Am I missing something here?

Daffonanna
I totally agree with your post. I cannot understand why we’re still seeing pictures of crowded airports when it’s actually illegal to go on holiday at the moment. My son cannot travel for less than an hour to his second home, nor can he legally sleep in it, but people are actually going on holiday. Also people can fly to do business, what’s wrong with zoom meetings for goodness sake?Why are we even allowing tourists into the country?

As for the teachers, they are indeed working their socks off trying to provide education for the children at home and the key worker children. But whatever they do, children will fall through the gaps. There’ll be children who don’t have a computer or WiFi in the home. There’ll be children whose parents are unable to help them. There’ll be children whose parents or carers don’t care whether they do school work or not. These children will drop behind. And let’s not forget the enormous social damage being done to children because they are deprived of their peers and face to face teaching. Anyone who pretends that children are not suffering tremendous damage from this pandemic needs to ask a teacher. I was a teacher, and my niece is a teacher, and we have discussed how in reality, the children have been at the bottom of the heap in this pandemic. I agreed with the schools reopening, but I also totally understand why they have to be shut now.

Consider the only child, stuck in a high rise flat, with a parent who is depressed, or alcoholic, and has no laptop to do his school work on. And now tell me that children are not suffering!

And a start to getting schools reopened would be to vaccinate teachers and all school staff. Elderly people can isolate at home, but teachers can’t, they have to be in school. The whole programme of vaccination has been wrong in my opinion. All key workers should have been vaccinated first, others could have waited their turn.

Yes, should have closed borders much earlier. So many going over + above their duties at this time. To read yesterday that Kate Moss just jetted off to either Paris or the Caribbean for her birthday. How is this even allowed right now then ? Previously read that Rita Ora, (who I like) had done something similar by having a restaurant full of 30 of her friends for her birthday bash in December.

joysutty
Totally agree with you. How is Kate Moss even allowed to leave the country, holidays are illegal at the moment? It’s not just one of the many guidelines, it’s illegal to go on holiday! And how was she able to enter France? I thought British travellers were banned from France because of the new variant. It’s absolutely unbelievable!

Part of the hestitation about enforcing quarantine for travellers to and from Denmark has been due to the damage it is said to do to international business and to the economy of the countries that trade with each other. Plus the damage that is being done to the border region of Denmark and Germany and Denmark and Sweden were a significant amount of people live in the one country and work in the other.

Obviously, if nearly all commercial travel and shipping is stopped it will have enormous financial impact.

You may not have heard of any riots, but as late as Saturday we had rioting in Copenhagen when a demonstration against the corona restrictions turned very nasty indeed. Germany has had riots too among youngsters in the bigger cities.

To me this is no excuse for not doing everything we can to stop the pandemic, but the younger generation, both teenagers and others up to about the age of 50 don't by any means find the measures that are in place necessary or democratic, so frankly most governments are between the Devil and the deep blue sea right now.

Nothing is more important than reducing the virus. Everything else depends on that - education, mental health, social interaction and yes, the long term survival of our place as in international travel hub. No-one will want to pass through our airports while we have a high level of the virus. The sooner they face the inevitable and make unpalatable decisions the sooner it will be over

I’m sure we should close our borders and should have done ages ago.
I too wonder where all those travellers have come from and why are they travelling.
Here in Wales we can’t leave the country and no more than 5 miles from home.

I was horrified when I saw the photos of all the travellers at the airport! Why on earth should we allow them in? I suppose the government thinks they are going to spend some welcome money here which will benefit the country.

Children don’t earn money....

Maddyone and joysutty. According to the media, Kate Moss was holidaying in the Caribbean and travelled to Paris for a photoshoot (allowed). Her daughter was also in Paris earning money on a catwalk (allowed) at the same time, so they got together as it was Kate's birthday. They can't earn money on a Zoom meeting.

Being a non-scientific bod, I thought that not closing the airports and flights back in March 2020 was a decision way above my pay-grade. I assumed that there was something that I had not understood about transmission of Covid etc.

Ditto early mandatory wearing of masks.

If these measures had been adopted for perhaps a month or two, ten months ago, it would have been likely (I think... but please don't hold me, it is just my thoughts) that we could have stopped the spread of Covid in one short very sharp shot and saved many lives. Instead, we have all these more wishy-washy stop-starts and please don't start me off on the ill-fated 'Eat out' scheme. This should have been entitled 'Eat out to spread the virus'. Coinciding with a return for schools it was a perfect storm of Covid-spreading.

I remember being in central London in March last year and the whole area was flush with Chinese tourists. Some of them must have been spreading Covid. We were in a lift with one young Chinese couple and he was coughing. I have never exited a lift so quickly! Why oh why did we not close our borders?

I returned to the UK from Germany back in early November and Heathrow was pretty busy then, but we weren't in lockdown at that time and Germany still had a travel corridor, though I only made it back just in time for that. I'm amazed how busy it is now! Who are all these people still travelling? I considered not going even then, but decided to stick to my plans as I was helping my DiL travel with her very young baby to join my DS who was already there, having started his new job before the baby had a passport! I cut my stay short as Germany were going into lockdown, despite their numbers being much lower than ours. I took the last flight out from their nearest airport as I didn't fancy the extra travel that would have been required to get home from another airport.

Our government has been on the back foot all throughout the pandemic. Every step they have taken to reduce the spread has been too late in the day and most of the relaxations have been too early! Result? The highest death rate in the world!

I thought we were meant to learn from our mistakes but this government don't seem to. Their concentration on the economy, and I realise it is not an insignificant issue, has been prioritised over peoples lives. Only now, as the NHS is being overwhelmed, are they actually considering doing what they should have done at the start!

