New lockdown in England, including school closures, announced by Johnson, 4/1/21

[takno]

This forum has been predicting mass civil disobedience for months. It has not, to date, materialized.

What do you call all the people having guests round, or meeting up with people miles away? I notice even Boris is sticking two fingers up at the government now with his long bike rides across London.

Mass Civil Disobedience is rarely about stuff like throwing bricks at policemen

 

[yorksrob]

I'm all for schools reopening - I think it's incredibly important. Hospitality appears to cause about 5% of the spread of schools though. There's no point even pretending that you're doing something useful by closing it down. This whole policy of "life ends at 18, but death must be prevented until 98" is insane

I agree 100% with that sentiment.

 

[brad465]

This forum has been predicting mass civil disobedience for months. It has not, to date, materialized.

Probably because the conditions that cause that haven't happened yet, the easing of restrictions over the summer gave many hope that prevented unrest in the most favourable weather for it. Then as restrictions got re-imposed over autumn and winter the weather was/is very unfavourable. Unrest caused by increasing unemployment has been sheltered by the furlough scheme, while we haven't yet had police brutality set unrest off. Last summer there was unrest from protests on racial justice and also counter protestors as well, so next summer is the period to watch if many restrictions are in place that don't seem necessary, and/or if unemployment is on the up.

 

[Tezza1978]

Susan Michie of SAGE being a darn nuisance again today....



We don't need tougher lockdown rules Susan! It's bad enough as it is now, without even tougher restrictions! Please just bog off and leave us alone!!!

I've (politely) called her out on Twitter for this today - we just need people to follow the existing rules to get this virus down, - the police can help by enforcing more - without her hysterically demanding for all businesses to close and for us to live under even more authoritarian measures. She has been ranting on about the fact that its dreadful we can buy takeaway coffees and its appalling that too many key worker children in schools all week. She's a psychologist not a virologist or a specialist in pandemics and given she is a member of the Communist Party I'm not surprised she's trying to use this crisis to impose authoritarian measures.

 

[35B]

John Lewis suspending click and collect...but you can still get a John Lewis parcel delivered to Waitrose - err what?!

They're blaming the change of 'government message' but I suspect the real reason is it isn't currently profitable enough to have staff hanging around John Lewis stores to deal with click and collect

Also "existing orders and bookings for services, such as installing washing machines, will still be carried out, if customers wish to proceed, but there will be no further bookings for non-essential services"...I would consider having a replacement washing machine fitted if your old one suddenly went pop a fairly essential service to be honest!

You might want to debate that with my wife - she’d refuse point blank to have the retailer install it.

 

[HSTEd]

There are many forms of civil disobedience, not all of them have burning cars.

I'd argue we are seeing civil disobedience with lockdown compliance falling away over time.
The fact we are now in the position where they are calling on police to actually enforce things shows that the restrictions are crumbling.

 

[brad465]

There are many forms of civil disobedience, not all of them have burning cars.

I'd argue we are seeing civil disobedience with lockdown compliance falling away over time.
The fact we are now in the position where they are calling on police to actually enforce things shows that the restrictions are crumbling.

Indeed, and if we see lots of incidents around bad enforcement, like the two women walking or more draconian, disobedience of one form or another will only increase. I've certainly not felt comfortable with all the forceful language that's being used, which while I haven't done this, that language is making me feel more rebellious, so there'll be others less tolerant who are rebelling as a result.

 

[Silverlinky]

Indeed, and if we see lots of incidents around bad enforcement, like the two women walking or more draconian, disobedience of one form or another will only increase. I've certainly not felt comfortable with all the forceful language that's being used, which while I haven't done this, that language is making me feel more rebellious, so there'll be others less tolerant who are rebelling as a result.

And therein lies the problem!
Two women walking (having driven 7 miles across the county border from Leicestershire into Derbyshire) and subsequently getting fined is terrible, yet many of the people who think that are now saying Boris is bad for going on a seven mile cycle ride......
If the women were in the wrong then the fines should stand, and therefore Boris should be fined too!
However if the Police were wrong to fine them and the fines were quashed, how can Boris be in the wrong for doing what he did?
Can't have it both ways!!

 

[Mag_seven]

And therein lies the problem!
Two women walking (having driven 7 miles across the county border from Leicestershire into Derbyshire) and subsequently getting fined is terrible, yet many of the people who think that are now saying Boris is bad for going on a seven mile cycle ride......
If the women were in the wrong then the fines should stand, and therefore Boris should be fined too!
However if the Police were wrong to fine them and the fines were quashed, how can Boris be in the wrong for doing what he did?
Can't have it both ways!!

Neither Boris nor those two women broke the law.

