From my point of view I’ve never praised a leader to trust the population to self regulate. If Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had left the population to decide the entire state would be still fighting the virus. Instead he kept the lockdown until elimination of the virus under great pressure from the public. I saw how much he was crucified for his decisions.
Thank fuck for potentially a vaccine solving the issue because the UK would perpetually be going from lockdown to total restriction easing every 2 months.
“It’s deadly serious. No it’s not anymore because business. No it’s deadly serious again”.
Testing site a few blocks from me. 20 people lined up waiting to get tested. Absolutely none wearing masks. None of the staff either. What in the absolute fuck.
When I went to a test centre, I was standing in the queue, mask on, when someone stood immediately behind me, far too close and not wearing a mask. I had to ask them to step back, much to their surprise. The general public are either thick or just don’t care.
I got a cold on Monday afternoon. The rules over here are, stay in and get tested. On Tuesday morning I looked on the government website, filled in my postcode and 3 hours later I had a spot 10 minutes from home.
Got there well organized (everybody who wanted to have a test was obliged to wear a mask) and all the staff were wearing masks and gloves. The testers were wearing protective clothing, a plastic vizier and medical masks.
How is it possible that the staff were not wearing masks?
BTW, the result of the test came back around noon today, negative.
I think @Mascot isn’t far off the mark. They’ve been forced into doing something simply because too many would take the piss if there were any kind of compromise in place.
From a political perspective it will go some way to keeping the Tory party back benches a little quieter for a while.
But it’s pretty certain that some will still take the piss and it is likely to help the virus along a little bit more. But in truth I’m actually more worried about the run up to Christmas (and afterwards thinking about it). In Wales we’re allowed to have 3 households get together. Christmas shopping however has started and places are filling up. Shops etc. While those retail places certainly need it, we might as well have an indoor boot sale in the Millennium Stadium with the roof closed. Then post Christmas there will be the January Sales.
We have had a mask mandate here since June, compliance is very high - worst I have seen for months are occasional ‘dicknoses’, people with their noses sticking out. I don’t really understand why masks are difficult. Regionally, we have managed to keep estimated R below 1 for over a month, other parts of the country are doing far worse.
My technique is to pull my mask high up my face, and use my glasses to pinch it tight to my nose. That encourages the breath to vent out of the bottom of the mask and not the top.
It’s not perfect and it’s really uncomfortable, but it’s not blindness.
The ones I use have a long wire that allows that top fit to the face to be quite tight., so after putting them on, you clamp the wire tightly over the bridge of the nose and flush against your face. With the subzero temperatures we have now, it is pretty easy to see where the airflow goes.
The disposable medical ones are indeed hopeless, I have had a rotation of 6 masks that get washed after a few days of use.
Travel data in the US suggests widespread disregard for health authorities’ requests for people to avoid large family gatherings for Thanksgiving. With the current level of community transmission as a base, they may be ten days or so from a staggering daily case load.
Yeah, a lot of coverage of that story, made even more scary in the context of every mainland state being in a deep red state of uncontrolled community transmission. But it is WAY down on normal thanksgiving travel. I cannot comprehend flying for thanksgiving in this environment, albeit made easier for me to say with no family in this country and it not being my holiday, and that seems to have been the majority attitude. I think what this shows though is how these sorts of problems can be driven by a minority of people.
A North Carolina friend ruefully suggested that all of the people he knows that have been isolating and wearing masks are also not travelling and gathering this Thanksgiving, so it all should be fine. The people who have been the problem all along are going to be the problem.
