I have a great deal more sympathy for the likes of small business owners and employees who are genuinely worried about their future than I do for the self-entitled moaners banging on about their ‘liberty’ and ‘rights’.

Absolutely. I live in an area that has a lot of airport workers so I totally get the fear. But, it is better to ease slowly than have to go backwards and have tougher lockdown restrictions again. Also. Boris did say it was the earliest the rules would be relaxed, I don't ever remember it being promised.

There is a great deal of sympathy for small business owners and others affected by the restrictions.

However, the choice that the country faces right now is either to keep the remaining restrictions in place for a little longer or be forced to lock down hard again in a month or two. That's the reality.

New date 19th July
 

Hi,

PM presser on just now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-57466097

Restrictions continuing until 19th July.

Limits relaxed on weddings and wakes.

Pilot events for sports/concerts continuing

Regards

TBS

It's really worrying how some people here think demanding your basic rights is a self entitlement. I'm afraid that in this past year relation between state and individual has changed dramatically and irreversibly. We live in a country with one of the best vaccination programs in the world (all these vaccines are highly effective against all variants known so far) and despite all that we still have people for whom risk is too high to allow us having a normal life back.

Now imagine this. Last year we didn't have a flu. Let's assume we have covid under control in autumn, but flu might hit really hard now (bad flu seasons in UK are 20k+ deaths). If media and government will start showing these numbers on TV I bet people in this country (perhaps many of you here) will beg gov for more restrictions and lockdowns. That's something I'm really scared of.

You don't understand that people opposing restrictions and lockdowns generally are not worried about wearing masks or social distancing. They are concerned that these measures are changing how far can government and scientists go into restricting our lives in the name of our "safety". It will have tragic consequences for the future.

I will simply say that I disagree. No government (at least here in the west) wants to impose these restrictions on its citizens, and we soon again have the freedoms we used to enjoy and take for granted. Just as soon as it's safe to do so.

The current restrictions are relatively small in scope:
- no night clubs
- capacity constraints on hospitality, which means their profitability is borderline, but it's not a total block
- tougher, but not complete restrictions, on crowd events such as sports
- travel (most people only travel once or twice a year)
- restrictions on family and friends group mixing - that's largely voluntary now since it is unenforceable
- post 18 education constrained, though sometimes more than the law requires
- working from home - and we are learning that this has a lot of upsides
- masks and social distancing

If you consider what average people do, in terms of working, living, the odd night out, kids at school, the constraints are relatively modest, certainly compared to lockdown. If you end up with 1,400 people dying a day - then that is unsustainable with a civilised society for a curable disease. If a Boeing 777 fell out of the UK sky each and every 6 hours you can bet that you would expect 777s to be grounded immediately. The disease can be, and is being, conquered. Those currently dying from Covid are often in their 30s and 40s, and would have been saved by vaccines. But despite all our best efforts we don't quite have enough vaccines right now - we are on a fairly delicate timeline here. My perception is that if HMG is operating largely on the basis of consent here, certainly parliamentary consent, and that if HMG were to have announced all restrictions ended today, some of us would have been appalled by the unnecessary risk it would avoidably engender.

Dead people have no freedom.

If I may say so, this is a very lazy argument. Either the current restrictions are significant to the extent they have a substantive effect in reducing infection rates, or they are insignificant and have no effect on rates. There isn't a middle ground where you can argue the restrictions are almost insignificant in our day to day life and we are living as normal, and yet they are having a substantive effect in reducing mixing and infections.

Also for your last line, by that reasoning we would have a lockdown every winter for the flu as many people die from that. I have been and continue to do my bit. I am not downplaying the pandemic and I am not someone arguing it is like a bad flu, but equally as a society we start from the principle that restrictions on our freedom need to be justified and not based on easy slogans like no one is safe until everyone is safe etc. It may be that's where we are actually heading in the future and that society is becoming more intolerant of death, but let's have a discussion about that rather than fall in to a new normal by accident.

