How much longer will social distancing go on for in the UK?

[hexagon789]

The longer this "Social distancing" nonsense goes on for, the more and more damage it will continue to do to the UK economy! There's more and more people being made redundant every week, more and more businesses having to close down, and if you're one of the unlucky and growing number of people who are unemployed then it's close to ZERO chance of finding another job. That's just a shortened comment on all the problems this ongoing social distance will cause. This madness can not go on much longer!

However, answering the question of the thread. From what I've seen on the news and the government daily briefings, it appears the government has no plans to scrap social distancing any time soon! As you will be aware, it's been announced that schools will return in September with no social distancing, but with complications to how they will operate, including "bubbles" and staggered break and lunch times, etc. So it's obvious that the government has no plans to scrap social distancing nationwide in September or sometime soon after that. The gist I get is that they intend to continue with this social distancing nonsense until at least NEXT SUMMER!!! Chris Whitty has said a number of times "Social distancing is here to stay now.". God forbid if that happens. Someone else in government(can't remember who) has said "Social distancing is here for many many months now.". And I think it will indeed be many many months that we'll have to put up with this nonsense and the catastrophic effects it will have on the economy and our lives.

What do you think about this?

I get the impression it will pan out as:

Masks compulsory in shops and on public transport; reduce distancing to 1m or 1m+ arrangement and retain until vaccine.

Seems the likely way this is going to pan out I feel

 

[Mitchell Hurd]

Indeed the transport network and people using it, can't really get back to normal whilst this social distancing is still going on. To accommodate social distancing, on single decker buses only about 10 seats are available to use and on double deckers only about 20 seats are available to use! It's insane if it carries on like this for months on end! And what about in September when the schools go back and a load of kids going to school and back, take up all the seats!

And yes having to wear a mask on trains, coaches and buses is not exactly very pleasant! Many people would not be keen on going on journeys of a couple of hours or more and having to wear masks!

Sooner all this insane nonsense is over, the better.

Thing is though what if it's unexpectedly too hot on the bus, coach or train in the summer - are people meant to suffocate? Sorry to be dramatic.

The only GWR trains I'd go on (if need be) are the IET's and Class 387's - these have far too reliable air-conditioning in my opinion !

Thanks Class 33 for agreeing with me - I'll remember that when I next ride behind a 33.

 

[birchesgreen]

The zeal for lockdown will quickly fade once the money runs out and the weather turns bad.

 

[Scrotnig]

Thing is though what if it's unexpectedly too hot on the bus, coach or train in the summer - are people meant to suffocate? Sorry to be dramatic.

Yes, basically.

Suffocation is not a death that is caused by the deadly killer virus, so the authorities don’t care about it.

 

[6Gman]

Yes, basically.

Suffocation is not a death that is caused by the deadly killer virus, so the authorities don’t care about it.

A face mask will not suffocate you.

(Unless you have one of a number of relatively rare conditions, in which case you will be medically exempt)

 

[Uncle Buck]

In my experience (I live in Glasgow) most people (myself included) accepted the need for the lockdown, and the rules were quite strictly obeyed until the first lockdown relaxation, which took place here in Scotland on 29th May, since when it has been ignored.

I would say most of my friends and family are conscientious people, but all of us have been in people’s houses since 29th May. Even relatives in their eighties have done so!

In my opinion the recent protests/riots were caused by the number of young people stuck at home, bored witless and scared for their future. I don’t agree with their agenda or their actions but can you honestly blame them- they were already a less fortunate generation than others? It’s human nature for young folk to socialise. Forgive my crudeness, but exactly how much are they supposed to sacrifice to save a handful of bed-ridden octogenarians a week? Is our whole way of life to be organised around risk mitigation?

There is also simply something farcical in the fact that it is illegal to open pubs, hairdressers etc “to maintain social distancing” but nine out of ten people are ignoring it anyway. Or hearing politicians announce “you may now meet more than one household”, about a month after everybody started doing so. This corrodes respect for the law. Admittedly there is something rather attractive in a society where people refuse to be told what to do by politicians!

