Quarantine

[Bantamzen]

That's a question that no-one has been able to satisfactorily answer throughout this pandemic.

It underscores politicians' refusal to be straightforward with the population, and to make clear that they can't prevent all of society's ills (at best, they can moderate and manage them), and in fact that it is unreasonable to expect any such thing of them.

This issue manifests itself through ever-changing goalposts - "slow the spread" ... "save the NHS" ... "significant normality by November" ... "vaccinate the over 70s" ... "vaccinate everyone" ...

The madness will, sadly, continue until someone makes the politicians spit out the "shocking" truth.

As with all of the government's responses, and indeed of those all around the world, the problem lies with policies still effectively being underpinned by "control" and/or "elimination" of the virus based policies. Politicians have taken it upon themselves to make the situation into a "war", where a victory or loss are the only outcomes. And with all wars, victory is seen as the only desirable result, and that is usually achieved in elimination or surrender of the enemy. Unfortunately there is a slight problem here, the virus does not know it's at war and so will not surrender, and elimination is all but impossible. Hence the almost endless cycles of restrictions, including pretending you can stop "other variants" by locking down the borders.

As both Australia & New Zealand have shown, even massively strict lockdowns of the borders will not stop the virus and it's many future mutations. 4Yet if you leave your house without the government's permission, the Police will be on you and potentially fine you. If you hug a family member or friend, the Police will be on you and potentially fine you. If you eat a crepe in the street, the Police will be on you and potentially fine you. And if you dare to travel the Police will be on you and potentially fine you. Better still if you travel from countries deemed "unclean", the Police will come and lock you up in a crappy hotel room and the government will charge you way beyond the going rate for the privilege.

A cynical person, I mean really cynical person would suspect that what this government seems to be introducing is a form of "Covid-Tax" to claw back some of the half trillion plus pounds they have p***ed up against the wall in their "War on Covid".

 

[Watershed]

I agree, these are inconsistent. They are also being applied to people who choose to travel abroad against advice, as opposed to those who have quite possibly have no control over their circumstances.

So it is about punishing people for going against government advice (bearing in mind far from everyone will fall into that category) - as opposed to dealing with an articulable epidemiological risk?

Different risk profiles lead to different responses.

The risk is undoubtedly higher if someone is known to live in a variant-hit area, compared to someone merely coming from a country where variants are present? And that is quite apart from the negative test that is required to even begin the journey.

From what I can tell, you are advocating for less stringent measures on people with a significantly greater risk profile.

A cynical person, I mean really cynical person would suspect that what this government seems to be introducing is a form of "Covid-Tax" to claw back some of the half trillion plus pounds they have p***ed up against the wall in their "War on Covid".

Sadly, I suspect they'd have to be charging a lot more to even start paying off the interest on the debt they've taken on!

 

[35B]

So it is about punishing people for going against government advice (bearing in mind far from everyone will fall into that category) - as opposed to dealing with an articulable epidemiological risk?


The risk is undoubtedly higher if someone is known to live in a variant-hit area, compared to someone merely coming from a country where variants are present? And that is quite apart from the negative test that is required to even begin the journey.

From what I can tell, you are advocating for less stringent measures on people with a significantly greater risk profile.

I'm suggesting this ought to have been done a very long time ago, and not just for "red" countries. I also do not consider this about "punishment" but managing epidemiological risk.

Whether the government are then managing epidemiological risk consistently is a different question, and there are reasonable questions to be asked.

 

[brad465]

Already had four fines of £10k issued in relation to the new Quarantine rules: it'll be worth watching what becomes of this in terms of any potential appeals should they be publicised:

Covid: Four fined in Birmingham over red-list travel

The air passengers did not declare they had been in a country deemed a high Covid risk, police say.

www.bbc.co.uk

Four air passengers have each been fined £10,000 for failing to declare they had travelled from a "red-list" country, West Midlands Police has said.