It was obvious to all back in March/April that India was going badly and many people were travelling freely between India and the UK. My anecdotal observations through April were that the Indian routes were some of the few long haul routes which were packed. And on the domestic routes it was very busy with families connecting on to or coming back from India/Pakistan. I am sure we would have got the Indian variant anyway at some point, but the delay in putting them on the red list allowed it to be firmly implanted here earlier and for weeks before HMG acted. I fully understand the reasons for the delay being the potential trade deal, and that isn't entirely unreasonable, but let's get away from this misnomer that HMG is doing everything they can to reduce risk when they have failed to act this year to do exactly that.

To what possible (and credible) end might a) government and b) scientists(?!?!?) be motivated to restrict your life unnecessarily in the future?

I am about as far as you can get from a fan of the current U.K. administration, but even I accept that its primary motivation in taking the actions it has has been to save lives, and that given the choice it would rather have not had to do so.

In this case there is. If you project the Delta variant's spread on one side of the column and the composition of who will get the vaccine over the next few weeks (adding several weeks on top) then you can see that Delta has a shortening window of opportunity to double cases every 7 days rather than every 11 to 12 days, the current progress. Though a lot has been made of the fact that 2 vaccines seem very effective against the variant, less fuss has been made over the fact that dose 1 plus X weeks also gives something like 60% effectiveness, the trouble is we aren't too sure what X is, other than it's over 6 weeks. So if you do the maths, then mid July - on current infection trends - will be OK, hospitals will get a bit busy, but not so much ICU and a minimal level of deaths. But if the 12 days ends up as 6 days then we are in trouble. The liberalisations delayed are ones that affect the unvaccinated and under-vaccinated the most - nightclubs, mass football events, inter-household holidays, up close drinking and eating. So if they are allowed that gives enough of an uptick to make it serious. If you stay at current levels, then with a bit more effort on getting vaccine take up in London and Manchester improved then we should be OK, and most people can maintain their lives with lower restrictions. So yes it's a middle way, but it's factored into the likely road ahead of us.

The critical difference with flu is that the nature of the virus is very different to that of SARS-Cov2 and therefore it is very difficult to reduce the death rate. Or so we thought until this year - we have learned a heck of a lot about what we can do to stop unnecessary influenza deaths and I expect as well as hope that we will be able to make a serious dent on future death rates. Unlike COVID19, children die from flu and this causes huge tragedies for young couples. It's rarely reported on in the media since we have seemingly written it off. But for example with things like lateral flow tests for nursery school staff, better ventilation, more use of cleaning products, a fast withdrawal of sick children from early year settings - all of that will make a big dent in that death rate. And with minimal inconvenience all round really. Small things that really add up.

This is a counsel of hope, I can assure you, I doubt you really wanted Boris to say "all systems go and now".

So the trip I booked for July 20th may happen? Looks like my June 21 visit is canceled…

Yes, because we obviously haven't had any examples throughout history that governments could use their power with bad intentions.

Anyway, let's assume that THIS government genuinely cares about our health. I am afraid that our absolute compliance now can lead to more and more opportunities in the future for the surveillance which leads to control and power. You can't be sure that everyone will have good intentions can you?

Power, control and money - I think it's enough to corrupt a person. We've had few examples of that regarding covid contracts in the past year.

Why did England allow all of those flights from India to land in the first place?

I think there’s some considerable distance between asking people to wear a mask indoors and a military coup.

According to the DT, UK ambassadors are warning that overseas holidays will be off till at least August. Further to this, many UK airlines are cancelling many flights till late July.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...esorts-august/

I'm sure many here will be delighted, but it seems like as the world moves on, we are stuck not being able to travel freely and vaccines play no part in allowing less restricted travel. Frankly ridiculous.

If we also look at the 7-day infection rates across the EU, we are now worse than Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta and more. France reported less than 700 cases today. 700. Yet it is seen as more dangerous to fly from France to London than Manchester to London. Tell me that is also science/evidence backed.