Or they are all from Norwich, the mask usage here is impressive compared to London.

I think the Mark 1 Eyeball has stood the test of time.

:)

Funnily enough, my experience is the mirror image of this and that of 13901. I was in London for the weekend, and continued to see generally good compliance on the tube - still 90% wearing masks - whereas it was a very different story on the mainline train down from Norwich.

Now Norfolk at the moment has some pretty low rates - north Norfolk in particular, which won’t be a massive surprise if you look at the vaccination figures - and our inaccessibility has no doubt helped. As a county, we should really be the most relaxed about any of the restrictions being eased.

Nonetheless, I agree - i don’t think there’s much doubt that if you ran this poll in Norwich you’d get a very different result to London. I suspect the recommendation will be to wear them in crowded spaces, but frankly when you’re 10 yards from someone on a train it will be nice to be able to adopt a spot of common sense by removing the mask.

I completely agree, on the 5am train to Liverpool Street Station I pretty much have a carriage to myself!

I think the public transport cohort in Cornwall is probably relatively statistically insignificant.

It sees what it wants to see I find…

Fixed. :)

And I have seen polls that say the opposite and that the majority will not continue with face masks beyond 19 July.

At the end of the day are some people unable to accept that having a personal choice means others may choose differently to you?

I think it’s probably more that, for good reason, that choice doesn’t exist today and won’t be a choice in most countries on 19 July. After 152,000 deaths, to paraphrase Sir Humphrey “that would be a particularly brave and courageous decision Minister”.

Not sure what the situation in other countries has to do with it? If you do want to compare, then yes lots of other countries do not currently have mask mandates - but tbh I am not really interested in what is happening elsewhere.

The good reason the choice hasn't existed up until now is fairly obvious, and it is vaccines. We had a lockdown this year where people were mandated by law to stay at home as few had any protection and therefore increasing cases quickly and directly led to unacceptably high levels of hospitalisations and deaths. Clearly that isn't happening now, so just as we have been relaxing lots of other restrictions since the end of March, we can relax this particular one in two weeks time.

This proves my point and is exactly why they continue to be necessary up here and I am glad they are here to stay for now. For what it is worth, regions in England are also on that list.

Here is the link to the press conference video:
I got mixed messages from Vallance and Whitty, which indicates how difficult the decision was. The SAGE documents will be released next week, but the decision looks be based on modelling like the below from Imperial:

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...ta-9-june-2021

My summary: Delaying stage 4 until mid December (green line in chart below) (which is their estimated date when all adults that want a vaccine have received both doses would result in less deaths and hospitalisations in total. But it would also result in a peak hospitalisation in the winter, when the health service is under most pressure.

With 25th July stage 4: 4,233 deaths, 26,125 hospital admissions and 3.5 million cases
With early Dec stage 4: 1,127 deaths, 7,767 hospital admissions and 1 million cases

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...133f1945df.png
I included the numbers based on no vaccine escape for B.1.617.2, and the optimistic scenario.

I can see the logic being the difference in deaths is relatively small (compared to deaths to date), so the only real difference is cases. If we accept the additional cases, then July is the sweet spot for stage 4 in terms of 'save the NHS'. Johnson announced school children and vaccinated people will no longer have to quarantine if they are an identified contact, so it will reduce the impact of those cases.

At the end of the day, Government policy under the slogan of 'living with the virus' is now to infect as many unvaccinated people in England as possible with covid-19 this summer, in order to avoid a winter NHS crisis. A culture war around masks is an added bonus!

The introduction of airbags did not make the seat belt a personal responsibility.
The invention of antibiotics does not make food hygiene in restaurants a personal responsibility.
Masks are particularly efficient, low cost and easy to follow measures, that are complementary to the vaccine barrier, not binary (one or the other).
The Swiss Cheese model, used in aviation safety for example, should continue to applies. I agree you can relax several things but a few had to stay in place or your Swiss Cheese only has 1 layer now.

25 000 hospitals admissions, the same as the January peak. 3.5 million cases equals 300 000 long COVID cases by a conservative estimates. This is back to the idiocy of the Great Barrington Declaration and the herd-immunity Brazil style. This will be interesting to follow.