They were stopped at border control by officials and were not able to leave Birmingham Airport.
Under new rules, arrivals in England have to quarantine in hotels, if within the last 10 days they have been in a country deemed a high Covid risk.
The "red list" of 33 countries includes Portugal, Brazil and South Africa.
The regulations came into effect on Monday and the four passengers had been fined by midday, a senior officer told a meeting of the West Midlands Strategic Policing and Crime Board.
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd said that in the same timeframe, the airport received six passengers who did declare travel from a red-list country, who were taken to a quarantine hotel.
But of the offenders he added: "There are some people who have attempted to hide their routes but that's not worked out."
A police spokesperson said the fines were issued by Border Force.
Birmingham Airport is one of five in England where people requiring hotel quarantine can enter the UK.
Those who fail to self-isolate as required face fines of £5,000 to £10,000, while anyone who lies on their passenger locator form about having been in a country on the red list faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
The rules aim to stop coronavirus variants entering the UK.
It was not clear in the board meeting which country or countries the fined parties had been in.

 

[RomeoCharlie71]

Meanwhile in Scotland:

Covid: Family reunited after hotel quarantine 'error'

Chun Wong and his daughter Kiernan can now isolate at home, instead of staying in a hotel for 10 days.

www.bbc.co.uk

The first international travellers to go into one of Scotland's quarantine hotels have left their room after a day because of a loophole.

Since Monday, all passengers arriving in Scotland on international flights have to enter "managed isolation".

However, this does not apply to those coming from within the Common Travel Area, including the UK and Ireland.

Chun Wong and his daughter Kiernan have now been reunited with his wife Danielle in Fife after 16 months apart.

They had gone straight to a hotel at Edinburgh airport after arriving from the US on Monday on Monday, following advice they had been given.

However, later that night they were told that as they had got a connecting flight from Ireland, they could instead isolate at home.

Mr Wong told BBC Scotland that on Monday night officials told them a mistake had been made and the pair could self-isolate at home in Fife.

The Scottish government said it was investigating why he was "wrongly advised" at the airport.

 

[Ediswan]

Already had four fines of £10k issued in relation to the new Quarantine rules: it'll be worth watching what becomes of this in terms of any potential appeals should they be publicised:

Covid: Four fined in Birmingham over red-list travel

The air passengers did not declare they had been in a country deemed a high Covid risk, police say.

www.bbc.co.uk

Under what legislation or regulation ? My understanding was that any such fines would be under The Fraud Act, which would require a conviction.

 

[Watershed]

Meanwhile in Scotland:

It's not a loophole at all. The Scottish government simply doesn't have the power to impose a hotel quarantine for people who arrive from other parts the CTA.

That's like saying that it's a loophole for someone to be acquitted because they were charged under an inexistent law ("Coronavirus Act fines" come to mind).

Whoever advised them was gravely misinformed. I hope they manage to get a refund of their £1750!

Under what legislation or regulation ? My understanding was that any such fines would be under The Fraud Act, which would require a conviction.

They weren't fined. They were issued with Fixed Penalty Notices which give them the opportunity to avoid prosecution if they pay the sum demanded. No different to an out of court settlement with a train company, in that sense.

Unlike a train company settlement, if taken to court and convicted, a Covid restriction related fine would likely be considerably lower than a £10k FPN. Very few £10k FPNs have been paid; in reality they are no more than intimidating but pathetic political stunt.

 

[Ediswan]

They weren't fined. They were issued with Fixed Penalty Notices which give them the opportunity to avoid prosecution if they pay the sum demanded. No different to an out of court settlement with a train company, in that sense.

Unlike a train company settlement, if taken to court and convicted, a Covid restriction related fine would likely be considerably lower than a £10k FPN. Very few £10k FPNs have been paid; in reality they are no more than intimidating but pathetic political stunt.

