Originally Posted by stut

I'm sorry you feel Priti Patel should not still be employed. (Sorry, running joke...)

She's Home Secretary, and has little to do with setting the restrictions - rather with how they are enforced. The government's MO at the moment seems to be to have a single cabinet spokesperson doing the rounds on one day, usually picked due to relevance to a particular issue. They will appear on multiple news outlets, answer questions on subjects outwith their portfolio, and either toe the line or give a non-answer.

Absolutely no fan of Patel, but I sincerely doubt she is out to crumble companies with Covid restrictions. You keep repeating an assertion that restrictions at this point in the game are useless, but the stats showing falling cases (over 10000 down over last week) would appear to indicate otherwise. Lockdown isn't going to eradicate the virus, but preventing the health service from reaching total saturation will stop an even more significant rise in the death rate (which will be expected to lag the case rate by a couple of weeks).

With the vaccination programme going on in parallel, the idea is delay as many cases as possible so that some form of immunity can become more widespread.

IMO, they're betting an awful lot on the vaccine. And the delay of the second jag is pretty reckless. However, I don't think you can assert that restrictions are pointless, even if their effectivess isn't as strong or quick as you may hope.