US CDC is now advising US citizens against travel to the UK:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-57898328

I'm not entirely convinced that night clubs being open is a good idea either, particularly in surge areas (such as where I live and where the nightime economy is pretty substantial). Those that work in nightclubs are on usually about £9 or £10 an hour, zero hours contracts and you can see the risks for them in the table above. But yes pushing events outdoors may be the way to go, and there is a long tradition of music festivals in the UK, even my nearest village of 200 people has one. The danger with the Covid Passes in September is you risk unlicensed raves in the middle of the countryside instead. There aren't many easy answers here. But at some point the legal restrictions have to go and if you do that in say October it may makes matters worse.

I'm somewhat surprised the Delta variant isn't already as prevalent in the US.

Give it a couple of weeks.

Here is the video of yesterday's press conference:

Some highlights:

just as with the kent (alpha?) variant, the US is trailing the UK by 1.5-2 months. i suspect things will shoot up end of august when school starts back and people resume a normal like (back to office etc).

To what country has the NHS outsourced the track&trace? Catched covid at the final last weekend and got called today. But the script... The way the person talked. I assumed it was from somewhere deep in Africa, Nigeria or something. But there wasn't any real human feel to the 'conversation'. Well wouldnt even call it a conversation. But it literally didn't do any good the information she was giving. They might aswell make it a robocall with a spoken message then this. a 8 year old would've made a more humanly conversation then the way this went. Completely useless.

The best part is how they mention your full name 11 times. My full name consist of 6 middle names and she literally read them all up at the end of every sentence.. Wish i recorded the whole call.

Well.... The call could have originated from London. I see that's your location so you know what a melting pot the place is (possibly like nowhere else on earth). That said, the rigid adherence to whatever process sounds like a call from India. And when it comes to calls, I'm afraid Inglish (or perhaps subcontinental Panglish would be a better description) often comes across as lacking in empathy.

I am no expert. But I don't think anyone can claim I'm the stereotypical armchair FT-er who knows everything better ex post.

Experts were very vocal in the media ex ante that the ultra-quick easing in England is not a good idea. Again, I'm no expert so I'm not claiming it was the majority opinion the loosening was too rapid. But we're not talking about some maverick scientist, that's for sure. The concerns of experts were broadly publicized.

The media was full of epidemiologists, virologists, chief physicians, and so on two months ago which questioned the strategy. Policymakers voiced concerns, too (e.g., shortly after the start of the euro cup, several politicians appealed to the UK not to let 60k people into Wembley for the final).

The government's policy seems myopic and time-inconsistent to me. And when people remind me that the restrictions of freedom and liberties must come to an end eventually (I agree), I point to the intertemporal payoff. It is an extreme invasion to an individual's human rights to put it into self-isolation for 10 days. Even hundreds of thousands of fully vaccinated Brits are sent into self-isolation these days.
And, IDK, it may be the right thing to do *given* the current situation. But I think this situation could have been partially be avoided (i.e., less than 3 million in self-isolation today) if less drastic measures were kept in place. I mean the usual mask mandates, capacity constraints on group/mass gatherings, and so on.

Given the NHS app pinging is not legally enforceable in law I expect many people to ignore being pinged and live their daily lives, I know several people who are now ignoring their pings. Of course, I am sure some people actually want to get pinged so they have an excuse off work as long as they are getting paid, it depends on who gets pinged I guess.

Yes, I just read that on the Guardian and fully acknowledge my post was wrong or misleading in that regard. I now realize being pinged has a different quality than a contact from NHS test and trace.

Although, the Guardian also reports more than 1 mil students out of school for pandemic-related reasons last week. Even with your correction, those numbers are still mind-boggling.

I feel the same about being told I have to wear a mask.

My 10 calls from NHS T&T were mostly from people in the Midlands/North.

There's an interesting (and inconsistent and confusing) mix of messages from the retail and transport sectors today.

My local post office (in London) has new signs on the doors asking customers to wear a face covering at all time while in the store.

My local Tesco has a new sign outside asking customers to "continue wearing a mask while shopping" and is still enforcing store capacity limits by means of traffic lights at the doors.

John Lewis Oxford Street had no visible notices this morning but almost all customers and staff were wearing a face covering.

The barista at Caffe Nero was yelling at everyone who walked in wearing a face covering that it's no longer necessary to wear a mask. :)

Train company LNER (owned by the UK government) yesterday claimed that it would be operating under English law even when in Scotland, and would not enforce social distancing or the wearing of face coverings on board its cross-border services but has now backed down and will comply with Scottish guidelines.

On your last point the issue wasn’t face coverings, it was only social distancing. LNER had always said they would continue to remind people face coverings were mandatory in Scotland and would make an announcement to that effect when north of Berwick. The problem was social distancing has been dropped in England but not in Scotland, but LNER mistakenly believed they had some agreement to allow them to operate based on English guidelines across all their routes which therefore meant no social distancing and no capacity restrictions.

Tbh the whole thing once again highlights the absurdity of different laws and guidance across the UK and the inability to work together of the four parts. It is of course ridiculous on a London to Edinburgh train that the company should somehow operate to different capacities for different parts of the journey - and I am sure most people will ignore the stupidity of the argument and just use their common sense anyway. Senior politicians getting involved has not helped on an issue which is practical in nature and does not benefit from being made political.