Originally Posted by lhrsfo

In reverse order to your statements, I agree that many international restrictions will end after domestic (that's simply a logical function of a sensible order of priorities) but clearly there's huge political pressure here to allow holidays, which isn't present in the US. So those political pressures do skew decision making and priority setting.

I'm not sure that doing more vaccination (on the QT it appears) in Bolton is indicative of anything much, other than common sense.

But I completely disagree that the Civil Service is free from political influence, whether overt (eg, the government orders the Civil Service to do something, or not to do something) or less obvious (the choice of scientific adviser or statistical modeller, for example). Everything is politicized in the US, but it isn't so much here and I think there is marginal at most correlation between views on strictness of lockdown between left and right. Rural and urban, perhaps, but I suspect that's more to do with everyday practicalities than political beliefs.

But back on topic, we have a situation where both the UK and the US have separately arrived at very different rules. The UK's rules and procedures are adapting as the situation evolves but the US' rules, which seemed sensible 14 months ago are now completely ridiculous. It also seems that the US won't move on its rules unless the UK moves on its. So it is political.