 

[brick60000]

And therein lies the problem!
Two women walking (having driven 7 miles across the county border from Leicestershire into Derbyshire) and subsequently getting fined is terrible, yet many of the people who think that are now saying Boris is bad for going on a seven mile cycle ride......
If the women were in the wrong then the fines should stand, and therefore Boris should be fined too!
However if the Police were wrong to fine them and the fines were quashed, how can Boris be in the wrong for doing what he did?
Can't have it both ways!!

I think it’s more of a principle thing. There’s no way on this earth Boris would have been fined, wherever he’d been cycling. He wouldn’t have to go through the stress and anxiety that those two women undoubtedly went through.

Neither should be fined - but for any period of time that lapsed between Boris going on his cycle, and the women’s fine being rescinded, no.10 should have been very visibly ridiculing the fines given to the two women.

 

[35B]

There are many forms of civil disobedience, not all of them have burning cars.

I'd argue we are seeing civil disobedience with lockdown compliance falling away over time.
The fact we are now in the position where they are calling on police to actually enforce things shows that the restrictions are crumbling.

Civil disobedience requires intent to break the law in opposition to that law. It should not be conflated with simple non-compliance with that law.

My own view would be that the government are realising, especially after that little jaunt to Barnard Castle, that attaining widespread compliance requires both encouragement and enforcement, and that the widespread voluntary compliance of last spring was the exception rather than the rule.

 

[35B]

I think it’s more of a principle thing. There’s no way on this earth Boris would have been fined, wherever he’d been cycling. He wouldn’t have to go through the stress and anxiety that those two women undoubtedly went through.

Neither should be fined - but for any period of time that lapsed between Boris going on his cycle, and the women’s fine being rescinded, no.10 should have been very visibly ridiculing the fines given to the two women.

I agree they should not have been fined, but not that No 10 should have been publicly attacking the police. Whatever we think of the action of the individual policemen, or of the force as a whole, for the government to publicly turn on public servants sets a very dangerous precedent. A leader, even where they disagree with those working for them, needs to give them a level of public support and cover.

 

[yorkie]

...and the two specifics examples of people breaking the rules mentioned in the press briefing are exactly the kind of behaviour that the police are trying to stamp out....

Can you clarify please?

Also you are not going to be able to get the entire population to behave in a certain way; it's just not going to happen. To claim that authoritarianism is some sort of panacea is a total fallacy.

Hopefully the daily cases dropping is a sign that the restrictions are starting to work...

Actually transmissions already started to plateau before the lockdown came into force.

 

[Silverlinky]

Neither Boris nor those two women broke the law.

Agreed!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2021 ==

Can you clarify please?

Also you are not going to be able to get the entire population to behave in a certain way; it's just not going to happen. To claim that authoritarianism is some sort of panacea is a total fallacy.



Actually transmissions already started to plateau before the lockdown came into force.

Thanks to School holidays, increased tier restrictions pre-lockdown, universities closing a month previously......many other reasons too perhaps......

 

[bramling]

This forum has been predicting mass civil disobedience for months. It has not, to date, materialized.

And to be honest, I’m amazed and surprised it hasn’t. However I’d attribute that to the generally light-touch enforcement and the fact that most people have (in practice not theory) had the option to pick and choose which elements of the restrictions they comply with. It remains the case that enforcement is pretty unlikely to occur - and I write this having been walking around London Bridge station for the last hour without a mask, with plenty of police in attendance, not an eyelid batted.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2021 ==

There are many forms of civil disobedience, not all of them have burning cars.

I'd argue we are seeing civil disobedience with lockdown compliance falling away over time.
The fact we are now in the position where they are calling on police to actually enforce things shows that the restrictions are crumbling.

I’d agree with that. One of the worries going forward is that we end up with a situation where large numbers of people don’t respect the police.

Having said that, the few horror stories we see on here aside, there’s a disconnect between what people like Cressida spout out, and how most officers on the ground feel. Certainly from my professional dealings with them I sense they’re as peeved as anyone else. Remember they’ve been asked to do Boris’s dirty work, and the only PPE they have is a mask.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Can you clarify please?

It was already mentioned in another reply but the cases of a boat party of 40 people, or a minibus of people driving to Wales.
I hope you aren't going to defend that behaviour.

Also you are not going to be able to get the entire population to behave in a certain way; it's just not going to happen. To claim that authoritarianism is some sort of panacea is a total fallacy.

I mean isn't that what laws generally are?
Sure you get a minority of people who break the law but by and large people do behave in a certain way - they generally respect the law.

Actually transmissions already started to plateau before the lockdown came into force.

Do you have a source for that given that cases were rising pretty much countrywide before hand?

