Absolute rubbish! With all these vaccinations being ramped up now, there's no way restrictions can or will last for the rest of the year at least! Whilst the healthcare and deaths stats situation is absolutely dire at the moment, there will come a turning point in the next few weeks when all these stats will come tumbling down week on week. And by a few months time, all the stats will be incredibly low and then there's now way the NHS can then be moaning and groaning that their hospitals are overloaded with Covid patients, and that we've got to "Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.". All these silly restrictions will then have to be eased and scrapped altogether to get this country back up and running again and the people of this country to enjoy a return to normal life again.
Snippet from the Sky News website....
Restrictions 'lifted in the spring'
There's a difference between current restrictions, no restrictions and some restrictions.
The current restrictions are likely to be scaled back in the spring.
Some restrictions will likely be in place for most of the rest of this year (but this may not be across the whole country and may only be limited things, as an example there's been cases identified in location X so anyone with need to travel there will need to limit their contact with others).
No restrictions is likely to be beyond this year, however there's likely to be some things which people opt to continue to do or there maybe some changes which are brought in (such as allowing staff to work at home if they are ill to reduce staff away from the office sick as if the first staff member isn't in then they can't pass it on to others).
If we still have the same restrictions as even before Christmas by Easter is be very surprised and very worried as clearly something wouldn't be working as well as it should (and would probably highlight that lockdowns were of little benefit to everyone).
I'm frankly appalled at the attitude of people on here that say restrictions must say 'because it's not safe' or saying there's 'no way' restrictions will be going anytime soon. I think you ought to remember there is more in this world than just COVID, and once the vaccine has been rolled out to the most vulnerable, that will prevent a significant number of hospitalisations. It will be a gradual relaxation, as the vaccine rollout will have a gradual effect on hospital capacity, and I would expect the easing to follow this model. My guess would be
Lockdown -> Everywhere Tiers 3/4
Individual relaxations/tightening dependant on hospital capacity in certain areas.
When vaccine has enough impact on this, we will eventually all be in tier 1 (or thereabouts), and the government will finally call it a day on these restrictions once and for all.
There is NO such thing as a risk free society, and you will ALWAYS face certain risks when you leave your home. It is not the job of government to mitigate risks like this. The justification for the third full lockdown is due to hospital capacity, NOT due to people dying from COVID (despite what they say). It is not the duty of the state to protect us against respiratory viruses, that's a risk we choose to take in society, and frankly it needs to stay that way, or there will be a gross imbalance of prioritising quantity of life over quality of life.
Whilst there's lots of other risks in the last week more people died of Covid-19 than died on the roads during the whole of 2000 & 2001 (when road deaths were nearly double their current rate).
Unless we start to see deaths fall significantly then we could see over the next month deaths reach the same number as died on the roads over the last decade.
No I'm not living in a deluded fantasy world. Please don't say I am!
You're saying these restrictions are going to last for the rest of the year at least!!! That is absolute madness! If all these restrictions continued until at least the end of the year the whole country would just steadily fall apart. Thousands upon thousands of more businesses will go under, millions more will become unemployed, there would be a mental health crisis of absolute biblical proportions, more and more people would be committing suicide as they'd just be unable to take all these harsh restrictions any longer. I will be one of them.
Within a few months the daily deaths from Coronavirus will be miniscule as a result of all these vaccinations. And the hospitalisations and numbers in hospital should be steadily falling week on week by then too. Absolutely no need for all these absolutely ridiculous restrictions to continue much longer. When we get to this stage, just what an earth justifications would there be for keeping all these restrictions??
I am confident that by Easter, things should be much much better. It's what keeping me going right now. If we believe the likes of you who seem to think we'll be living with these restrictions for at least another year or so or even forever, then it will not do our mental health good.
If we see some limited restricts at the end of the year it may well be that they are so limited in scale that the impact on the economy is tiny.
And so has Matt Hancock, when he supported the police who fined those two women £200 for travelling 5 miles to get some exercise, and then said having a cup of coffee constitutes a picnic, and is not allowed.
I have never heard such ridiculous claptrap in all my life.
And then the silly twit says "Every flexing of the rules can be fatal".
More claptrap.
How do you know that travelling 5 miles from your home for exercise is fatal?
Those two women travelled by car, so weren't mixing with anyone else, and the open space they went to was sufficiently empty to enable social distancing to take place. So there was no more risk than if they had walked from their houses to the nearest public park.
A clear overreaction by the police, the problem with such a reaction is that it's likely going to have a similar outcome as that seen after Cummings' trip to Northumberland where people just give up the rules.
