In one sense it is only a matter of timing, surely? We don't normally mandate self isolation for flu, RSV or other respiratory disease, accepting that COVID-19 is more generally more lethal. Having said that the various statutory instruments that regularly get mentioned in this thread are enabled by some primary legislation enacted in 1984, the Public Health (Control of diseases) Act. So there remains some general provisions to mandate certain courses of quarantine restrictions, though they generally require a magistrate to sign them off for the individual concened. It's hardly ever been used in the original form.

Right now it's essential people self isolate and past experience is that if you move too quickly from statutory controls to guidance then at least some of the public won't get the point of it. So it's not on the cards now. Larger companies and educational institutions will want their staff to follow guidance fairly strictly, amd we really should be keeping away from unnecessary contacts if we have flu, RSV, that's probably a good learning point for all of us. But while it's too soon to do it now, I do see it as part of how we unwind ourselves from the pandemic.

A strange way to ignore the 15m+ people in the UK with multiple comorbidities who haven’t fared quite so well. I’d suggest reading alongside Rory Kinnear’s heartfelt article about why his severely disabled sister could have continued to live a full life for years, rather than the “underlying conditions” narrative that in one fell swoop makes a third of the adult population akin to a fully depreciated asset being written off with minimal societal loss. It’s in The Guardian, you might need to hold your nose.

It is time to get back to normal, and if any of you had pandemic parties or work meetings with wine and cheese during the lockdown it does not matter anymore, since life is getting back to normal and we are dropping those restrictions anyway, it is all in the past, so can we all move on and have a general amnesty is the point....:p

We may very well get to the point of no longer imposing a legal requirement to self-isolate, but I am convinced that culture has changed for good - it will no longer be socially acceptable to drag yourself into the office unnecessarily with a heavy cold, when you can work from home. We've all done it - I did it in January 2020 a few weeks into a new job with what in hindsight may very well have been COVID. Wouldn't dream of it now, and wouldn't expect anything other than complete support from my employer.

Obviously that doesn't apply to all jobs.

Well there was a reason for that which was employers typically penalised those who stayed at home when ill by various means such as use of Bradford scores etc. I am not convinced that has changed as much as you suggest, we are already seeing several major employers in the UK reducing sick pay for those who have not been jabbed for example which is a great incentive for those who may feel unwell or think they have covid to go to work.

Also to my mind if you are not well enough to go to the office you should not be working at home.

No, I think there's a middle ground, where you are coughing, spluttering and generally not pleasant to be around, but actually not impaired to any significant degree.

Of course you could just look at the figures and use it as part of the the bigger picture, perhaps use it as a "warning" to people that could actually do something about their overall health rather than focussing on deaths, deaths, more deaths, and more sob stories, without trying to go any deeper. We've all got sob stories as it relates to this so no, I don't need to read anyone elses. If we come out of this and have learned absolutely nothing and made no changes, whether individually or at a societal level then this has all been for nothing.

Most pre-existing conditions are not the fault of the individual but rather chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome and dementia. Many are a natural consequence of getting older. Most people who died with a comorbidity would still be alive today were it not for covid, and trying to differentiate between the "innocent" victims of covid-19 and those with comorbidity "sob stories" is unhelpful and heartless.

You’ve only to look at the comments on social media about reducing sick pay for the unjabbed who are required to isolate vs the jabbed who are still required to work. Comments relating to the unvaxxed being entitled to a weeks paid holiday “at home” whereas the reward for being responsibly vaccinated is that you have to work.

Your last sentence wouldn’t apply to those with asymptomatic covid, who are clearly able to work, being symptomless, but you wouldn’t want them in a crowded office.

Given you have consistently opposed pretty much every Covid mitigation other than vaccination, then I suspect our “learnings” may be very different.

It is the usual of extremism, a negation to find a scapegoat. It affects others, not me, and they are responsible for that (both by virtue of having a conditions but also because they should have tried to not have these conditions). That is stage of denial due to poor information and poor beliefs.

Today's travel story from the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ovid-variants/

No surprise to many of us...

Yes that's exactly what the world of work needs to do - if people are sneezing, or coughing, or a bit of temperature, then these people need to immediately reduce the number of people they are in contact with. Typically they can still work at say 90% of normal capacity. The sort of world of work we need to get to is that particularly for office workers / commuters / service sector that they have parked up some WFH work that needs to happen but not time critical. So I have to renew some Statutory and Mandatory training each year to remain on the clinical register, the CQC checks these things. Bit of a chore, they are done via e-learning on a NHS portal, but it's the sort of thing that can be kept on standby for when forced to work from home. Even forklift drivers in an Amazon warehouse have similar things like that to do. So we need employers and employees to move to a culture where this an acceptable part of how we work going forward, have it planned, and it is the sort of thing that ultimately benefits all of us, where as "just struggling on" is the opposite of being a hero.

Reducing contact when you have a bit of a cold? Yes, it does seem that some people don’t actually want to return to normal at all.

Of course this again throws under the bus those who can’t work at home and I imagine will have to survive on statutory sick pay under this new “zero germ” utopia.

Well as you know I'm "moderation in all things" so I think that's a harsh reading of the scenario. It's all above getting a good balance between working in person and working for the common good. If someone goes into a 10 person office with a mild bout of RSV, an entirely plausible outcome is that 6 co-workers also get RSV, 1 person passes it on tp a child who then can't go to school, 2 people in the office are laid out flat by it, and in one case it has a serious impact on other health conditions. If person1 had spent a few days at home doing paperwork then it's for everyone's advantage, including the employer. The alternative is that you get 12 days of absence from the others infected. I do see the point that we need to get out of a COVID psychosis, but we've actually learned a lot of valuable things recently. Like, for example, the thousands of deaths from influenza each year can be massively improved upon.