I realise that people are tired of all the restrictions and many are still in denial over the risks, so refuse to comply, but we wouldn't be in this mess if Boris and co. had bitten the bullet right from the start!

Hear hear jocork!

I seem to remember when the virus was first highlighted back in Jan/Feb last year, people coming off a cruise ship were taken to a hotel and kept there for 2 weeks. No more was heard about that therefore the powers that be must have aborted that idea quite quickly. I too think borders closed in both directions would have saved so many lives in the early stages but then Boris and his numpties have dithered about every serious decision while other countries have just done it. I really hope that when all this is over people will be made accountable for their actions, not forgetting the Chinese who started this in the first place.

I don’t understand why people are being allowed to travel for holidays and the rich celebrities holidaying in the Caribbean and other places is not setting a good example. I hope that if people coming back from holidays have to quarantine for 14 days in hotels it is not at the tax payers expense.

I was on three months holiday in Australia last March when my return flight got altered. I contacted the airline and was given a choice of a flight the next day, or stay indefinitely as in al, probability all international flights were being cancelled in the next few days, and all state borders and airports closed!!! They have had just over 900 deaths in total, altho I realise their total population is far less than ours, and have just celebrated the first week with no new infections reported anywhere in the Country and life is pretty much returned to normal, albeit there are still travel restrictions in place and it will probably be next year before I can even begin to plan a resumption of my holiday! Such decisive action is so sadly lacking here.

Daffonanna

I would really like to understand why we are still seeing pictures of crowded understaffed airports , and hearing about the import of a number of cases of disease variants ‘ linked to travel ‘ . Did I understand a report correctly that said ministers are considering the removal of travellers to isolation hotels
for two weeks but they are reluctant but to do so as it would constitute ‘ a serious and irrevocable step that would affect our standing as an international travel hub ‘
Meanwhile it seems acceptable to deny an entire generation of our children and young people their basic right to an education , freedom of outdoor activity and contact with their
peers other than through a screen for the best part of a year .
Please can someone explain to me how these two experiences of enforced encarceration are calculated , and the effect of their long term effect considered .

I think the government is in a performance exercise. They are just pretending to do something.
Shutting the airports now would be like locking the doors and windows when the house is full of burglers.
The UK is the most infected country in the world right now, and the best we could do is to stop people LEAVING.

As for coming to the country and facing quarenteen. That would be like wiping your feet before entering a swamp.

No the government has let us all down very badly and is trying to draw attention to others so they can blame them. They have blamed teachers, nurses, the general public, new variants, and more besides, but they need to look at themselves.

The UK is so liberal when it comes to population entitlement. Borders should be closed. Only those who have basically been requested by Govnt by way of a contribution they can make to managing Covid-19 should be allowed in and formal isolation should be a normal. If the populations is not allowed to travel outwith their own Local Authority area why are we allowing people to travel from outwith the country. It's madness.

New Zealand has a population of just under five million people and is remote from the rest of the world. To put this in context, Yorkshire has 5.5 million inhabitants.

Australia's population is just under a 25 million in a vast continent also comparatively remote from the rest of the world. It is a great exporter of minerals and iron ore is its biggest export.

The UK has, officially, 66.65 million people and probably more. It is also a country which depends on trade for its lifeblood. It is the biggest travel hub in the world and the City, related finance products, Media, Sport, travel and entertainment power the economy.

It is clear from these facts that it is not helpful to compare the UK with either New Zealand or Australia - or other countries for that matter.

Yes, a ban on internal/external travel might do something to bring Covid-19 numbers down and slow the import of variant strains of the virus but at great cost to the economy of a country which the OBR has estimated will have borrowed £394 billion in the financial year when it was expecting to borrow £55 billion.

It would be nice if things were simple, for example: deaths versus the economy. However, the government has to take account of many factors in its decision making and to take responsibility for consequences of its actions.

I am glad that the vaccination programme is racing along. From the 8th December to the 17th January 3,981,445 vaccinations were given, an astonishing feat given the logistics.

If, in 2019, anyone were to suggest that getting a new vaccine up and running in under a year and then administering it to so many in such a short time, they would have been laughed at.

Sorry,
"If, in 2019, anyone were to suggest that getting a new vaccine up and running in under a year and then administering it to so many in such a short time, they would have been laughed at."

Should read:-

"If, in 2019, anyone were to suggest that getting a new vaccine up and running in under a year and then administering it to so many in such a short time was a possibility, they would have been laughed at.

Lily flower whilst we all realise Australia and New Zealand are more remote etc etc it is the STYLE of pandemic management that is at issue. Swift, decisive action, not delays and u turns, enforced rules, not “advice”.

I commented on this on another thread the other day. We are being told to stay at being driven to tears with loneliness missing our families.
We fear catching the virus and are going out only for exercise essentials or for sanity. Also partners are suffering cabin fever and nearly killing each other with depression.
Watching the news on the internet the other day seeing hundreds of people queuing up at Heathrow. There is no logic in this whatsoever I was so infuriated with this I cried in temper. The borders should have been shut last year with no exceptions whatsoever.

Missed out home

A bit off the subject, but I wonder why reporters, camera crew etc are allowed to move around freely. They report from here, there and everywhere (including airports). Shouldn’t they be observing lockdown like the rest of us.

I think that we should definitely be quarantining arrivals and should have done so from last March.
BTW I don't think anyone suggested that teachers weren't working hard to provide online teaching, but it isn't the same as being on school. With so many other restrictions children, especially only children, and their families too, can feel very isolated.