I am still interested in knowing what legislation or regulation those fixed penalty notices were issued under, if of course they have actually been issued. (I agree about this being a political stunt.)

 

[Skimpot flyer]

Talking of threatening £10,000 fines ...
A police officer threatens a shopkeeper with jail or a £10k fine for not wearing a mask... while his colleague (in the background) buys something, sporting a mask worn as a chin warmer!

 

[Watershed]

Talking of threatening £10,000 fines ...
A police officer threatens a shopkeeper with jail or a £10k fine for not wearing a mask... while his colleague (in the background) buys something, sporting a mask worn as a chin warmer!

The threat of a £10k fine is of course ludicrous, since a face covering FPN would be £200 (for a first FPN). Even if the officers didn't offer the shopkeeper a FPN, there is no way the shopkeeper would be fined £10k if taken to Court and convicted.

There is also the fact that the shopkeeper, as the person responsible for (or employee of) the place of business, is exempt from having to wear a mask unless he "comes or likely to come within close contact of any member of the public" (reg. 3(2)(2A) of the Face Covering Regulations).

The term "close contact" is not further defined in those Regs, but if you take the definition given in reg. 5(1) of the Self-Isolation Regulations, the shopkeeper would have to be face-to-face within 1m of members of the public, or else within 2m for more than 15 minutes. I severely doubt that either of those criteria will be met, so long as social distancing is observed.

Of course such menial tasks as getting the law right are hardly the strong suit of police officers. Unfortunately the only area where the officer was right is that, even in his woeful misapprehension as to the law, he would likely meet the low bar of reasonable suspicion to arrest the shopkeeper.

I am still interested in knowing what legislation or regulation those fixed penalty notices were issued under, if of course they have actually been issued. (I agree about this being a political stunt.)

The various Health Protection Regulations have provisions for fixed penalty notices, for example reg. 7 of the English International Travel Regs.

I don't see any reason to doubt that FPNs have been issued - as the above video shows, the police etc. have been only to happy to hand them out like confetti when it suits them!

 

[Skimpot flyer]

Unlike a train company settlement, if taken to court and convicted, a Covid restriction related fine would likely be considerably lower than a £10k FPN. Very few £10k FPNs have been paid; in reality they are no more than intimidating but pathetic political stunt.

Of course, if the FPN is not paid or indeed quashed, we’ll see reports of this and headlines in newspapers about it. Not.

 

[rumoto]

The Telegraph reports that the US and Spain may be added to the UK red list:

Exclusive: United States and Spain could be added to Covid quarantine 'red list'

Health officials deciding this week whether passengers coming from the two countries should be required to quarantine in hotels

www.telegraph.co.uk

Exclusive: United States and Spain could be added to Covid quarantine 'red list'​

Health officials deciding this week whether passengers coming from the two countries should be required to quarantine in hotels


The United States and Spain could be added to the "red list" of countriesrequiring passengers to quarantine in Government-approved hotels.

On Wednesday, the Department for Transport (DfT) and health officials considered the latest scientific data on the risk of new Covid variants from the two countries. Ministers at the Cabinet Covid operations committee will decide whether they should be added to the red list later this week.

The US and Spain have both seen local transmission of new variants and are geographically linked to South America and Portugal, which are subject to UK foreign travel bans. They are two of the biggest travel markets with the UK.


Even with the newly-tightened border restrictions, there are an estimated 1,000 arrivals a day from the US and 500 from Spain, who are currently allowed to quarantine at home without having to pay the £1,750 charge to self-isolate in hotels.


The Telegraph revealed earlier this week that airports had been told by the Government that the red list would "get longer before it got shorter".

"The US and Spain are on the list so it means some of the bigger markets will be considered by officials as part of the discussions before being put to ministers. It will be based on evidence from the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC)," said a Government source.

 

[Watershed]

The Telegraph reports that the US and Spain may be added to the UK red list:

One can but hope that, once people start realising that it could affect 'normal' people like them making journeys to 'normal' countries, they will no longer be so supportive of this extreme imposition...

