Am I missing something here?

I don’t understand why why we didn’t close our borders last year to foreign travellers when this first happened. My daughter was travelling Asia and she returned home just before our first lock down because the country’s out there were closing borders . I collected her from Heathrow and it was as if nothing was going on. I spoke to several tourists that were arriving for a holiday. Being an island we were surely in an easier position than most to keep safe .

Hymnbook

Why are football matches being played, snooker, bowls, cricket tennis players flying out to Australia!!!!

Apologies I used the wrong quote. My screed above relates to this quote from Hymnbook

Ro60

Brilliant thread. I hope there's some MPs on GN. There's no logic what as I ever.
Big clap for the teachers for adapting so quickly - my GC for one is enjoying her home school but missed her friends.

Absolutely agree.
Here in Australia from day 1 there have been exceptions to the restrictions for sports teams and individuals. It has caused a lot of angst to people who have been living under tough restrictions - particularly in Victoria where we had almost 4 months of not going anywhere, no schools open for most, only being able to travel 5 km from home etc. and yet here are the sports people and in many cases their families being allowed to live a much less restricted life and move around the country albeit into hubs (bubbles). It has been about the money - to individuals and governments not to mention gambling businesses.

Now the Australian Open tennis players are arriving and there has been several cases of COVID detected. Players are up in arms at having to quarantine for 14 days because they were in contact with someone who tested positive on the plane they came on. This will affect their preparation but they do not seem to have any sense of the fact that most of us cannot travel from State to State (i.e could not go from one UK county to another) let alone any consideration for the multitude of people that have not been able to earn a living. One player stated it was not worth them being here if they crashed out due to lack of preparation and thus only got a $100,000 cheque.

Brilliant thread. I hope there's some MPs on GN. There's no logic what as I ever.
Big clap for the teachers for adapting so quickly - my GC for one is enjoying her home school but missed her friends.

Why are football matches being played, snooker, bowls, cricket tennis players flying out to Australia!!!!

In this day and age I see absolutely no reason for flights for business reasons at all and any “ex-pats” have had plenty long enough to return to their countries of origin if they’d so wished so I’d say completely shut off the borders except for cargo planes. I have a cousin who lives on the Gold Coast in Australia and she told me that they were Covid free until someone who’d flown in escaped from mandatory quarantine and reinfected people recently causing yet another outbreak. Potentially this could occur here because, as another poster mentioned, they didn’t even check their relatives papers from Singapore on arrival so I really can’t see them adequately policing quarantined visitors sufficiently! We can’t even do Track and Trace app properly in my personal experience as family has twice been pinged (incorrectly but we obeyed anyway) yet it took 5 days to find them!! Close the borders immediately!

Frue.it makes me want to weep with shame reading that.

My DD and her family went to the Algarve in the summer, on returning they had to quarantine, which they did. The forms which they had filled in were not picked up and there weren't any checks, the track and trace has been useless, and Dodo Harding is being paid a lot if money to run it. I've just been listening to how they quarantine in Australia, relatively few flights allowed in, we should have used these measures from the beginning.

Thank you Lisbethann55. He is on the road to recovery but the medics think it will take at least a couple of years to get back to what he was before.
I actually agree with quarantine hotels etc, and absolutely, nobody should be travelling unless it is completely necessary. But sometimes what seems like an easy answer can be more complicated than it first appears.

Alegrias1 I hope your family member is ok. Obviously with every situation there will always be exceptions and a certain amount of common sense must always be used. There will be many people who absolutely have to travel and so a certain amount of leeway must be available. But we have to find a way to persuade those that do not HAVE to travel that perhaps it isn't such a very clever idea. The travel pages in the press are full of holiday adverts offering exotic breaks at really low prices, and their advice columns are full of people asking if they should go on holiday, is it safe and will they get their money back. Surely the simple answer is "no. It's not safe. Don't go"

A family member flew to a European country where her only son had been involved in a serious crash. We didn't know whether he was going to live or die. I don't suppose she wanted to sit in a plane for several hours with her mask on. She got permission from both governments to go and eventually was able to bring him home, where he is still recovering, I'm glad to say. When she came back to this country she did her 2 weeks quarantine at home.

When people say things like "we shouldn't let them back", or "they should be shut in a hotel room", remember that not everybody who goes abroad is going for a holiday on the Costas.

Not sure the issues of travel and schools are connected, really.

Don't forget we still need to have seasonal workers here and they still come from abroad. Until we can get British people willing to pick daffodils and cauliflowers, there will be folk arriving. I don't think those pictures would have looked a quarter as bad if the border force officials had managed to open more than 2 points of entry.

What I struggle to understand is why anyone would actually want to fly anywhere just now. We live fairly close to one of the busiest airports in the country and my DH has an app which identifies every plane going over, where it is from and where it is going to. A lot of the destinations seem to be more like holiday than business ones. Why would anyone choose to sit in a crowded tube for hours on end wearing a mask? Unless necessary , they would be mad! I would let anyone leave who wanted to , but not let them back. Anyone who does come back should be shut in a basic hotel room for two weeks, at their own expense with basic room service meals. Rich celebrities included. All airports are surrounded by uninspired hotels , so there shouldn't be a problem finding space.

Tags? Tags?!?

Have I woken up in a police state?

Should I wear my mask when I take the bins out? (although apparently that's the rule in Belgium )

I know of people who have just said they are attending a job interview or working on Business when they fly. No checks are made. The trouble is, half the people are shouting about their loss of liberty, the other half want more stringent measures and ne'er the twain shall meet. The Government always seem to be compromising and therefore nobody is happy. I would like to see masks worn whenever we leave the house so it is instantly obvious that people aren't complying with a pass to show that you can't wear one if you really can't. As our Dr says, if you have a bad enough condition not to wear a mask, you won't like being on a ventilator. I would like to see all flights stopped except for residents returning and then they would need to go to a Government isolation unit or agree to wear tags.
Yes, these are tough measures but nearly 100,000 dead shows that we need it now.

Too little too late!

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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.

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.

Missed out home

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.