When do you think lockdown restrictions are going to end in England
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Steel Icarus
e le aulelei pe mauoa ae malie
Whenever is, it'll be driven by economics not safety, so it'll likely be too soon.
Steel Icarus
e le aulelei pe mauoa ae malie
ETA: stop being facetious catsbum, you tool
existentialist
Things Done
Please can we stop calling this evil twat by his preferred brand? Even calling him "Johnson" seems excessively friendly 
And I'm not going to make predictions about exactly when, but what I suspect will happen is that we will scoot up to 21 June with the government insisting that nothing's going to change, and then, just in time to cause maximum distress, infection, and damage, they'll swiftly drop in lots of controls and local lockdowns, while insisting that the whole thing is still going to plan.
And I'm not going to make predictions about exactly when, but what I suspect will happen is that we will scoot up to 21 June with the government insisting that nothing's going to change, and then, just in time to cause maximum distress, infection, and damage, they'll swiftly drop in lots of controls and local lockdowns, while insisting that the whole thing is still going to plan.
I think in many cases the restrictions are pretty meaningless now. The sheer inertia has made it impossible for them to continue. That's my feeling, it could be completely wrong. I don't think they should open on 'freedom day' but doubtless they want to. They haven't even passed their own tests to make it safe, but I guess we'll have to see what the datat brings this week. I find it unliek the rise we've just started seeing won't continue.
Yeah my feeling from what I can see is something similar, that apart from where they're enforced by others, then people have largely stopped following the restrictions on a day to day basis - although things like WFH etc continue for many. I'd be interested to see what the data shows about that though and whether my observations are accurate. I'm not sure if they'll delay the 21st, I think they very much don't want to (obviously), and I guess as the cases rise some of that will leak through into hospital admissions and deaths, I just wonder what level of that the government (and people) will think it's OK to have as a background to more 'normality'.
I also wonder what could be done restriction wise to allow some stuff to happen while closing things that are less important. School holidays coming up will have some kind of balancing effect for a start, but continuing the WFH message might help too. Maybe mask wearing and some restrictions could stay/come back to enable some other stuff to start again...?
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
By 21 June everyone over 50 in the UK will, on paper, according to official records, have been offered a second vaccination. The Tory press will splash this on their front pages proclaiming a great success for the government. The Guardian has a small piece questioning if this target actually has been met.
Despite rising cases and a concerning but inconclusive rise in hospitalisations and deaths Johnson will point to the fantastic success of the vaccine programme and reopen everything. But at the same time he will tell people to be careful. This will be followed by guidance slipped onto the gov.uk website advising people not to do all the things they are now allowed to do.
The resulting third wave, which was already growing, will be worse than optimists hope, but not as bad as pessimists fear. This will enable everyone to say they were right and it'll become a new front in the culture war.
Despite rising cases and a concerning but inconclusive rise in hospitalisations and deaths Johnson will point to the fantastic success of the vaccine programme and reopen everything. But at the same time he will tell people to be careful. This will be followed by guidance slipped onto the gov.uk website advising people not to do all the things they are now allowed to do.
The resulting third wave, which was already growing, will be worse than optimists hope, but not as bad as pessimists fear. This will enable everyone to say they were right and it'll become a new front in the culture war.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
What restrictions? Go outside and look around. There aren’t any anymore, people are doing whatever the fuck they want.
elbows
Well-Known Member
People have claimed that on several previous occasions and it wasnt true. Its more true now than at those previous stages, but still fails to describe the full picture. Lots of people are not fully back to pre-pandemic behaviours and levels of contact with other people. And if things get really bad again, many people will respond in a rational way.
But sure, I dont want to stretch this point further than it will reasonably go, and it is certainly true that the sense that the pandemic is coming to an end has risen a lot as vaccinations increased and summer expectations were encouraged.
I dont have a prediction about dates and formal restrictions at this time. I'd like to think that I'll have a better idea in a coupke of weeks but I dont know if that will be true either.
Steel Icarus
e le aulelei pe mauoa ae malie
People being prevented from doing stuff and choosing not to do stuff are not the same thing, though.
Last summer I daresay most of us couldn't envisage the possibility of a second wave, let alone one that turned out so horribly. It was an abstract. Now we're at the cusp of another wave and most people aren't fully vaccinated yet.
The vaccine situation globally is actually pretty rubbish. Most countries are significantly less vaccinated than us as well.
It was around this time last year that the Bournemouth beach debacle occurred. It didn't contribute to a spread, but that was before, iirc, shops opened as the first stage in ending the first lockdown. Now we have shops pubs schools and homes open. I just don't see people following even the scant rules we have remaining.
It's just so depressing to be in covid groundhog day again. There's no normality until we are completely through this and that's going to take a long while with the Tories lying and gaslighting
muscovyduck
Good IT skills and food hygiene competent
the real question is, is this going to be a repeat of january 4th or a repeat of march 2020
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
I'm sticking to my prediction from last year - lockdown will continue to September 2022.
baldrick
hmmmmm
I'm fairly certain lockdown will end on June 21st and also fairly certain that will turn out to be a mistake in the medium/long term.
I don't think enough people have been fully vaccinated yet for that to make the difference people want in terms of serious illness/death. I think it should be delayed until school summer holidays, is my feeling. I can imagine the worst of all worlds occurring - case numbers and hospitalisations are beginning to turn the wrong way in recent weeks and I can see this escalating through summer until we get to August and schools/universities on the brink of returning and another lockdown is needed.
I don't think enough people have been fully vaccinated yet for that to make the difference people want in terms of serious illness/death. I think it should be delayed until school summer holidays, is my feeling. I can imagine the worst of all worlds occurring - case numbers and hospitalisations are beginning to turn the wrong way in recent weeks and I can see this escalating through summer until we get to August and schools/universities on the brink of returning and another lockdown is needed.
Mr.Bishie
pickled egg
Fuck that.
SpookyFrank
Float like a caterpillar, sting like a tree
Neither, realistically. Third wave or no, schools will not close again. The big freedom day on June 21st will be kicked down the road a bit, at absurdly late notice, but it will still come too soon.
existentialist
Things Done
I don't want to sound like some kind of smug rose-tinted hindsight know-it-all, but I have to play to my strengths
. I was deeply cynical about the government's approach to the first lockdown, and I watched them carefully as they blustered their way through the initial stratospheric case load numbers. At that point, I thought "If we actually can end this lockdown, then given what the govt have done so far, there will inevitably be future lockdowns". And so it turned out to be, each one being clunkier and clumsier than the last. Nothing that I can see tells me that the government has significantly changed in its approach to infection control: they still insist on "gaming" everything, as if hard scientific fact is somehow amenable to political warping. So they've learned no lessons whatsoever.Meanwhile, a population - and I will include me in this - has become increasingly jaded at the interminability and purposelessness of the whole lockdown/regulations/precautions cycle, and are quietly building up to a de facto end of lockdown. I think, even if we get a horrible spike in July, the government will struggle to prevail against a large movement of frustrated, fatalistic, quietly pissed off people, who've just had enough.
The Government has had several chances to get this right, and - if nothing else - establish some kind of sense of social shared purpose towards managing Covid-19. It has botched all of them. I suspect that they - and we - are now running out of chances.
Thora
Differently Ethical
Around 22nd July in England/Wales. June in Scotland/NI I think.
Sorry, was being lazy, should totally have just Googled that!
If there's any doubt and things are in the balance whether to open or not, then maybe the very least that could happen should be a delay until then, and then any other opening might be slightly offset by schools then being closed for the summer?
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