Step 3 confirmed for 17th May

[MikeWM]

I was wondering what they would do about that one. Perhaps it is synchronisation.

It is rather cheeky, because the original reason given for not requiring various measures for this regulation (eg. an impact assessment) was that they would be in force for no longer than a year, which is no longer true.

I suppose that *if* this is dropped from June 21st, then no-one is going to try to take them to court over 6 days difference. Still a big if there, though.

 

[Jonny]

It is rather cheeky, because the original reason given for not requiring various measures for this regulation (eg. an impact assessment) was that they would be in force for no longer than a year, which is no longer true.

I suppose that *if* this is dropped from June 21st, then no-one is going to try to take them to court over 6 days difference. Still a big if there, though.

Very much an if, but some of us, myself included, have formed the opinion that the disease itself is such low-risk that we will be passing on the vaccination. I expect everyone to "act normal" around me. I will be taking the view that imposing rules on everyone because of some having declined vaccination is targeting those who are unvaccinated.

Also, as a "properly unvaccinated" person (I've had an offer, which I will not accept. I consider it to be declining rather than refusing), my risk of passing it on with a face covering is higher than a vaccinated person without a face covering anyway.

And one of the limits on the current enabling Act is here (it is part of the same Act:

Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 as amended​

...​

45EMedical treatment
(1)Regulations under section 45B or 45C may not include provision requiring a person to undergo medical treatment.

(2)“ Medical treatment ” includes vaccination and other prophylactic treatment.

This iteration applies to England and Wales, other laws with the same words apply across the rest of the UK.

It should also follow that if I did have any foreign travel plans (which I don't), I would seek a binding assurance, or challenge the UK government and/or the carrier (at least on the return leg) as a positive test could be seen as betraying an absence of vaccination. I view being placed at risk of "getting stuck" overseas as undue coercion to vaccination. The former on the above little gem of legislation, the return-leg carrier on GDPR; as long as I seem healthy and I am heading into my country of birth and citizenship (the highest form of admissibility), it is none of their business.

 

[dk1]

Good to see First in Norwich removing those ridiculous DO NOT SIT HERE seat labels from tomorrow on all but rear facing seats. Other operators in the city haven't used them & neither did Stagecoach in Devon when I was there late last year.

 

[duncanp]

Good to see First in Norwich removing those ridiculous DO NOT SIT HERE seat labels from tomorrow on all but rear facing seats. Other operators in the city haven't used them & neither did Stagecoach in Devon when I was there late last year.

In Birmingham, National Express West Midlands are saying that, from tomorrow, all forward facing seats can be used if necessary.

That means, horror of horrors, that you may have to accept someone sitting next to you.

I bet that won't go down well with the coronaphobes, but don't worry, you have got your face covering to protect you.

 

[dk1]

In Birmingham, National Express West Midlands are saying that, from tomorrow, all forward facing seats can be used if necessary.

That means, horror of horrors, that you may have to accept someone sitting next to you.

I bet that won't go down well with the coronaphobes, but don't worry, you have got your face covering to protect you.

It seems a national policy more or less then. Oh yes I can imagine it will cause some problems but common sense will hopefully prevail amongst most.

 

[Jonny]

In Birmingham, National Express West Midlands are saying that, from tomorrow, all forward facing seats can be used if necessary.

That means, horror of horrors, that you may have to accept someone sitting next to you.

I bet that won't go down well with the coronaphobes, but don't worry, you have got your face covering to protect you.

Apparently masks leak like sieves, in both directions (from and to the person wearing them), to the extent that you get that close it makes no difference anyhow.

 

[adc82140]

The most undesirable place to be in relationship to someone wearing a mask is behind them. As in walking round a one way system :-/

 

[Class 33]

Good to see First in Norwich removing those ridiculous DO NOT SIT HERE seat labels from tomorrow on all but rear facing seats. Other operators in the city haven't used them & neither did Stagecoach in Devon when I was there late last year.

First took all these off their buses in Bristol yesterday. Got on a bus late last night and seen that all those ridiculous things had gone! A step back to normality again. Now we just need this face mask nonsense scrapped.

 

[yorksrob]

The Government is facing tough questioning for not restricting travel from India earlier at a time when neighbouring countries were under tighter controls. Hopefully this will cause them to stay the course for tomorrow's easing. I sense that if this is delayed or goes into reverse, the Government will be getting the blame from the wider population.

 

[island]

This iteration applies to England and Wales, other laws with the same words apply across the rest of the UK.

It should also follow that if I did have any foreign travel plans (which I don't), I would seek a binding assurance, or challenge the UK government and/or the carrier (at least on the return leg) as a positive test could be seen as betraying an absence of vaccination. I view being placed at risk of "getting stuck" overseas as undue coercion to vaccination. The former on the above little gem of legislation, the return-leg carrier on GDPR; as long as I seem healthy and I am heading into my country of birth and citizenship (the highest form of admissibility), it is none of their business.