 

[joncombe]

The Telegraph reports that the US and Spain may be added to the UK red list:

Well I'm not at all surprised about Spain given that it neighbours Portugal.

I'm sure I also read rumours about Austria and Belgium. Anyway it's very clear it well spread. Just like the chaotic scenes last year when new countries were added or removed from the "Travel Corridor" list at often only a day or 2 notice and then the mad panic for people in those countries to get home. Yet this year it will be worse because if you don't get back before not only will you have to quarantine, it will now also cost you nearly 2 grand for the "privilege". However perhaps this year the limiting factor will be hotel rooms. The Government will be mindful that each time it adds a new country so the number of needed hotel rooms goes up.

I mean if there are 1500 arrivals a day from these countries at the moment and the quarantine is 10 days then you need up to 15,000 hotel rooms (I say up to because there will be families/couples that will share a room .... but there will also be people who later test positive and have to stay longer). There won't be that many rooms at "airport" hotels so they will presumably be looking at other hotels nearby (but I suspect the further you get from hotels the less willing hotels will be to become "qurantine hotels" given that likely prevents them taking any other bookings and perhaps having to cancel any they already have).

 

[rumoto]

One can but hope that, once people start realising that it could affect 'normal' people like them making journeys to 'normal' countries, they will no longer be so supportive of this extreme imposition...

And we also need to take into account that the inclusion of a country into the red list means an automatic ban for all the direct flights from that country to the UK since this moment, with all the changes / refunds that this circumstance may cause.

Well I'm not at all surprised about Spain given that it neighbours Portugal.

I'm sure I also read rumours about Austria and Belgium. Anyway it's very clear it well spread. Just like the chaotic scenes last year when new countries were added or removed from the "Travel Corridor" list at often only a day or 2 notice and then the mad panic for people in those countries to get home. Yet this year it will be worse because if you don't get back before not only will you have to quarantine, it will now also cost you nearly 2 grand for the "privilege".

It is even worse; if you don't take the flight to the UK before the deadline it also means that your return flight will be automatically cancelled. Apart from the quarantine hotel cost, you will need to add the possible costs (fare difference) of changing your flight to another indirect flight to the UK.

 

[Watershed]

there will also be people who later test positive and have to stay longer

This is actually a noteworthy point - because of the multiple tests that returning red-list travellers now face, the government will soon have a very clear picture of precisely how many people test positive during quarantine, having obtained a negative test shortly before travelling.

Data showing that hotel quarantine is capturing only a miniscule number of cases would conclusively prove that these measures are excessive. They will of course have equivalent data for home quarantine, as the day 2 and 8 tests are now mandatory regardless of where you have been.

It would demonstrate that the residual risk of transmission is minimal and can adequately be abated by home quarantine, and that there is nothing remotely close to sufficient justification for imprisoning people and charging them for the privilege.

 

[Bikeman78]

And we also need to take into account that the inclusion of a country into the red list means an automatic ban for all the direct flights from that country to the UK since this moment, with all the changes / refunds that this circumstance may cause.



It is even worse; if you don't take the flight to the UK before the deadline it also means that your return flight will be automatically cancelled. Apart from the quarantine hotel cost, you will need to add the possible costs (fare difference) of changing your flight to another indirect flight to the UK.

Can this really be true? So to "limit the spread" people are forced to take two flights instead of one and mill about at the connecting airport. Wouldn't it be easier to round people up off a direct flight rather than have to pick them out from numerous indirect routes? If Covid is so transmissable then there is the potential for anyone on the connecting flights that hasn't been to a red list country to be infected. Every day the Covid rules get more absurd. I'd happily bet that the Portugese varient is already in the UK anyway.

 

[joncombe]

I'd happily bet that the Portugese varient is already in the UK anyway.

