WDB
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Post by WDB on Mar 25, 2021 13:29:20 GMT
...and my reasoning is grounded in what I understand ‘stay local’ is intended to achieve — and the hazards that await if we don’t. Your vaccination is still taking effect — that’s why you still feel rubbish. It’ll be weeks before you’ve produced a meaningful number of antibodies and T-cells. And while those, when you have them, will keep you from getting ill, we still don’t know whether you’ll be shedding virus particles even as the T-cells destroy them.
15km isn’t really a circle I’ve drawn; it just covers all the short-range trips that take me out of town and back in an hour or so. But it seems reasonable — although clearly there’s a risk associated with each one. I think May will turn out to be about right for venturing further afield. We need the vaccinations to have reached the age groups who are most likely to be out and active to create big enough firebreaks, and the April pause will delay reaching that point.
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Post by EspadaIII on Mar 25, 2021 13:35:41 GMT
Mother-in-law is joining us this weekend for Passover. She is not the only person we know who are visiting family for the festival, on the basis that most people have been vaccinated the risks (unlike in the summer or Christmas) are vastly reduced.
We thought long and hard about her visit and it was a couple of non-Jewish friends who said '...just do it... the risk factors are too low to worry about..'. In the meantime of course Espadrille has broken her ankle so the visit now becomes a medical matter as her husband and three children are incapable of looking after her.
So, I am in the Humph block here. The only people I have heard of getting stopped on the roads by the plods and asked what they are doing, were doing something really stupid. Anyone who is driving sensibly, for any vaguely reasonable purpose, is not stopped. Al - visit your Mum. Get some pleasure of the visit, don't stop on the way there and back; sit in the garden; clean everything thoroughly if you go inside to use the loo, and clean your hands and car controls when you get in to go home. I would also isolate for a couple of days when you get home, just to be sure that you are not passing it on to anyone.
In the meantime, I am going to Horley near Gatwick on Wednesday for a legitimate business meeting on Thursday morning. Premier Inn is booked and I will be going via the Mother-in-Law to eat...
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Post by EspadaIII on Mar 25, 2021 13:37:41 GMT
In reality, people's views on what is reasonable depends upon their experience. Humph and I have been driving around the UK on business. So we feel more comfortable on the roads. If Dubya has stayed local he will of course feel less comfortable going further. Chacun a son gout....
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 13:39:14 GMT
Well, here's the thing about unclear messaging. Look at the BBC link I posted. It states, from March 29th: "The stay at home rule will end, but the government will urge people to stay local as much as possible". Then, there is absoultely zero mention of staying local or any guidelines for distance you're recommened to keep to in any of the subsequent milestones, 12th April, 17th May, and even June 21st. So, when does "stay Local" end? How can I plan to travel to see my Mum if it isn't even included in the June 21st relaxations? The implication is we're suppoed to "stay local" for all eternity. Under those circumstances, how can I plan? I have to make my own judgement, or the next time we'll see eachother one of us will be in a box. Give me unclear messaging, and what am I left with? It's almost as if this government thinks we all live in an Enid Blyton story where granny lives in the same house.
BTW, I'm thinking about making this trip in the week after Easter, when I've taken some time off work. Not tomorrow.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Mar 25, 2021 15:26:48 GMT
In reality, people's views on what is reasonable depends upon their experience. Humph and I have been driving around the UK on business. So we feel more comfortable on the roads. If Dubya has stayed local he will of course feel less comfortable going further. Chacun a son gout.... It’s risky to extrapolate from anecdotal experience; more so to tell other people how they’re feeling. ⚠️ On none of the trips I’ve made have I felt at risk of catching Covid, nor did I feel I was increasing anyone else’s risk. I was, though, as were you and Humph. That was the point of my explanation to Vić: we can rationalise all we like but there is risk in every journey, every contact, and the more we make and the further we go, the more the risks multiply. An exempt journey isn’t a safe journey, just a recognition that some parts of life can’t be entirely suppressed. I’ve written here that I’m no fan of lockdowns, although I’ve softened my view over the past year. I think we have heaped harm on many for the sake of prolonging lives that, in most cases, were already near their end, and that feels more like sentimentality than sound management. But it’s clear that lockdowns will keep happening when infections start to rise. Infection is spread by contact and accelerated by travel, so the only way out is to respect the principle by avoiding contact and travel as far as possible. That way, when we do emerge, we won’t get a repeat of September 2020. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 15:40:41 GMT
But this year is different for one gigantic reason: vaccines.
I think I'm having a bit of the opposite journey to you WDB. I was a big supporter of the need for lockdowns last year, and I think we did too little, too late. However, I'm softening now that we have widespread vaccination. The effect of the vaccines won't be to wipe the disease out, but it will reduce the mortality and hospitalisation rates to a near insignificant number. So we should now be looking to normalise things, but of course carefully and slowly, and keeping some aspects of mitigation against transmission like face masks and social distancing until we know we can give them up. Which is why I think I'm comfortable with making a low-risk, non contact day trip down the motorway. I don't yet feel confident enough to engage in other activites I enjoy like trips to the pub, football matches and music events, and I probably won't even when they're "allowed", for a while. Those will have to wait, of course. But an isolated drive followed by a few hours sitting in a garden 5 metres from someone, with a face mask on, that's within my tolerance, and is within the law, if not strictly within "guidance". Well, it will be from Monday.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Mar 25, 2021 16:05:29 GMT
There are two problems with the vaccines argument.