As someone who has been self-employed in the past, I hope I don’t offend anybody by saying that too many in this country think that money comes out of a big box in the ground controlled by rich people. I can’t help notice that it’s friends employed by the public sector and paid out the bottomless pit that are the most pro-lockdown, often for others rather than themselves. Every business’s money has dried up and it’s the poor who always suffer most in that scenario.

To sum up, 80% of the population are now ignoring the lockdown, but the economy is still being left to collapse. End it now and salvage the future. Who are they afraid of, some hysteric on Twitter?

 

[mawallace]

It's going to have to change sometime. As an example, I manage an office and asked the BEIS and my MP when office workers will be allowed to return. Response was that they 'need' to reduce the number of people interacting with each other, and that office workers will be 'encouraged' to work from home for the foreseeable future as they need to keep the R number across society as a whole below 1.

As for guidance in churches - I am involved in one and the guidance makes it unworkable! Basically it's no community singing, no wind instruments "apart from Organs that need to be cleaned", and services to be kept to a minimum! I get that there is some concern other singing, but the rest of the guidance makes opening the place of worship a nightmare!

 

[bramling]

I get the impression it will pan out as:

Masks compulsory in shops and on public transport; reduce distancing to 1m or 1m+ arrangement and retain until vaccine.

Seems the likely way this is going to pan out I feel

I have a feeling you're right that's what the government is perhaps considering at this point, however I'm not sure it will work out like that in practice. People are already getting extremely worn down by all of this, and unless a vaccine is time-bound to be on the scene then I don't think people will accept measures that are open ended.

It's already causing conflicts, over such stuff as someone not wearing a mask or someone else passing too close on a pavement, and there's a limit to how much people can tolerate all this.

Over time there will be a natural shift to measures which people *can* choose to take to protect themselves.

 

[richw]

I’ve been out today for a huge Asda shop, seemed around 10% of other shoppers were paranoid, wearing masks and huffing and tutting at anyone who came within 1m99 Of then. The other 90% carrying on like normal precovid behaviours.

 

[route101]

I’ve been out today for a huge Asda shop, seemed around 10% of other shoppers were paranoid, wearing masks and huffing and tutting at anyone who came within 1m99 Of then. The other 90% carrying on like normal precovid behaviours.

I was walking behind a lady down the stairs into Glasgow Central station toilets , and i was close maybe 2m if that , she wasnt happy and stopped right in front of me! Soi ended up coming up closer behind her!

 

[brad465]

At my organisation the Exec board is working on the scenario of 6-12 months (this was a month ago so maybe 5-11 now) before the current widespread working from home (around 80% of 11,000 staff are) ends and normal office operations resume, so I'd like to think if sometime in that scenario played out social distancing would end at the same time, which would be start of December at the 6 month end. Limited return to offices are being planned for mid/late August.

Personally if we can approve a few more drug treatments that should be end of social distancing for sure (we already have remdesivir and dexamethasone), regardless of vaccine prospects, as such treatments will essentially reduce severity enough that health services don't get overwhelmed and complications are avoided/treated quickly.

 

[Reliablebeam]

I agree with fellow members that 'social distancing' is rapidly breaking down in peoples 'private' lives and is frankly impractical on a lot of our streets and paths. People are though still trying to be respectful round here and I personally try and give people who seem panicked as wide a berth as possible, with the caveat that I will not place myself in danger i.e. walk into a road or such to do it. I suspect many people have done a personal risk assessment.

The danger of course is many companies will have to stick to these sometimes ludicrous 'covid secure' guidelines. I've said elsewhere on this forum that even my public sector organisation is undertaking mental gymnastics to try and comply with this stuff. To my mind, in the medium term this will probably render a lot of the economy unviable, and I am aware of management grade friends in private companies looking at increased automation and outsourcing to lower cost base countries in their facilities. The covid-zealots might not like what is coming economically! On that note, a lot will probably depend on what our European neighbours do - if they start to unwind these measures more quickly than the UK, that isn't going to leave us in a very competitive situation - and I was speaking today to collaborators on the mainland who are charging back to near-normality as we speak...