And therein lies the problem!
Two women walking (having driven 7 miles across the county border from Leicestershire into Derbyshire) and subsequently getting fined is terrible, yet many of the people who think that are now saying Boris is bad for going on a seven mile cycle ride......
If the women were in the wrong then the fines should stand, and therefore Boris should be fined too!
However if the Police were wrong to fine them and the fines were quashed, how can Boris be in the wrong for doing what he did?
Can't have it both ways!!

To be fair I do think there is a bit of a difference between driving somewhere to go for a walk with a friend as "exercise" and going for a 7 mile (14 mile round trip) cycle from your home.

 

[Yew]

It was already mentioned in another reply but the cases of a boat party of 40 people, or a minibus of people driving to Wales.
I hope you aren't going to defend that behaviour.

That seems like a reasonable and normal thing to do, before Comrade Boris decided to follow the lead of communist dictators, at least.

 

[WelshBluebird]

That seems like a reasonable and normal thing to do, before Comrade Boris decided to follow the lead of communist dictators, at least.

Not when we are in pandemic and have laws related related lockdown.

Also the hilarity that you think the prime minister is a communist. I assume you think you are being edgy and so are going ott for effect, but come on be real.

 

[Yew]

Not when we are in pandemic and have laws related related lockdown.

General restrictions on the uninfected do not fall within the scope of the public health act, lockdowns are abhorrent, unjust, and illegal.

Also the hilarity that you think the prime minister is a communist. I assume you think you are being edgy and so are going ott for effect, but come on be real.

I said follow the lead of a communist, Mr Jinping of the Chinese Communist party, by throwing aside all conventional pandemic control measures in favour of inflicting unnecessary suffering in the whole country.

 

[takno]

It was already mentioned in another reply but the cases of a boat party of 40 people, or a minibus of people driving to Wales.
I hope you aren't going to defend that behaviour.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. Obviously I'm a bit peeved that I didn't get an invite, but apart from that I mostly find myself quietly applauding people who do anything "against the spirit of the rules". Whether it's completely over the top and ill-advised or not has stopped really mattering to me tbh.

 

[WelshBluebird]

General restrictions on the uninfected do not fall within the scope of the public health act, lockdowns are abhorrent, unjust, and illegal.

You are assuming they were all uninfected. You do not know that. They did not know that. That is specifically why such gatherings are currently illegal. Given that there has been talk
Of around 1 in 50 people having it a week ago it is a fair assumption that at one person in that boat trip probably was infected at the time.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. Obviously I'm a bit peeved that I didn't get an invite, but apart from that I mostly find myself quietly applauding people who do anything "against the spirit of the rules". Whether it's completely over the top and ill-advised or not has stopped really mattering to me tbh.

Such an attitude is just going to prolong all of this.
I can understand the argument some here have about schools, or about things like hospitality etc, even if they differ from my thoughts on it. But to suggest that having a boat party of 40 people or travelling in a full minibus for a jolly are good ideas right now is just insane. At least when hospitality was open there were measures to try to prevent spread. No chance of that on a damn boat party.

 

[takno]

Such an attitude is just going to prolong all of this.
I can understand the argument some here have about schools, or about things like hospitality etc. But to suggest that having a boat party of 40 people or travelling in a full minibus for a jolly are good ideas right now is just insane. At least when hospitality was open there were measures to try to prevent spread. No chance of that on a damn boat party.

I think the whole thing will go on until it falls apart or the government gets bored of it. I don't think the actual facts on the ground will have much impact on the length of the lockdown at all. Whether or not I jump on the government's blame bandwagon is going to make no difference to the length of it whatsoever.

I'm still respecting this lockdown, but it's been a while since I felt that it was achieving its aims, or that it was a justified action in support of those aims. If other people don't choose to comply with it then I'm past getting on a high horse about it.

 

[farleigh]

This forum has been predicting mass civil disobedience for months. It has not, to date, materialized.

Well the government seems to think it has materialised.

They keep saying people aren't taking the lockdown seriously enough

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2021 ==

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Looking at the figures overall, it would seem that the lockdown measures are starting to work.

Yesterday there were 46,169 new cases reported, which represents a 21.5% decrease on the figure for the previous Monday of 58,784.

The figure for 10th January (54,940) is lower than the figure for 3rd January (54,990)

And looking at the total number of cases for 5th - 11th January, that is 404,955 which represents a 5.5% increase on the previous 7 day period. A few days ago, the number of cases per 7 day period was rising by more than 20% week on week.

Of course it is far too early to say whether this is part of a long term trend. Only time will tell that. But when the number of cases starts to increase at a slower rate it does suggest that new infections are starting to plateau, as can be seen from earlier in this pandemic.