I am not sure that line of thinking will take you very far.

• You do not have to go abroad if you are afraid of “getting stuck”.
• The possibility that a test might reveal you are positive for COVID19 does not imply you are not vaccinated, and even if it did, this does not equate to forcing you to receive medical treatment.
• GDPR is also a red-herring; anyone processing your data in the above context is legally doing so under GDPR as they will be processing your data to comply with a legal obligation.

Whilst you may feel that it is “none of their business”, I am afraid your only course of action for the time being to avoid this disclosure will be to refrain from travelling abroad – and any “challenges” to the carrier would fall on deaf ears.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 May 2021 ==

Interestingly, they also amend the ‘masks on public transport’ regulations, so they expire on June 20th rather than June 14th. Make of that what you will!

I noticed this as well. I can only hope that will be the end of it all.

I was wondering what they would do about that one. Perhaps it is synchronisation. They cannot justify keeping them on longer, and the longer they do go on, the closer they come to looking like an unlawful requirement to receive vaccination.

Can you help me understand how a requirement to wear face coverings has anything to do with a requirement to receive a vaccination? Unlike other countries, the English regulations make no distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated people in terms of who must wear one.

 

[kristiang85]

Good to see First in Norwich removing those ridiculous DO NOT SIT HERE seat labels from tomorrow on all but rear facing seats. Other operators in the city haven't used them & neither did Stagecoach in Devon when I was there late last year.

What's the difference with rear facing seats? Does the virus only like being transmitted backwards?

 

[island]

Face to face is considered higher risk than side by side.

 

[Cdd89]

The possibility that a test might reveal you are positive for COVID19 does not imply you are not vaccinated, and even if it did, this does not equate to forcing you to receive medical treatment.

I think there is an argument that the day 2 and 8 post arrival testing required by the UK is a forced medical procefure.

With other procedures, you can change your mind right up until the point you receive the procedure. That is the point of consent. What if someone decides they don’t want to put things up their nose having landed back into the U.K.?

 

[big_rig]

I think this sums things up nicely:

"Brace yourselves, the Zero Covid cult will be throwing everything at this next five weeks and they won't care whose mental health they destroy. They are like Bolivia getting to the World Cup final. They'll never get this chance again so they have to make the most of it."
-Sam Street on Twitter

Yep. Much like the South African, Brazilian, Florida and whatever other variants though, the evidence shows the Indian variants joining that list of fizzers. I do think it is the last roll of the dice for them - the Guardian today is full of 'experts' (various Professors of mathematics, modellers etc joining the other dentists, nutritionists, 'epidemiologists' from dark corners of lesser known universities) frantically trying to advance arguments for pausing. Supposedly the virus is 'surging' in the UK - right..

It has been mentioned before but these people are essentially anti-vaxxers at this point, and despite their constant presence in the media, are no doubt being treated by the public as such.

 

[Darandio]

Brazil variant, South Africa variant, India variant, who's next?

More information about that will be released on June 14th.

 

[brad465]

So indoor hospitality is reopening tomorrow, but not for around 10% of restaurants and 19.4% of "mid-market casual dining venues", which have all closed in the last year:

Covid: A tenth of Britain's restaurants lost during pandemic

As bars, pubs and restaurants prepare to welcome customers back indoors, some will not reopen at all.

www.bbc.co.uk

Monday sees another milestone in the reopening of the economy: people in most of the UK will be able to go to a bar or restaurant and eat indoors.
But some favourite haunts will no longer be there: over the last year, thousands of establishments have closed, latest surveys indicate.
Across Britain, there are 9.7% fewer restaurants to choose from, compared with before the pandemic.
And mid-market "casual dining" venues have fallen by 19.4%.
The data in the latest Market Recovery Monitor from CGA and AlixPartners suggests that while many pubs and bars have also struggled to survive the pandemic, it is restaurants that have fared worst.

That includes places such as Oskar Ali's in Newport in Wales. Oskar and his wife opened Falafilo Island, serving grilled meats and vegetables and falafel, in August 2018.
They invested thousands of pounds to set up the business, transforming the dark interior with a cheerful yellow ceiling and tree-patterned walls.
"We had so many lovely customers, but corona just hit us so hard, we had to close," Oskar told BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme.
They hoped a busy Christmas might save them, but Oskar's wife caught Covid and they had to isolate for two weeks.
"Then it was January and we thought: we should just close," he says. "We couldn't survive, even with the grants they gave."
Oskar, a computer science graduate, now has thousands of pounds of debt and is looking for other work.

This is one of many reasons we need to hammer home the need for all this easing to be irreversible, and why we've had an unsustainable pandemic management strategy. 10% might not be much, but given where we are all that's needed is a short delay to push more business over the edge.