Hopefully, someone like Sunak will sit BoJo down, and explain this to him, forcibly...

 

[hexagon789]

I have a feeling you're right that's what the government is perhaps considering at this point, however I'm not sure it will work out like that in practice. People are already getting extremely worn down by all of this, and unless a vaccine is time-bound to be on the scene then I don't think people will accept measures that are open ended.

It's already causing conflicts, over such stuff as someone not wearing a mask or someone else passing too close on a pavement, and there's a limit to how much people can tolerate all this.

Over time there will be a natural shift to measures which people *can* choose to take to protect themselves.

To be perfectly honest there was conflict from Day One, it has just been slowly increasing I would say rather than in fits and bursts.

I don't see that hostility ending until the lockdown does completely, as in no restrictions whatsoever

 

[bramling]

To be perfectly honest there was conflict from Day One, it has just been slowly increasing I would say rather than in fits and bursts.

I don't see that hostility ending until the lockdown does completely, as in no restrictions whatsoever

Yes you’re right in my observations, and it’s increasing rapidly now. I think that’s a function of time, new measures like masks on transport, and quite simply that a greater number of people now don’t have quite so much free time on their hands to be standing patiently outside a supermarket.

The point about conflicts is a serious one - at my work we’ve already had the inevitable Twitter warriors moaning about drivers “not setting an example” by not wearing masks in their can, and we’ve had several cases of rows on station premises where people have confronted staff - resulting in two sickness absences (the last thing we need at present) for assault on duty, and one case of the job being stopped for a short while until sense prevailed. With there already being stresses of various forms, we can well do without this being added to. The more people get sick of all this the shorter it will last - at the moment there do seem to be a couple of demographics who seem to think it’s their job to be going round telling others what they should be doing.

 

[Busaholic]

My guess is that the social distancing nonsense will break down naturally once people see that the reduction to 1 metre and the reopening of the hospitality industry has no effect on the continually falling death and new infection rates.

And if it does have an effect?......

 

[Enthusiast]

we already have remdesivir

No we don't. The Donald has cornered the market:

Coronavirus: US buys nearly all of Gilead's Covid-19 drug remdesivir

The US will acquire almost all the next three months' production of the drug from Gilead.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[johnnychips]

And if it does have an effect?......

Then we will have possibly local lockdowns - it’ll be interesting to see how this thing in Leicester pans out - or we will just realise that there is a balance to be struck between lives lost to CV and the normal functioning of society.

 

[Richard Scott]

And if it does have an effect?......

Then I think majority of people have had enough of this so possibly it'll still be ignored.

 

[bramling]

And if it does have an effect?......

The way I see it is that we’re now theoretically roughly back to where we were in March, so what’s different now?

(1) Shielding
(2) Social distancing
(3) some herd immunity
(4) Warmer weather
(5) Virus have mellowed

The first of those has to end at some point, the third is tenuous, and the last two very unknown.

Ultimately it’s a case of running with distancing measures which we can live with. There’s nothing wrong with 2 metres as long as it’s suffixed with “where possible”, for example.

Because we have a prime minister who has been overtaken by events rather than leading through them, and one who is unwilling to accept that mistakes have been made (even Sturgeon has admitted to errors like on care homes) we’re now in to measures which look good rather than necessarily effective and which people will buy-in to. As we are very much locked into a reactive setup now, who knows where and how long things go from here, it probably depends on how the virus behaves rather than anything Boris does or doesn’t do.

It doesn’t help that the comms has been dire. Good digestible comms from the scientists would have helped get buy-in to things, instead one of the ones who seems to cut through (Van-tam) has been conspicuously hidden away, and we all know why that is!

 

[geoffk]

As for guidance in churches - I am involved in one and the guidance makes it unworkable! Basically it's no community singing, no wind instruments "apart from Organs that need to be cleaned", and services to be kept to a minimum! I get that there is some concern other singing, but the rest of the guidance makes opening the place of worship a nightmare!