I don't think there is a "Portugese variant". I think this is the South African variant that has been found to be in Portugal to (and yes also in the UK, as you suggest).

 

[MikeWM]

One can but hope that, once people start realising that it could affect 'normal' people like them making journeys to 'normal' countries, they will no longer be so supportive of this extreme imposition...

There's a few people I work with that would be very unhappy with Spain being added - they have family living there and are back and forth quite regularly.

As I said a week or two back, this is going to significantly affect a lot of people, who until now have been able to work from home and seem to have been fairly relaxed about all the other horrific impositions on our daily lives.

 

[island]

I am still interested in knowing what legislation or regulation those fixed penalty notices were issued under, if of course they have actually been issued. (I agree about this being a political stunt.)

The £10,000 FPNs have been correctly issued in accordance with the legislation, specifically regulation 7 (5AB) of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations 2020, as inserted by regulation 12 (c) of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021.

It is up to the recipients to choose between paying them or not; in the latter case they may be prosecuted and if convicted can face an unlimited fine.

 

[Ediswan]

The £10,000 FPNs have been correctly issued in accordance with the legislation, specifically regulation 7 (5AB) of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations 2020, as inserted by regulation 12 (c) of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021.

Thanks for finding this. That is a long document to plough through.

All makes sense now. The fixed penalties are in regulations. It looks like it is the threat of a 10 year prison senetnce that would need the Fraud Act.

 

[kristiang85]

YouGov is getting ever more unbelievable - supposedly 90% of British people support hotel quarantine. That's completely at odds with all my anecdotal findings.

The Telegraph ran their own poll, which found the opposite. Considering many of their readers are anti-open borders anyway, the difference is quite striking.

Ninety per cent of Britons are in favour of hotel quarantine, according to a new YouGov poll – with the vast majority of respondents calling for an even stricter regime.

Responding to the survey yesterday, 72 per cent of British adults agreed that the 'managed quarantine' rules should be imposed on all arrivals, not just those from 'red list' countries – while 18 per cent said that they should only apply to travellers from countries with high Covid case-rates.

Just 5 per cent of respondents said they were in favour of scrapping hotel quarantine. The remaining 5 per cent said they 'didn't know'.

The results are at odds with Telegraph Travel's own poll, which we conducted on Twitter today. We asked respondents the same question as YouGov, with the same four responses – and the results were overwhelmingly in favour of ending hotel quarantine entirely.

70.2 per cent of respondents said they thought the scheme should be scrapped, while 8.5 per cent said it should only apply to red-list arrivals. Just 19.2 per cent supported the idea of extending hotel quarantine to all travellers.

 

[Watershed]

YouGov is getting ever more unbelievable - supposedly 90% of British people support hotel quarantine. That's completely at odds with all my anecdotal findings.

The Telegraph ran their own poll, which found the opposite. Considering many of their readers are anti-open borders anyway, the difference is quite striking.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Goes to show how you just have to pitch your poll to the 'right' demographic if you want the 'right' result. You can't take the results of many 'representative' polls at face value - and even if you wanted to create an accurate poll, it's almost impossible to control for factors such as people not saying what they really think.

Sadly I do have the feeling that a significant proportion of the population nominally support these measures. But they have been brainwashed into thinking that by the xenophobia and fear the politicians and media have incited. I'm sure you could just as well reverse that by portraying things in perspective and telling the full story, not the hyperbolic drivel that drives clicks.

 

[35B]

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Goes to show how you just have to pitch your poll to the 'right' demographic if you want the 'right' result. You can't take the results of many 'representative' polls at face value - and even if you wanted to create an accurate poll, it's almost impossible to control for factors such as people not saying what they really think.

Sadly I do have the feeling that a significant proportion of the population nominally support these measures. But they have been brainwashed into thinking that by the xenophobia and fear the politicians and media have incited. I'm sure you could just as well reverse that by portraying things in perspective and telling the full story, not the hyperbolic drivel that drives clicks.

