Will the Staying Alert send out mixed messages

I know what I'm doing, no matter what Boris 'rolls out'! I'm carrying on staying six feet away from everyone when I'm out. I'm not letting my cleaner come back for a good few weeks. Or my boys and their families visit for quite a while yet (hardest of all!) I'm not going to my hairdresser either (nothing is better for your hair anyway than a holiday from 'product') I feel I will know when to relax all this..... Of course I'm lucky - one of my sons is working from home and runs past the house most days training for the Marathon in October, the other cycles past on his way home from work every now and then. The rest of my family live nearby. And, I never thought I'd admit it, but modern technology means we are in touch all the time. Also, we might well be all in this together, but in the end we are all responsible for ourselves.

What would I have done? Not buried the Cygnus Report - it told the government four years ago that systems could not cope with a pandemic. It told them that we wouldn't have enough PPE. That report should have been made public and changes made.

We should have introduced testing, as advised by the WHO, at the beginning of the crisis. We should have locked down incoming travel to the UK, or at least quarantined those arriving.

Boris should have been utterly clear from the beginning - You are not allowed outdoors other than to buy food. If you are seen outdoors for any other reason, you will be arrested and imprisoned, until the pandemic is over. Firm, clear, honest, and actionable leadership.

I did read that certain areas/places would be remaining in lockdown ? Now if this doesn't start a riot I don't know what will.

Urmstongran
You are absolutely right. The lockdown has been far too lax. The importing of over eighteen million people over the early months of the year with only a few hundred actually quarantined was an absolute disgrace. Our borders should have been closed. The police should have been given greater powers and the army brought in to help enforce them. Fifteen thousand people are still entering the country every single week! And none of them are either tested or quarantined. I think it’s a lesson in how not to manage a pandemic.

I agree Urmston. Total lockdown should have been put in place after those who'd travelled from Wuhan in January left our local hospital.

One of those who'd left China said he'd come from the frying pan into the fire as he could have gone back to China when it was deemed safe enough to do so but instead he's had to stay here indefinitely. So much for isolation !

I don't think anyone envisaged that things would have got as bad as they have done.

I'd give a Zanamivir inhalant to the younger members of society and send them back to work. This is a preventative medicine which acts against viruses. The young ones don't appear to be affected. Mainly those whose immune system is compromised in some way.

Can’t we just wait until 7pm, when we’ll know for sure what Boris is going to do?

Why are so many people entering the country? Does anybody know ? Are they returning Brits ?

I’d like to know that aswell Lucca.

It is a fine balancing act we cannot just stay at home forever
We shall find out more later

You are right, JenniferEccles they have been ignored by some, so what the back will those people be doing now?

The initial procedures were too little, too late.

Remember Boris, stating how he would continue to shake hands? Where did that get him......

For once or maybe its twice, I agree with you Urms, but I would also say that the trouble with Boris he wants to be known as the friendly guy and everyones friend and will therefore not come down hard on his orders.

I think that we should have kept the lockdown for another 3 weeks until we are really sure we have have got to grips with the control of the virus, especially in Care Homes.

Barmeyoldbat ?

Boris is a great libertarian. He would hate lockdown to be as strictly enforced as it is here in Spain. He trusts people to ‘do the right thing and think of others’.

*According to the ONS statistics your risk increases quite rapidly post 44 yrs.
In the W/E 24th April: 109 deaths 16 -44 age group, 883 deaths 45 - 64 age group.*

Without specifying what fraction of the total these numbers are they are not useful information.

The importing of over eighteen million people over the early months of the year

What on earth does this mean? Our population has not increased by 18million over a few months of this year.

No Baggs of course our population hasn’t increased by 18 million, but over eighteen million people arrived in Britain during the early months of this year, and none of them other than around two or three hundred were quarantined. They mainly arrived by air, but obviously some arrived on the cross channel ferries, and Eurostar. Obviously many were being repatriated but it’s difficult to believe that they were all coming home. I’d like to know why our borders were kept open to the whole world, unlike the borders of other countries. New Zealand for example, and many others.

Those who don’t want to understand the message, won’t.

I don’t see what has been or is so difficult to understand. Even my 4 year old Grandson understands the rules

They won't all have been coming home. Most will have been on their way home to somewhere else. As I've said before, the UK, and London in particular, is a global flight hub, one of the busiest in the entire world. That can't just be turned off at the flick of a (government or otherwise) switch.

Exactly, ginny.

New Zealand is somwhat more off the beaten track than the UK, maddyone, and with a vastly smaller population too.

And, to hammer it home yet again, the UK is a global hub for getting about the world in a way that very few other places are. That makes a difference to what we can do or how fast we can do it.

Go and look at global flight maps from before Covid. The UK looks like half the flights in the world bounce off it.

I'm not sure the slogan needed to be changed but there are people whose job it is (and who are highly paid!) to come up with new ideas for the government to use. Our DD has a friend who works on enhancing politicians' personalities!

Baggs yes I realise that. New Zealand is very different from the UK in many ways and I’ve pointed that out on a couple of threads where posters have complained that we’ve failed with Covid19 whereas New Zealand has been successful. You have to compare like with like to come to valid conclusions.
I already knew that the UK is a hub for flights, but I do think that causes us huge problems because huge numbers of people pass through our airports. It’s certainly not as easy to close our borders as it is for some other countries, but France and Denmark temporarily closed their borders, and I believe we could have done that. Perhaps we would have done the world a favour, because if people couldn’t travel through Britain, then maybe it would have been too difficult to travel, and if there were fewer people traveling, Covid19 would have been suppressed. World wide travel is what has caused this virus to infect the world so quickly.
And in any case, why is all this travel so immediately imperative that it simply can’t wait, even though we’re in the middle of the worst pandemic for a hundred years?

Staying alert certainly confused my 7 year old (possibly autistic) grandson.
What he heard was you must be a lert. Looking rather baffled he asked his mum what is a lert?
My daughter, hiding her amusement, explained the meaning of the word alert.
He then went on to say "that's silly, how can you be alert to something you cannot see".
So, he isn't going out to the park as you can't see the virus on the play equipment.

MiniMoon 'From the mouths of babes' etc.

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/out-of-the-mouths-of-babes-and-sucklings