 

[NorthOxonian]

So indoor hospitality is reopening tomorrow, but not for around 10% of restaurants and 19.4% of "mid-market casual dining venues", which have all closed in the last year:

Covid: A tenth of Britain's restaurants lost during pandemic

As bars, pubs and restaurants prepare to welcome customers back indoors, some will not reopen at all.

www.bbc.co.uk

This is one of many reasons we need to hammer home the need for all this easing to be irreversible, and why we've had an unsustainable pandemic management strategy. 10% might not be much, but given where we are all that's needed is a short delay to push more business over the edge.

It is very sad to see, particularly for those who will lose their livelihoods. However, a fair amount of that was just a continuation of trends we've seen for a few years now. That casual dining market in particular was really saturated, particularly with national chains (things like Byron or Jamie's Italian) that weren't cheap enough to really attract price conscious diners but weren't expensive enough to be upmarket.

That said, while the chains really saturated the market, it's probably the small independents who'll suffer the brunt of the losses now.

 

[Bantamzen]

More information about that will be released on June 14th.

Well we've had a European variant, a South American one, an African one and of course an Asian variant. So next up will be either something from Central/North America, Australia or New Zealand, or perhaps Antarctica....

 

[Glenn1969]

IMHO the June 21st date will change to September. For it to happen in June it needs all over 18s to have been offered a jab

 

[NorthOxonian]

IMHO the June 21st date will change to September. For it to happen in June it needs all over 18s to have been offered a jab

I don't see why it would leap to September, even if you didn't release restrictions fully until after all adults have been vaccinated.

The target is to get all over 18s vaccinated by the end of July, and it's entirely possible that target is beaten by a couple of weeks. You would want to leave three weeks after that for immunity to build (though there is some evidence that immunity builds much more quickly with younger people), but that probably points to a full reopening in early August.

There is also the question of seasonality. There is likely to be some sort of exit wave no matter when we release. I would rather have cases rise during the summer when we know spread is a little less than during the winter when it could be more severe.

 

[Glenn1969]

Because the full effect of vaccination isn't felt until 3 weeks after the jab which from 31st July takes you to 21st August

 

[roversfan2001]

But why do we need to wait until all over 18s have been offered the jab?

 

[Glenn1969]

To stop the virus spreading in a largely unvaccinated section of the population and reaching those among the vulnerable for whom the vaccine didn't work or couldn't have the jab

 

[bengley]

IMHO the June 21st date will change to September. For it to happen in June it needs all over 18s to have been offered a jab

Unacceptable if this does happen. 18-40 year olds are barely at any risk. I am in that age group and would be extremely unhappy if we delayed proper reopening for my age group's benefit.

 

[roversfan2001]

To stop the virus spreading in a largely unvaccinated section of the population and reaching those among the vulnerable for whom the vaccine didn't work or couldn't have the jab

But then it could spread to them via younger people who won’t get it/can’t get it/it isn’t as effective in them. And of course children who currently can’t get it.

Time to cut the excuses out and return to normality.

 

[takno]

Because the full effect of vaccination isn't felt until 3 weeks after the jab which from 31st July takes you to 21st August

What's the difference between a million or so under-25s being fully-vaccinated or not? They are extremely unlikely to get very sick regardless of their vaccination status. In terms of herd immunity, even after the deadline there will still be people capable of spreading it; the under-18s, people who didn't get the jab, and people who didn't attain sterilising immunity from the jab

 

[Glenn1969]

I would vaccinate everyone over the age of 12. Better safe than sorry

 

[kristiang85]

To stop the virus spreading in a largely unvaccinated section of the population and reaching those among the vulnerable for whom the vaccine didn't work or couldn't have the jab

Well those people are already used to taking extra precautions during flu seasons, etc. So that's not a good reason to stop reopening.

And those who simply declined the jab did so at their own (presumably considered) risk, so again not a good reason.

And those in the lower age groups who are not vulnerable are more at risk of dying from a car journey to the vaccination than from covid itself. And the vulnerable of those will have already been prioritised.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 May 2021 ==

I would vaccinate everyone over the age of 12. Better safe than sorry

Given the effects of continued restrictions on people's mental health, and that suicide accounts for 19 deaths a day on average, whereas right now COVID is less than 10, "better safe than sorry" is not going to save any more lives.

 

[Glenn1969]

The problem in the NW is being caused because the variant of concern is spreading through unvaccinated sections of the population. Personally I would only open up for unvaccinated people in the first instance. I have had both jabs and feel a lot safer going about my business than I did a month ago

 

[Darandio]

IMHO the June 21st date will change to September. For it to happen in June it needs all over 18s to have been offered a jab

And then when we get to September people will start telling everyone winter is coming and we'd better not open up fully yet, let's wait until 2022. Then in Spring 2022 people will start saying everyone needs a booster so we cannot open up until they are all administered. Then it will be Autumn again.......

I just cannot agree with people like that have these opinions. You'll have us locked up for good if you get the chance.