Your accusations of selfishness are totally inappropriate and completely wide of the mark. I, along with most others, have made astronomical sacrifices in the past year - reduced personal freedom, juggling work and homeschooling etc etc etc. I know for a fact that my mental health is suffering enormously, and we are only beginning to see the impacts on suidide rates, broken families and other related issues. How dare you think you are well placed to judge my personal situation.
And you are totally factually wrong on the variant issue - outside of South America and the as-yet unproven impact of the Brazilian variant, everywhere else is dealing with the Kentish strain, which is infectious, but no more deadly than vanilla-Covid - as mentioned by others, they are more a feeding frenzy for the press than a real danger beyond the base virus, If you want to shut yourself off from the world until the end of time be my guest, but I would rather support the 10s of thousands of people working in the travel industry and not have them suffer a minute longer than absolutely necessary.

Your ability to constantly miss the point is quite remarkable.

I imagine there's very few here who are demanding that every country in the world suddenly goes green on 17th May - that is patently unrealistic, and taking an extreme stance either for or against that can only lead to ridicule.

In terms of the priorities, you're absolutely right - patients need to be treated, businesses need to open. But let's add to your list that everybody needs their own personal freedom to improve their mental health, and we all know someone - likely many people - who have suffered terribly because of the lengthy deviation from normality we've been through several times over the past year. Keeping them locked down unnecessarily when all the evidence points to a different path being possible makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Consider also - if we make it nearly impossible for foreign visitors to come here and spend money, how exactly do you think the government is going to pay for all these desirable things? Encouraging staycations is all very well, but it doesn't actually bring any new money into the country - it just moves it from one bit of the UK to another.

This isn't having a political pop at HMG - indeed, there is considerable evidence from the mouth of Jonathan Ashworth that Labour favours an even harsher approach to quarantine on return - but it is about taking a proportionate view of just how large the risk really is when we have (to coin a phrase) world-beating genome testing which quickly identifies and controls any variants, and a system that pretty much immediately drops mass testing squads into affected areas.

Of course putting Portugal as amber instead of green won't trigger national unrest, although it would be illogical, but assuming nothing changes in terms of trajectory having just one or two countries as green would make a mockery of the efforts/sacrifices put in so far to bring the UK to this advantageous position.

Completely in agreement with much of your post. Mental health is of course important and we all know someone affected as you say. Although as usual on this subject extreme are drawn (destroyed lives, rise of suicide when suicides are actually decreasing- cf 2020 mortality details and latest study looking at 20+ countries).
All that needs to be balanced without forgetting this is global and the current UK success is fragile. One bad move and months are lost.
Patience is the key virtue here.

To expand on this, and my own points on the value of incoming tourism to the UK economy, this page might be instructive to those who quite like quoting facts and projections: https://www.visitbritain.org/visitor-economy-facts

A high level summary, as required by FT rules:

- The 40.9 million overseas visitors who came to the UK in 2019 spent £28.4 billion. These figures represent a 1% increase in volume and 7% (nominal) increase in value compared with 2018.
- In 2018 the UK ranked eighth in the UNWTO international tourist arrivals league, behind France, Spain, USA, China, Italy, Turkey and Mexico. The UK accounted for 2.7% of global arrivals in 2018.
- In 2018 the UK was in 11th place in the international tourism earnings league behind USA, Spain, France, Thailand, Italy, Japan, Australia, Germany, Macao and China according to UNWTO figures. The UK accounted for 2.4% of international tourism receipts in 2018.
- Tourism is of ever increasing importance to the UK economy, with the percentage share of GDP increasing to 9.9% by 2025 - assuming, of course, we actually give people some encouragement to visit.
- Foreign visitors are projected to grow at 6%
- 3.7m jobs will be supported by the sector

They're all very big numbers, critical to supporting all the laudable aims some have stated.

If you prevent UK residents from travelling abroad partially because of the hoops it's necessary to jump through on return, those very same hoops apply to foreign visitors, the vast majority of whom represent no threat to the UK because - as has been pointed out - the main variant propagating through the world now is the Kentish one, which all vaccines in the UK give good protection against. Excessive caution - much like the stopping of the AZ/J&J vaccines - will now do far more harm than good.

Reasonable caution I understand. Scaremongering I don't.

I’d be interested to hear someone explain this vanilla virus to someone who has suffered considerably or has lost a love one. A friend of mine, young healthy male, spent 2 weeks in intensive care due to Covid not knowing if he would see his newborn. It’s frankly insulting to these people to call this virus vanilla.

Just because one hasn’t suffered or knows of anyone who’s suffered doesn’t mean there isn’t suffering from this horrible virus. To say it’s vanilla is frankly BS and that choice word should be dropped.

I asked this question a few days ago. CWS summarised nicely:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33171211-post3820.html

A variant with the same infection fatality rate, but which spreads more readily is definitively more deadly. The only way it can be as, or less deadly, is if the variant IFR reduces to compensate for the increased R number. Am I missing something? :confused:

Case in point, Ireland’s experience since Kent variant became dominant around the end of last year. Broadly same lockdown as last year, yet cases and deaths much higher and sustained much longer.

It would help if you supported such blunt statements with some evidence.

Considering the South African variant managed to escape both AZ and been Pfizer in the London cases we are seeing (this surge testing), you can kiss all these new freedoms goodbye if this variant gains a hold in the UK. I am desperate to travel like many on this forum, but, even I can see that. And of course this London outbreak happened because of someone who quarantined at home but spread it to others in the home and from there into the community.

There is no evidence of this variant escaping anything in London or elsewhere. We dont have info on who has been infected, whether they were vaccinated or not, or who they may or may not have passed it on to - or most importantly, whether anyone vaccinated has become seriously ill (the whole point of vaccinations...).

All we are seeing is proper track and trace finally working - a source of the dreaded 'variant of concern' has been identified and its spread is being tracked using surge testing. Anything beyond that right now is just media speculation and exaggeration.

That isn't the case though. The NHS documentation the BBC got a hold of clearly says it came in from a traveller from Africa somewhere (that wasn't red but then went red), he or she quarantined but passed it to household members, and then those people passed it on both within schools and a care home.

There has been a lot of mention of these few countries, I suppose countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore would also be likely candidates for the Green List? Although they all have similar restrictions.

Though I don’t disagree with your prediction..

Last year there was various debates about whether we should lockdown, or let the virus rip and protect the vulnerable. Lockdown won due to protecting the NHS and avoiding huge numbers of deaths.

Now the vulnerable have been protected, and there has been nothing to show the vaccines still do not protect from serious illness/death in the variants, how can restrictions possibly still be justified? It’s as if the draconian removing of our most basic freedoms is becoming normalised with moving goalposts. Next it will be “just until the Autumn booster” until some other reason to extend it all is found.

Some data for today:

Cases 2,672 (3,030 last Thursday)
Deaths 30 (53)
Patients admitted 201 (195 on the 4th)
Patients on ventilation 351 (440 on the 7th)
Patients in hospital 2,393 (3,137 on the 6th)
People vaccinated up to and including 14 April 2021
First dose: 32,444,439
Second dose: 8,513,864

The rolling 7 day daily average is down 6.9% on the previous week. This represents a slow down on the rate of fall we saw a week ago. Maybe to do with lower Easter figures moving out of the data. We did see a slow down a month or so ago and then it picked up again, so anyone's guess right now... Still good figures for hospitals though.

It depends on what we are looking for in the data. Can we have Zero Covid? Is it doable?