Something that's gently boiling my piss at the moment...
I'm on a couple of Facebook groups (yeah, I know...) related to my profession, and there is a very clear attitude amongst some regarding face-to-face working.
Therapists are, it has to be said, a little bit prone to doing the whole "saving the world" thing, so there are threads from people saying "I'm working f2f, my clients need me", with various descriptions of how carefully they are "following the guidance".
I felt the need to (gently - some of these people get terribly precious about being disagreed with) point out that the guidance isn't some kind of guarantee of security, and particularly since the emergence of this new variant, it's hard to know exactly what "safe" is. Personally, I took the view that, regardless of 2m distancing, opening a window, and/or wearing masks, there were just too many risk factors for me to consider it safe to work in this way. Yes, there are some clients who, for all kinds of good reasons, don't want to work on the phone or video, and that has to be their choice, but I do find the exceptionalism - "well, I'm doing a special and Very Good thing" - rather tiring.
I had this problem when I made the - controversial - decision to close a counselling centre in April. With no precautions, beyond "follow government advice", no risk assessment, no attempt to track and trace, it was clear that we were on a sticky wicket, and it was fortunate that the Welsh Government's advice did actually make it clear that we had to be taking precautions, so I had good grounds on which to make that decision. A decision which quite a few people were utterly blindsided by, with some of them regarding it as tantamount to depriving needy clients of an essential service, regardless of the Covid-19 risks.
Mostly, I find the overwhelming notion that, just so long as everybody does exactly what they've been told to by the Government, everything will be OK really quite worrying. Particularly in a field like this - I know I'm a bit of an outlier, what with being a gobby sod who actively looks for rules to bend - but this supine acceptance of what we've been told to do is depressing, particularly amongst a group of people who are supposed to be capable of thinking creatively and exploring boundaries, not mindlessly adhering to arbitrary rules.
TBF, it's not just Covid - lots of discussions on those groups end up with people having big fits of the vapours because someone disagreed with them, and they're suddenly trying to map the whole thing onto a therapist/client framework and accuse their interlocutors of being "unethical", but I suppose my wide-eyed idealism caused me to expect that, when push finally came to shove, they'd come through.
Just to be clear about it - I'm not particularly on about those who DO take the decision to carry on working face-to-face, so much as the worrying unquestioning acceptance of Government advice, and the pearl-clutching when anyone suggests they poke their heads out of that safe little comfort zone and consider the reality for themselves.
And, I imagine, this is probably true for all kinds of professional groups. It's the kind of mindset that we really ARE going to have to address if we are to get on top of this situation.
On a slightly different tack, I note that the clown Johnson said in his Marr interview on Sunday, when pressed on further restrictions, that he "did not want to speculate". How interesting that he should conflate "speculation" with "tell us what you plan to do next" - I rather suspect that he DOESN'T know what he's going to do next, so that talking about what it might be really is speculation.
And this is the basis on which advice that is being slavishly and unthinkingly followed by people is being developed?
We need a better approach. Less sloganeering, more hard facts. Much simpler and more general rules, and enforcement. And for the fluffier end of my chosen line of work to grow a backbone and start thinking about what they're doing - and if they can't do that, they probably shouldn't be in the profession.
Rant over.
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