Apparently this time around, travel agents and jewellery sellers have added themselves to the list, with a few barbers clearly operating illicitly behind half-drawn shutters.
I was bemused by the very chi-chi local middle class deli near my home insisting they'd be staying open when I enquired on Saturday evening. I mean, sure they sell food, but really - I'm unsure how vital to survival artisanal cheese and pasta is!
Bluntly, without the sincere threat of fines or whatever, no action will be taken. UK-dwellers' sense of entitlement to 'freedoms' seems drastically diluted compared to what I witnessed on the continent a few months back, when I was able.
We deserve everything we get.
- ed, whups - clearly I meant something like 'drastically inflated', not 'diluted'.
Let's not repeat the mistakes of the first lockdown. If you close down too many places, all that causes is everyone cramming into the same few places still open, causing superspreader events. At one point, LA shut down outdoor farmers markets and many cities including London slashed their public transit schedules, leading to overpacked busses and trains.
On the last point, there was almost always some psycho causing problems in the regular supermarket because it appealed to their sense of drama and got them attention. The extra %15-20 was worth avoiding the risk of an altercation.
The contempt some people have for local shopowners who provide services that are actually worth a premium is shocking, albeit typically british.
I'm not sure I do think it's a British thing to hate on local shopowners, if anything - the opposite, what with us being a nation of them, and all.
Sure major Supermarkets have captured most of the spend, but that's just the way things are. Convenience comes in different forms.
The health of the population, in general, is not the primary concern. We just need to stop the hospitals from collapsing.
We live with all manner of sickness and disease every day of the year without trying to eradicate them. Covid is only different from heart disease, lung cancer, and rabies in that it has the potential to swamp us.
Adjusting the throttle for spread might mean jewelry shops being open but sandwich shops being closed. It might just as well involve lockdown for anyone born in an odd month, or with a name ending in a vowel, or ginger hair. The measures are arbitrary and only used as a throttle for the inevitable spread.
This is how I sleep at night. The alternative is the worrying thought that no one in power really knows what they are doing.
* keeping schools open (mostly a success)
* avoiding economic disruption (mixed, tending towards failure)
* avoiding unnecessary deaths and long run health issues (failure)
* Avoiding a second lockdown and the related uncertainty and stress (failure)
* returning to normal life (failure)
* avoiding dangerous mutations (failure)
The UK is an island and could have fairly easily done a NZ/Australia strategy over the summer when seasonality made elimination easy. Jurisdictions that made that choice are doing better on all front.
I live in one such jurisdiction (atlantic canada) and we’ve spent less time in lockdown, had a good economy, and mostly avoided deaths and hospitalizations. Seems a clear winner.
Perhaps a country in the middle of europe couldn’t have done it but the Uk certainly could have.
And no, this pretty clearly shows govts had no long run or even medium run strategy. Europe will be in rolling lockdowns till april or so, because of a premature declaration of victory in the summer.
The lockdown in New Zealand had that goal to stop it completely, and achieved it.
Also, it is in general not impossible to eradicate a contagion and suppress it completely. For example, this was done with smallpox, which is about as transmissible SARS-COV2. Smallpox has been eradicated world-wide, for a quite modest price.
Seriously?
We (the West, I'm not from the UK) are losing our freedom at an unimaginable speed even a few years ago and you think freedom is negotiable? I find this appalling how easy we ease into a dictatorship everywhere in Europe.
ALL our freedoms are attacked: the social media censorship reached crazy levels lately, and let's not talk about democracy given the disgusting spectacle the US has shown this year (my country doesn't fare any better).
When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to open, this is not a matter of self entitlement, yes I think these are the beginnings of dictatorship.
As I said I'm not from the UK but as far as I know people in London had more freedom during the WWII aerial bombings.
I tend to communicate quite drily - that's often hard to put across online.
In 1000 little steps you are suddenly miles away from a real lockdown. You're basically BAU, but the pub is shut ever other week (unless you buy a scotch egg in which case it is also essential).
I don't care if people are eating gourmet olives. But we need to realise that making excuses for doing nothing is still doing nothing.
Lockdowns have gone on long enough that people are deciding to risk it because they have far more pressing concerns.
I suppose we could close all food shops other than Asda, and restrict Asda to selling only their most basic range (and no sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks, etc- after all, you can survive without those). On the other hand, that would mean that Asda would be more crowded as people who normally shop in your "chi-chi local middle class deli" now have to go there.