Concert halls, music venues and theatres are likely to be some of the last institutions to reopen as the UK eases its lockdown. I play in an amateur orchestra and we have been working on the assumption that rehearsals will start in September for a November concert. There are normally around 40 of us in a rehearsal, concert will be 50+ in the orchestra plus up to 200 in the audience. Official advice has been going round about playing wind instruments (and singing) as though these activities are virus spreaders, although research has suggested this is not the case. Even so, social distancing will mean a greatly reduced audience and, as many of ours are in the upper age bracket (as are some of the orchestra) there is the question of whether they will be happy to support us. We have little in the way of ongoing costs and will survive an extended period of inactivity, but for professional orchestras, theatre groups etc. it's a very different matter and, when the furlough scheme ends, many of these will be getting the "final curtain" unless some funding can be found. A very worrying time for musicians and actors.

 

[Busaholic]

The way I see it is that we’re now theoretically roughly back to where we were in March, so what’s different now?

(1) Shielding
(2) Social distancing
(3) some herd immunity
(4) Warmer weather
(5) Virus have mellowed

The first of those has to end at some point, the third is tenuous, and the last two very unknown.

Ultimately it’s a case of running with distancing measures which we can live with. There’s nothing wrong with 2 metres as long as it’s suffixed with “where possible”, for example.

Because we have a prime minister who has been overtaken by events rather than leading through them, and one who is unwilling to accept that mistakes have been made (even Sturgeon has admitted to errors like on care homes) we’re now in to measures which look good rather than necessarily effective and which people will buy-in to. As we are very much locked into a reactive setup now, who knows where things go from here, it probably depends on how the virus behaves rather than anything Boris does or doesn’t do.

It doesn’t help that the comma has been dire. Good digestible comms from the scientists would have helped get but-in to things, instead one of the ones who seems to cut through (Van-tam) seems to have been hidden away, and we all know why that is!

I'd certainly agree that we're roughly back to where we are in March, largely because the government (to use the term loosely) has been so inept and incompetent in everything it does, and even more so in what it hasn't done. The 'world-beating' Contact and Trace takes the biscuit, of course, and we'll obviously never have a viable system until we go down the locally-run route, but we have the most centralised administration in the western world, including what's been hived off to the privatised sector.

 

[bramling]

I'd certainly agree that we're roughly back to where we are in March, largely because the government (to use the term loosely) has been so inept and incompetent in everything it does, and even more so in what it hasn't done. The 'world-beating' Contact and Trace takes the biscuit, of course, and we'll obviously never have a viable system until we go down the locally-run route, but we have the most centralised administration in the western world, including what's been hived off to the privatised sector.

Yes I left the world-beating test & trace off the list as it doesn’t really seem to be there yet, and there are probably still too many cases doing the rounds for it to be effective. Perhaps I’m pessimistic on that, but unless this takes a leap forward then it’s not going to have much impact on distancing, for the time being at least.

 

[johntea]

Face masks long term would be an absolute nightmare, if I choose to visit work rather than working from home I have to wear one on the trains and then bus to and from work (6 journeys!) plus around the workplace until I arrive at the office, but then I have to wear one again to walk round the workplace! (Complete nightmare today with the rain and my glasses, which I couldn't see a thing out of come putting the mask on!)

The sobering truth is myself and my colleagues took all neccessary precautions from the start of lockdown, yet around 80% of our team still have come back as positive for antibodies, only takes one person to infect many I guess...

 

[johnnychips]

#49 @geoffk, I really feel sorry that a hobby, which must bring satisfaction to you and pleasure to others has been taken away. One of the biggest enigmas of this virus is that nobody is really sure of the most effective way it is spread. Is it by air or by touch? Can unsymptomatic people spread it? And back OT, is social distancing more effective than washing hands? If it isn’t public toilet closures don’t help.

On a lighter note, my grandma would have suggested gargling with TCP before you sang or played woodwind. That would have got rid of it! It would certainly help distancing as people would stay away from you because of its smell.