Daily rates are a poor indicator as they represent the reporting of the test results not the day the test was actually undertaken which is more representative of the prevalence at a point in time. Data post Xmas has become a bit distorted with nations other than England not reporting for days on end as well so that distorted some days.

Looking at the data for the day the test was undertaken reveal the worse day was 29/12 when a staggering 81456 positive cases came from 345k tests for a c23% prevalence but suspect that was people holding back after Xmas. However, since January both the actual test date numbers have been declining but also the number of tests has increased substantially so prevalence has dropped back considerably and this will feed through into a reducing R rate which the Zoe app is indicating. You can also see that London and SE areas have peaked and are rapidly dropping down the charts all decline rate is much slower than initial transmission rate unfortunately. The irony is Liverpool and it surrounding Boroughs are now becoming dominant in the top 10 worst areas. Not a good advert for the mass testing campaign Boris and hancock spoke so highly about only a matter of weeks ago and that actually keeping it in Tier 2 wasn't a good reward. Burnhams Manchester now looks in substantially better shape being kept in Tier 3 through the same period.

 

[HSTEd]

Looking at the data for the day the test was undertaken reveal the worse day was 29/12 when a staggering 81456 positive cases came from 345k tests for a c23% prevalence but suspect that was people holding back after Xmas. However, since January both the actual test date numbers have been declining but also the number of tests has increased substantially so prevalence has dropped back considerably and this will feed through into a reducing R rate which the Zoe app is indicating. You can also see that London and SE areas have peaked and are rapidly dropping down the charts all decline rate is much slower than initial transmission rate unfortunately. The irony is Liverpool and it surrounding Boroughs are now becoming dominant in the top 10 worst areas. Not a good advert for the mass testing campaign Boris and hancock spoke so highly about only a matter of weeks ago and that actually keeping it in Tier 2 wasn't a good reward. Burnhams Manchester now looks in substantially better shape being kept in Tier 3 through the same period.

Areas that had relatively low prevalances in previous waves appear to be getting hit rather hard now - see the Isle of Wight as an example.

That does support the hypothesis that significant numbers of people have already been exposed on a population scale - would support why London's rates are dropping more rapidly than the rest of the South East.

1 in 5 in England have had it, which implies a ~20% reduction in R with all else being equal.
I don't think the "Virign population" approximation is valid any longer.

 

[Cdd89]

Such an attitude is just going to prolong all of this

People always say that, but that is to imply that lockdowns are effective in getting and keeping R down, in reality they only continue to work while the brake is being actively applied.

I’m not supporting it, but if everyone ignored all the rules, things would be over more quickly because herd immunity would be reached faster

 

[bramling]

People always say that, but that is to imply that lockdowns are effective in getting and keeping R down, in reality they only continue to work while the brake is being actively applied.

I’m not supporting it, but if everyone ignored all the rules, things would be over more quickly because herd immunity would be reached faster

One does wonder if it was a wise decision to keep restrictions over the late spring / summer period last year. Would we be in a better position now if they had “let it rip” over the summer and built up some immunity?

However we could have ended up in a worse position going into the winter, starting from an even higher base than we did.

At times it does seem like whatever they try to do with this virus is doomed from the outset. We have to hope that doesn’t apply to the vaccine too - every day I half expect to turn on the news to “new mutation renders vaccine ineffective” headlines - especially if as some conspiracies believe it is true that this was a deliberate invention by the China regime!

 

[Yew]

One does wonder if it was a wise decision to keep restrictions over the late spring / summer period last year. Would we be in a better position now if they had “let it rip” over the summer and built up some immunity?

However we could have ended up in a worse position going into the winter, starting from an even higher base than we did.

At times it does seem like whatever they try to do with this virus is doomed from the outset. We have to hope that doesn’t apply to the vaccine too - every day I half expect to turn on the news to “new mutation renders vaccine ineffective” headlines - especially if as some conspiracies believe it is true that this was a deliberate invention by the China regime!

I presume they thought that track and trace could keep on top of it, however that was clearly untrue.

 

[HSTEd]

I presume they thought that track and trace could keep on top of it, however that was clearly untrue.

Track and trace became an article of faith amongst certain parts of the media and academia - as it was essential to allowing the eternal suppression strategy to pass as halfway sane.

Too bad noone has managed it for a sustained period with resort to outright gestapo tactics.

 

[bramling]

Boris' bike ride was within the law.

I am less convinced about the 100 mile journey to Bristol by him and his team. He could have said everything he said in Bristol from Downing St. If he really needed to visit a vaccination centre as a part of his job (which is debatable) there is one roughly the same distance from his home as where he was riding his bike - could even have combined the two.

Boris can always claim that Bristol was a work-related trip, which I think would be covered - by the letter of the rules if not the spirit. I agree it seems rather needless though, especially at the current point.