I trust a YouGov poll more than I do a newspaper's own survey - even allowing for doubts about YouGov's specific recruitment methodology, the mathematics that goes behind something badged as an opinion poll will give a much more representative answer than a survey that is self selected and not statistically controlled for bias in any way. I'd be much more interested in the difference if the poll had been in a paper like the Guardian - readers of anti-restriction newspaper oppose restrictions is not a very surprising finding.

YouGov is getting ever more unbelievable - supposedly 90% of British people support hotel quarantine. That's completely at odds with all my anecdotal findings.

The Telegraph ran their own poll, which found the opposite. Considering many of their readers are anti-open borders anyway, the difference is quite striking.

I tend to find most polls don't align with my anecdotal findings very well. That's because my anecdotal findings reflect those whom I choose to associate and engage with, which of those people choose to express themselves, and then also my own filtering of what's said, which reflects my own biases.

If my circle were based on this sub-forum, I would certainly expect to get a result along the lines of the Telegraph's findings on that self-selected basis. Conducted scientifically, across the membership of RUK, I'm less convinced that would be the result - there are many members who choose not to comment on this sub-forum and who may be discouraged from doing so if their views do not align with the consensus on this thread. And whether the views of members of this forum are consistent with the population at large is yet another question.

 

[WelshBluebird]

YouGov is getting ever more unbelievable - supposedly 90% of British people support hotel quarantine. That's completely at odds with all my anecdotal findings.

To be blunt - your anecdotal findings mean literally nothing.

If you took the anecdotal findings from this forum you would be vastly out of step with much of the British public (note I'm not saying all, or a majority here).
A polling company is much more likely to have a sample that better represents the entire public than just the social / professional circle of individual forum members.
Now that isn't to say there aren't issues - those have been discussed across multiple threads here so I'm not going to go back over them.

But to suggest that a poll result is "unbelievable" because it just doesn't match with the people you personally know - that is just proving how much of a echo chamber and a reflection of our own opinions our lives often are (and with much of life being online at the moment, that effect is only intensified).

You can't take the results of many 'representative' polls at face value

A representative poll is still much more accurate than just asking people you personally know, specifically because they trey to be representative of the population. Sure they often fail to be totally representative, but even when they do, they are absolutely more representative of the general publics opinion than just taking a group of people that you or I know.

 

[kristiang85]

To be blunt - your anecdotal findings meal literally nothing.
If you took the anecdotal findings from this forum you would be vastly out of step with much of the British public (note I'm not saying all, or a majority here).
A polling company is much more likely to have a sample that better represents the entire public than just the social / professional circle of individual forum members.
Now that isn't to say there aren't issues - those have been discussed across multiple threads here so I'm not going to go back over them.
But to suggest that ia poll result is "unbelievable" because it just doesn't match with the people you personally know - that is just proving how much of a echo chamber our lives (which atm are mainly online these days) often are and is the exact same trap that many remainers (including myself) fell into before that referendum.

Oh certainly, I realise this- having spent a lot of time on statistics and surveys in my time, I know those dangers.

When I say 'my own anecdotal evidence' I mean the general impression I get looking at comments on news articles and tweets, etc. about this by general media - I'm pretty certain 90% agreeing with it is very skewed (and I do click on 'see more' so I don't see just the ones filtered out based on my interests). I think its more like 50/50, which is between what the YouGov poll and the Telegraph said. That might be wrong, but You Gov's numbers just throw out all sorts of alarm bells.

 

[Wuffle]

Regarding YouGov polls
Firstly I believe that they are self selecting in that one has to sign up for them
Secondly I signed up some years ago and have found that if they have questioned you once and your answers do not suit a particular narrative you're seldom asked about the same topic again, C19 being a case in point I was asked to take part in a survey in December and have never had another survey presumably because I am a sceptic.
I also found the same with leaving the EU

 

[takno]

To be blunt - your anecdotal findings mean literally nothing.

