Many SAGE members have come out and said that lockdowns should not ease till we have an average of under 1,000 new cases a day. Is that not a number?

Oh, great. Another summer checking the Rt Hon's Twitter account.

Not really. US is fully open in some states and even in the 'careful' states such as NY and CA they are much more open than we are with indoor dining etc, so 2 months ahead of our timelines. And this with the US behind us in vaccines! So it's high time we open up.

No one expects travel to be 100% normal by May, but the US and Europe should be ok.

Somewhere on this forum, I've read that the lateral flow tests give a false positive 1 in 1000 times. So as the government gets up to 1 million lateral flows a day, and let's just assume there's no Covid at all, then we get 1000 cases simply due to the false positive. In other words, the SAGE members want zero Covid, but have chosen different words to describe it.

Also Whitty said a while back we would have to live with annual deaths of 7000-20000 per year so quite happy to quote numbers then.

There's a bit of a muddle there :D

Opening the economy to a limited extent is one thing; opening travel abroad in the way we knew it is another. Hopefully the first of those things will be facilitated by a combination of the vaccine programme and sensible behaviour by the public. The second is pretty much outside our control: if you're limited to seeing all this through a little-England lens, you won't get it.

Around half our population have received the first of vaccination they need to acquire a significant level of immunity from infection.

Maybe best to relax, take a breath and hope:

• the vaccination programme gets over the expected stutter keep up its excellent progress;
• immunisation prevents infection spread from asymptomatic carriers;
• the virus does not evolve to escape the current vaccines;
• Europe gets its act together.

You do know Paul Charles runs a public relations agency focused on the travel industry, right?
Maybe stick to the Telegraph :D

This might be true on paper but realities are always different. I’ve already pointed out elsewhere that despite the Texas Gov declaring they are open and maskless, is not quite what is being experienced on the ground.

That will be the case globally, many will celebrate the day when everything is open and masks are no longer, but many will avoid the open places as well as the maskless environments. Many will simply wait until they feel ready. This is not a light switch moment. It will take time no matter how progressive one place might be.

People have worn masks long before COVID and will wear masks long after. It's a question of whether it is mandatory or not. Nothing wrong with ppl wearing masks if they feel comfortable with it.

This brings into light the 'lockdown'. Lockdown by definition is forced on people, Texas simply said we allow everyone to open if they feel safe to do so, and that's what I want to see in the UK. Let the ppl decide.

Infection rates are low enough and vaccines are high enough.

Look at Israel. Pretty much fully open now except for borders.

I know the focus is right now on EU cases rising, but they are really behind on vaccinations compared to us and we should not compare ourselves with them.

Whilst that’s true, I am referring to how many will wear masks. Masks have been common in Asia but for places such as the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Southern America and the USA etc, masks are unfamiliar, hence why there has been a backlash and fierce revolt against masks, as it hasn’t been apart of these cultures, change especially when radical doesn’t work well. I have family members that simply feel masks are a muzzle to stop them from being human. Wild, crazy, selfish but perhaps understandable on some level of humanity, to convey to these people who have never donned any sort of face covering, that masks aren’t about taking away freedoms but more about limiting viruses or pollutants is a very tough motion.

So yea masks may have been around but I think that the idea of places being open on paper by government officials may sound idealistic, the reality will be different and personally I hope masks become a norm in socially compact environments.

Looking at this from a different angle, can the travel companies survive if they do not get their summer season this year? Let's take Jet2 as an example. A company with 13,000 staff and a pre-COVID turnover of £3bn+, which must indirectly be supporting a few thousand more jobs. They have gone to their shareholders for cash once already I think. I am going to guess that a substantial part of their workforce is on furlough, meaning in effect the government is pumping a substantial amount of money into the company. Can they survive without their summer season, I suspect not. The government will have a difficult decision to make. Do they bail them out, probably to the tune of a few hundred million to get them through to next summer or let them fail? It's a lot of jobs and a lot of money already spent supporting them which could be lost. The government is also on the hook for the ATOL scheme which protects their customers. I don't suppose there is much money in the bank account that supports the ATOL scheme, leaving the government to pick up the tab. Pre-COVID Jet2 was a profitable company too, paying a substantial amount of tax. Now apply the same logic to many of the other travel companies in the same boat. The decisions on international travel that must be made will be guided not just on the virus, but on the economics. Government borrowing of nearly £20bn last month is not sustainable and this will become an increasing problem.

If you have been watching commercial TV for the last few weeks (and let's face it, there's sod all else to do), you will have seen the commercials Jet2 is running. Lots of them. £100pp off on summer holidays. These commercial campaigns are not cheap and Jess Glynne gets a cut too. Even if they are a third of the price of pre-COVID rates (ad revenues are seriously that down with only the government paying the full rates). Would Jet2 be running these if they had not been given some behind the scenes promises that they would be able to run their summer season? Unlikely it seems.

(emphasis mine)
Israel is open for vaccinated people. You need to show proof of vaccination to access restaurants, gym, ....
Non vaccinated people are still under heavy restrictions.

This is what is being advocated: careful, step by step reopening to see how it affects rates on non vaccinated population to lead to a fairly normal life into the summer with a very controlled border to avoid importing cases from variant that would destroy the entire work.

Also in Texas, of course masks can be made mandatory by any private establishments that decide it: countless banks, restaurants, etc ... have mandatory mask in Texas. People trying to enter there maskless have been arrested.

Obviously I know that I can read.

Some good news for the UK and everyone following the vaccine roll-out closely: The UK is no longer considered an area of variant concern by Germany, and is now a normal risk area (I would consider this a double downgrade).

This means the requirements to travel to Germany (for those allowed to enter) is a test either 48 hours before or after entry, and a 10 day quarantine (with a 5 day test to release option). It will also be much easier to transfer flights in Germany now, with only the destination country's requirements applying.

Source: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/...ublicationFile

The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said the government will protect its vaccination programme at all costs and hinted that strict restrictions on foreign travel could continue into the summer.

Asked on Sky News about the prospects for travel he said: “We can’t be deaf and blind to what’s going on outside the United Kingdom. If you look in Europe, and the increases in infections, we can’t put at risk the huge amount of risk, by the taxpayer, by the NHS, by our scientists, in developing this vaccine. If we were to be reckless in any way, and important new variants that put it at risk, then what would people say about that? We’ve got good direction of travel, we’re getting there, and I think we need to make sure we preserve that at all costs.”

The shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, also underlined the need for the government to be careful when she appeared on the Andrew Marr show on BBC:

“We’re all desperate to go on holiday, but we’ve got to proceed with caution. We can’t allow the good work that’s been done by the vaccine rollout to be unravelled by unlocking too quickly, or by failing to secure our borders. We’ve seen problems with that in the past.”

UK minister hints Covid rules on foreign travel could extend to summer