One is that we are months from vaccinating everyone and, until we do, there remains a large pool of infectable people. They are mostly young enough not to get seriously ill but they are still incubating viruses and potentially exacerbating the other problem, which is...
...variants. We don’t know the extent to which new variants may allow the virus to sidestep the vaccine, but if we keep our foot on the pedal hard enough for long enough, it won’t matter as the number of variant cases will be small enough to contain — in the same way as prompter action a year ago would have been vastly more effective. In any case, the fewer people are infected, the fewer viral replications are occurring and the less chance there is for a resistance mutation to arise.
The best time to limit infections is when infections are low, and they’re not yet so low that we can relax.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 16:18:24 GMT
Well I'm not suggesting fully relaxing, am I? Who, specifically, do you think is at risk of being infected from me going to see my Mum in her garden in two weeks time, socially distanced and masked up? At what point do you think such a trip would be reasonble? Me and the wife are vaccinated, the children are tested twice a week. I'm obviously not going to go if one of those tests comes back positive. I don't even have to go in the house for a pee, she's got 34 acres of land for me to do that on.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Mar 25, 2021 16:32:31 GMT
‘Specifically’ is entirely the wrong way to look at this. For every thousand non-local journeys, a small but measurable number will result in an avoidable infection. Of course, if we could be specific about which ones, we’d make those people stay at home instead. Since we can’t do that, we try to persuade people not to make so many trips.
Your deliberation is probably being done in millions of households with distant relatives they’ve not seen for ages. Understandably. And many of them will go, and most will do no harm, nor come to any. But that won’t be because they’ve had one shot of a vaccine that’s 70% effective after two, nor because their children are taking self-administered lateral flow tests, nor because they peed in a field. It’ll be because of luck. But not everyone can be lucky all at the same time.
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Post by Humph on Mar 25, 2021 16:39:33 GMT
And I suppose, the truth of the matter is that you are both making extremely good and accurate points. Rules do tend by default to have to address lowest common denominator mentalities though.
What's that old thing about the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 16:52:15 GMT
I suppose because I do it for a living to a certain extent, I'm looking at this through risk management eyes. The risk is that I will transmit the virus to someone else. I estimate the chance of that happening to be low. The impact of the risk, should it occur, is potentially high. So, apply proactive containment measures: stay in the car, don't stop, socially distance, wear a mask, pee in a field, sterlise car controls and hands regularly, take vaccine and wait a few weeks for it to take, test children. Now, reassessing the risk I would rate the chance of it happening as negligible. There is a residual risk of course, but do the benefits of taking accepting the risk now outweigh the potential impacts? Proceed Y/N? That's how you do risk management.
I can't do this for anyone else but myself of course. But going through the exercise inclines me to believe the risk is now worth taking, in my case. In any business, if you didn't take such a risk as outlined above, you'd never get anywhere. There is never zero risk. I could take all sorts of diseases to my mother at any time, and we never take such extreme mitigations as I've outlined above.
EDIT: I forgot the Reactive Fallback actions if the risk occurs: self isolation. Which is pretty much what life is already anyway.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 16:59:52 GMT
And I suppose, the truth of the matter is that you are both making extremely good and accurate points. Rules do tend by default to have to address lowest common denominator mentalities though. What's that old thing about the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men... True Humph, but we are now slowly entering an arena of guidelines rather than rules. |
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Mar 25, 2021 17:12:47 GMT
I suppose because I do it for a living to a certain extent, I'm looking at this through risk management eyes. I do some of that at work too, and I don’t think it’s the right approach here. It’s the Above-Average Driver phenomenon; the other households pondering the same decision are telling themselves the same things as you are: that they know the risks and can contain or eliminate them, because they’re more knowledgeable and sensible than most people out there. (They may not all have parental fields to pee in, I grant you — or wives who would agree to pee in one if they did.) But road accidents still happen, and Covid cases still happen. And if we get a lot more travel over the Easter holidays, it will cause more cases and delay the ‘not before’ dates currently pencilled in for relaxations in April and May. |
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Post by Humph on Mar 25, 2021 17:15:13 GMT
Indeed Al, and in truth, as I hinted before, I'd probably go too in your situation with the caveats you outline. Just make sure everyone has a precautionary pee before you set off!
😉
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2021 8:37:13 GMT
OK, things are a bit clearer this morning. The Welsh government will allow travel in and out of Wales for any reason from April 12th. I'll wait until then. I can't see anything from the English side to say I can't travel outside England's land borders within the UK from that date, unless I am much mistaken. gov.wales/wales-tourism-sector-starts-re-open-restrictions-are-relaxedShame, I'll miss out on going during the days I've booked off from work, but hey ho. Worse things happen at sea in the Suez Canal. |
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