sanitising our homes as much as possible then we are going to be so sterile when we begin to relax these measures that we will be prone to any viruses/germs going around. I wear a mask only in large supermarkets as people do come close sometimes and I also have my hand sanitizer on me and wipe the trolley handles down. I am more worried what we can catch when the time comes to stop being this sterile.