I am growing increasingly frustrated with views expressed by my friends and on other social media (not, for the avoidance of doubt, this forum) inviting yet more burdensome restrictions and non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Any restrictions that must now be imposed must be temporary and must have clear, rational, and independently verifiable conditions for their removal.
I do think someone needs to put the question to those callling for lockdown this winter, "is it going to be the same every winter for the next 5/10 years?" And they need to give an honest answer and not try to wriggle out of it.
Yes. The winter period has stretched the health service since time immemorial.
Then, people can decide whether the least-worst option is to live with Covid, or to have repeated lockdowns and suffer years of economic hardship which will probably cause more deaths, and certainly a greater sum total of suffering, than without the lockdowns.
Indeed. We cannot sacrifice what's left of the economy on the altar of the NHS.
Plus, if the vaccines are supposed to protect us, what possible justification is there now for lockdown?
A great many people should be asking that.
You cannot have a fourth lockdown (ie. with forced closure of businesses and stay at home orders) without some kind of furlough scheme, or financial assistance for affected businesses and people.
Indeed. With the exception of work-from-home instructions, any measures not involving shutting businesses will be ineffective. Mask rules have just about never been enforced unless someone catastrophically failed the attitude test, and towards the end of February and start of March when full lockdown was in place, it was honoured only in the exception.
And if there is a fourth lockdown, people will be entitled to ask "er, what exactly was the point of the vaccination program?"
As others have said, public compliance with a fourth lockdown is likely to be much less than in previous lockdowns.
I think the government knows this, which is why they are currently saying that a new lockdown will not be happening.
I agree. Whilst I have in the past said (correctly) that mass civil disobedience would not be a response in England to the restrictions, I am less sure that this would hold in the future. The English public have for the most part been docile and submissive, but this was on the promise that vaccines would fix everything. If we are now being told they won't, the appetite for and acceptance of what was meant to be temporary measures will dwindle. The British public are not like Twitter and most people now just want to get on with their lives.
Any measures imposed now will just kick the can down the road for next winter.
Indeed. Groundhog Day, anyone?