="yorkie, post: 4607292, member: 4"]
I still don't understand how this is related to proposed relaxations of the 2m guideline, but you are incorrect to say that the numbers would be expected to drop off straight after a (semi) lockdown as that's just not the way it works. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the issue and it's not relevant to the discussion in hand.
Whilst numbers shouldn't drop straight after a semi lockdown it took 4 weeks (of you look at the 7 day rolling average, so you can see the real falls and not just the falls at the weekends where less testing happens) after this for the numbers to do so, with other countries a full lockdown resulted in the numbers falling after 3 weeks, so if everyone did follow the rules of working from home where possible, not going and seeing people, etc. it's reasonable to assume at least a flattening after three weeks. That didn't happen.
How this is relevent to should we ease restrictions is this; people don't follow the rules and so if you relax the rules then people are going to relax more than the rules allow.
For example there'll be parents who'll say, "my child is at school mixing with their classmates, so there's no reason why I can't do likewise and...". As such, before we go to 1m, we should wait a few weeks to see what happens to the number of cases. There's probably an argument for that to be a few weeks after all school children go back. The overall balance is ensuring that we don't open so quicker that we see cases going back upwards whilst trying to allow businesses to get back to doing their thing.
The death figures yesterday weren't overly encouraging going back above 200 when they were well below it the day before, however that's just one day so could just be a blip and may continue back downwards, well have to wait and see what Tuesday's data shows.
Those concerned about the reopening of shops leading to problems in town centres if we don't relax the rules, if say this; whilst with normal shopper numbers it would be there going to be a quote a few who will stay at home rather than go shopping.
The reason for this is that for some they shop socially, well that's not aloud (and whilst some still will many who do won't), add to this the fact that many are now used to shopping online and that there's less parties to go to (less presents, less new outfits, etc.) as well as people are likely to be able to plan ahead more easily. Yes there'll be a few days of it being a bit too busy, but then it'll calm down and it should then work fine.
The other thing to consider is that with less places to eat/drink people are more likely to be doing get in, get out shopping rather than destination shopping (i.e. spending a day with lunch or, a coffee, catching a film, etc.). This would reduce the numbers in the town centers from what is typically seen.
One thing which could be done fairly easily, which would help parents working at home, would be the use of live teaching (the use of zoom). Whilst there'll be some who wouldn't be able to access this, or at least in real-time, saying that we shouldn't do this because a few would be left out. However that means that we're excluding everyone and limiting the ability for staff to work at home as efficiently as they otherwise could. Even a few hours of teaching a week would give parents the ability to be able to work without being so distracted by helping their children.
It could also allow other restrictions to be eased sooner as it would allow the risk from more children going to school to be pushed back until later on. Especially as it's going to be hard to take small steps from bubbles to full classes, it's likely to be an all or nothing thing.
That could allow the relaxing to the 1m distance to come in sooner and therefore help the economy more than just waiting for schools to open or relaxing to 1m whist being at a lower risk than doing both together.