While I agree when it comes to conspiracists and anti-vaxxers, as I (and others) have posted before they only make up some of the people who haven’t had a vaccine. There is a difference between them, and people who have simply been misinformed - something that social media rabbit holes, and certain parts of the media, have absolutely not helped. Unfortunately if you have a community with low trust and engagement with officials/government anyhow, they will be disproportionately less likely to get jabbed - and bear the brunt of the outcomes. It’s why there is such immense efforts at outreach for these groups (I’m sure corporate-wage-slave would be able to explain more about this, but having seen his post about how busy he is I think he has more urgent things to do).

I don’t hold all these people responsible - but I certainly hold the influencers and commentators who reinforce their doubts and spread disinformation responsible. In my view, they have blood on their hands.

Edit to add: One other aspect of this mess is that older people (and those with certain underlying conditions or on some medical treatments) have less immune response than younger people even if they have been vaccinated/boosted. To say nothing of the small proportion who cannot have the vaccine for a reason like allergies. They will bear the brunt of the selfishness of others, through no fault of their own.

And no sign of any of my flights being cancelled so I at least get my money back!

Quite frankly, I have to say that some of the discourse on here as well as on the media and the political discourse infuriates me, and I say this as somebody who did all they could to get their first two doses as quickly as possible and had the booster this past Thursday.

The problem isn't a minority of people who didn't get vaccinated. In fact, the uptake in the UK has exceeded even the best expectations that were made in late 2020. People have been incredibly receptive and eager to uncover their shoulders for the shots. There would've always been a minority who would not get the vaccines, whether because they like conspiracy theories, or are scared, or are marginalized (and yes, wealth and social status are a big determinant of whether you get vaccinated), or in any way fall through the cracks.

The problem imho is that

1. Decades of bad policies and politics, incompetent management, lack of funding, and inadequate recruitment and retention of staff have left the healthcare system unable to manage an increase in pressure as a pandemic would expectedly bring: Why does nobody seem to be angry at the fact that from ~300k NHS beds in 1987 we are now at ~140k, with a population that's increased and gotten older, more obese, etc.? The system isn't fit for purpose. A lockdown now or later will not solve the problem, and the NHS will collapse anyway.
2. In the case of low vaccine uptake in certain groups, divisive politics, name-calling from all corners of the political discourse, social marginalization, a sense of being ignored and left behind, increasing inequities and inequalities, broken promises have all fueled distrust. Many people simply don't trust politicians/the intellectual class/the élites/whatever you want to call them any more. They now (rightfully imho) ask, "They told us vaccines where the way out--and we're back at it! They can f**k off, I won't comply. Why should I get vaccinated?"

All this to say, that blaming the "no-vaxxers" is a straw man and a deflection from the real root of the problem: The social contract is broken or at least severely damaged, and blaming all of our problems on those who refuse to get vaccinated 1. won't solve anything and 2. will increase social division and all our problems further.

And a lockdown won't help either.

"And a lockdown won't help either."

And will be largely ignored. I know I will.

I mean, if things are closed, you can't really ignore that. They're closed.

Agreed, but there'll definitely be more house parties in Jan 2022 than in Jan 2021. Or PTs giving classes in their homes when gyms are shut. Or "closed" restaurants that have the back door open.

Thanks Sherlock! :)

Clearly I was referring to restrictions such as visiting other households, etc., etc..

At least here, I know of plenty of people who had police visits from neighbours who heard noises of parties.

My street had a vigilance who spent most of lockdown staring out the window to catch folk out haha.

No-one likes a grass. :)

i wish they would introduce some kind of crimestoppers reward system where you could grass people up, £500 for everyone you report - would help pay for a few of my trips :)

Snitches get stitches :)

It wasn't me!

I fully subscribe to your Point 1. The NHS has been broken for way too long. I don’t remember another Western country where a guy who’d been run over by a car had to lie on the wet tarmac for one hour, in West London, while we worried about him going into hypothermia just because it was winter and there were no ambulances.

I see the sense of parts of your point 2, but there is a caveat I make. We all (well most) don’t have a lot of trust in politicians. But it’s a case of personal responsibility too. It’s OUR collective responsibility to be good citizens, and what is requires of us is to take a jab and some limited curbs to our personal freedoms like wearing a mask. Pointing at others - government, society, “the powers that be” - is IMHO an easy way out. At some point we need to be responsible for out actions.

I agree with all of the above.

I certainly agree that there are long-standing structural problems in the health system, though I think using a single rather crude metric like 'NHS beds' is itself not particularly helpful. Better to look at a wide range of health outcomes, which have generally improved over time (for example, cancer survival though you can look at a wide range of different outcomes for different conditions, plus waiting list times, etc). These were, on the whole, improving to around 2010 and have declined since. This is not me trying to make a party-political point, by the way - there were plenty of problems with New Labour's approach too (can anyone say 'PFI'?).

Unfortunately, because health is an incredible political football, politicians like to fiddle with it in the hope of taking credit for improvements. Too often, that means imposing whichever particular political and economic ideology is in vogue at the time, regardless of whether it's actually going to do any good. Another issue is that healthcare is also intrinsically linked to social care (especially as people live longer, with more chronic conditions), and this certainly has suffered, being de-prioritised and under-funded for many decades.

I'm afraid I don't agree that "A lockdown now or later will not solve the problem, and the NHS will collapse anyway" because it is the wrong premise: it mixes up short- and long-term issues. A lockdown absolutely can protect the system from being overwhelmed in the short-term. But it comes with all sorts of other societal costs too. No, of course it can't deal with long term/systemic issues. But I don't think anyone is arguing that it does - these are exacerbated by short term pressures but need their own solutions. Trying to do that in the middle of a pandemic would be, however, "a brave decision Prime Minister" to quote Sir Humphrey.

While I agree with much of this, and in particular not blaming anti-vaxxers for everything (which I'm not), I would point out that 1) the breaking of the social contract did not start with vaccines, but has been an ongoing process for quite some time and 2) the level of vaccine and booster uptake so far suggests to me that most people - even if they're annoyed by the hypocrisy of the No 10 parties, and angry that they were told vaccines were the way out, etc. - are still doing the steps they can to protect themselves and others around them. I.e. that the social contract, while strained, is not completely broken (at least at a societal level). If such a view was widespread, we'd see lower booster uptake, fewer volunteers coming forward to help with the booster campaign, more people not bothering to take LFTs, etc.

If a lockdown would reduce the number of cases sufficiently to reduce pressure on the system, so that people don't end up dying in hospital corridors or waiting to be admitted from the back of an ambulance for any number of Covid or non-Covid reasons (heart attack, stroke, RTA, falling off a ladder, etc), then it will by definition work. It is precisely what happened between January and March last year.

Will people ignore the rules, in light of all the issues raised here? Quite possibly. But 1) many, and I suspect the majority, would still obey most of the rules most of the time 2) you'd have to go to a lot of house parties to spread it to the same extent that you would with unrestricted indoor winter mixing in workplaces, pubs, etc. So I think it would still "work", albeit maybe not as effectively as last time.

Try Sweden in the summer.