If you took the anecdotal findings from this forum you would be vastly out of step with much of the British public (note I'm not saying all, or a majority here).
A polling company is much more likely to have a sample that better represents the entire public than just the social / professional circle of individual forum members.
Now that isn't to say there aren't issues - those have been discussed across multiple threads here so I'm not going to go back over them.

But to suggest that a poll result is "unbelievable" because it just doesn't match with the people you personally know - that is just proving how much of a echo chamber and a reflection of our own opinions our lives often are (and with much of life being online at the moment, that effect is only intensified).

IIRC this particular one was a free-to-enter internet poll on the YouGov homepage. If so it's probably got slightly less validity than a straw poll on this site.

I think the proper YouGov polls have got some really serious problems with their panel system which render any results on Covid restrictions highly questionable, and I think the fact that the other organisations are largely not attempting to run polls on the topic tells you everything you need to know about how the wider industry feel about the accuracy of such polls. I'd concede that however unlikely I suspect it is, it's entirely possible that everybody I know could be against restrictions and they would still be supported by 60% of the population. Once you get up to a figure like 90% it starts to get seriously unlikely though - not many people are in that much of a bubble.

 

[WelshBluebird]

The Telegraph ran their own poll, which found the opposite. Considering many of their readers are anti-open borders anyway, the difference is quite striking.

That is a bit of a disingenuous argument for two reasons:

The Telegraph is anti open borders in terms of immigration specifically, not in terms of travel in general (which includes holidays and trips abroad - infact I'd think given the general makeup of their readers, they would probably be very supportive of arrangement to make overseas trips easier, as long as you are British I'd assume though!).

And given the paper has been publishing quite a lot of anti lockdown articles (even extending to a huge attack on the whole idea of WFH - its been sometime to behold to see how many articles they can publish about the "dangers" of remote working) it really isn't a surprise that their readers are also anti lockdown (and thus likely anti other measures too).

Oh certainly, I realise this- having spent a lot of time on statistics and surveys in my time, I know those dangers.

When I say 'my own anecdotal evidence' I mean the general impression I get looking at comments on news articles and tweets, etc. about this by general media - I'm pretty certain 90% agreeing with it is very skewed (and I do click on 'see more' so I don't see just the ones filtered out based on my interests). I think its more like 50/50, which is between what the YouGov poll and the Telegraph said. That might be wrong, but You Gov's numbers just throw out all sorts of alarm bells.

I do think the general public is much more in support of a lot of these restrictions than this forum seems to think, but agree that the real answer will be somewhere between a lot of the numbers being thrown about.

IIRC this particular one was a free-to-enter internet poll on the YouGov homepage. If so it's probably got slightly less validity than a straw poll on this site.

You have to remember this forum is very anti lockdown and anti the restrictions in place. Much much more so than the general population. So much so that as someone who is generally accepting (but not happy) of the restrictions, I find this section of the forum very hostile (and I've seen comments from others suggesting they feel the same). So a straw poll on this site probably wouldn't be valid either. Especially given what the demographics of this site probably are.

 

[Cdd89]

I’m sorry but this doesn’t pass the smell test for me either. 90% want people to quarantine in a hotel? 72% want people coming from (say) New Zealand to quarantine in a hotel? Are people misreading the questions, getting to “quarantine” and ignoring “in a hotel”, and answering on that basis? Do 90% of people think there are no more proportionate ways to beef up home quarantine? Most issues with upsides and downsides get a strongly balanced response; does 90% indicate people don’t view any downsides to this? If there is such incredibly strong support, why has no other country in Europe implemented this?

This isn’t about being in an echo chamber, it’s about questioning the premises that lead to these answers. Frankly my guess is the sort of person answering YouGov surveys isn’t doing much travelling and doesn’t want anyone else to do so either even if it benefits the economy.