 

[bramling]

Face masks long term would be an absolute nightmare, if I choose to visit work rather than working from home I have to wear one on the trains and then bus to and from work (6 journeys!) plus around the workplace until I arrive at the office, but then I have to wear one again to walk round the workplace! (Complete nightmare today with the rain and my glasses, which I couldn't see a thing out of come putting the mask on!)

The sobering truth is myself and my colleagues took all neccessary precautions from the start of lockdown, yet around 80% of our team still have come back as positive for antibodies, only takes one person to infect many I guess...

Yes a bigger game changer would be for the scientists to actually find out how it spreads. If I understand correctly they’re still at the stage where they *think* its droplets and surfaces, but they don’t seem to know to what extent it’s weighted from one to the other (if at all). Again this would have a bearing on how we go forward.

 

[geoffk]

#49 @geoffk, I really feel sorry that a hobby, which must bring satisfaction to you and pleasure to others has been taken away. One of the biggest enigmas of this virus is that nobody is really sure of the most effective way it is spread. Is it by air or by touch? Can unsymptomatic people spread it? And back OT, is social distancing more effective than washing hands? If it isn’t public toilet closures don’t help.

It is a hobby for me and my colleagues but for professionals, and that includes music teachers, a much more serious situation.

 

[PHILIPE]

I'm starting to wonder if social distance is making much difference at all considering that so many people are ignoring it.

 

[trebor79]

People are already ignoring it, in places like Bournemouth Beach, the London Underground, supermarkets (once you are inside) and all the protests that have been going on.

No doubt some people will also ignore it when the pubs re-open in England this weekend.

I think observance of social distancing will gradually decrease as time goes on to the point where it will be scrapped, rather like the "quarantine" rules on overseas travel.

Yes when doing the school run I've noticed the past few days parents are hapoy for the kids to play together and stage round and have a chat. A few weeks ago they were having conversations stood apart and trekking the kids not to get to close to other people.

When I go for walks to go shopping or just go out for a walk, having to frequently "socially distance" and swerve to be about 2 metres away from any passing people, it reminds me of playing old video games from the 80's and 90's having to avoid the aliens, monsters, or whatever! I've taken some different routes, gone into different zones to add some variety. But I'm just well and truly bored of this game now! It's very tedious! It's just the same old thing. I've played it to death now!

Yes it's nonsensical, especially outdoors. I don't even make an effort now.

They already manufacturing vaccines on the assumption they will work, so this should give any vaccination programme a head start

Hmm. A bit like those tests the government bought on the assumption they'd work, but turned out to be worse than useless so had to be thrown away.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm starting to wonder if social distance is making much difference at all considering that so many people are ignoring it.

I think what's making more difference is people being outdoors, and mostly not being close together indoors. It does seem to be close indoor settings with poor ventilation where it really kicks off - the meat plants for instance.

It still does appear that spread outdoors is negligble.

 

[trebor79]

There is also simply something farcical in the fact that it is illegal to open pubs, hairdressers etc “to maintain social distancing” but nine out of ten people are ignoring it anyway. Or hearing politicians announce “you may now meet more than one household”

The bit that made me laugh was "you can go into someone else's house, or have someone round your house, so long as you stay 2m apart". Yeah, right, like anyone is actually going to do that. Just illustrates that all this rubbish is being stabbed to in committee rooms with no thought as to practicalities. We see that with the constantly changing and obviously unworkable 'plans'for getting children back into school too.

Personally if we can approve a few more drug treatments that should be end of social distancing for sure (we already have remdesivir and dexamethasone),

Interesting article about dexamethasone in private eye. It would appear the data was cherry picked.

Then we will have possibly local lockdowns - it’ll be interesting to see how this thing in Leicester pans out - or we will just realise that there is a balance to be struck between lives lost to CV and the normal functioning of society.

I can't be alone in wondering what happens when all of these infected people go to other nearby cities for their haircuts, night out and non-essential shopping. Unless it's a China style city is completely cut off from the rest of the country, it's more likely to spread rather than contain, isn't it?