Pubs seem to think they're re-opening

[thelittlemango]

I'm no lockdown skeptic but people can't live like this forever.

I know you're not one of them, but this is pretty much the anti-lockdown mantra and it's quite annoying. Playing on how "people need to return to normality!" to cover up the reality that they've decided that the economy is more important than lives, it's frustrating to read that when we're one year into this and no lessons have been learned. It's exactly that kind of thinking that has led to this dragging on for so long and pressuring to open things up and keep the cycle going over and over.

[mobias]

I'm on my way to werk now, to my Covid-secure werkplace, should I be skiving off instead?

I'm no lockdown skeptic but people can't live like this forever. This has been going on for a year now with no end in sight, lots of places closing down and people losing their jobs, and my job is also now at risk due to charities having less grant money to offer and there being more competition for the publicly-funded grants, for the money that hasn't been redirected to Covid research.

People need to be cautious but they also need a phased return to normality and a bit of hope.

The way out of it is a zero covid strategy. Which is what some scientists including Edinburgh's Devi Sridhar have been advocating for since last Spring. We could currently be like Australia, New Zealand and other countries if if we didn't have such a massively incompetent libertarian Westminster government. Its pretty clear Nicola Sturgeon would like to go for zero covid up here but she realistically can't if Westminster isn't going to go for that approach.

I do think Westminster will eventually go for zero covid but it'll take another wave of a mutant strain of vaccine evading virus and thousands more dead to get us there. 

[Blue Jam]

Playing on how "people need to return to normality!" to cover up the reality that they've decided that the economy is more important than lives

The economy is quite important for allowing people to buy food and pay the rent and remain alive.

Also while Covid may be a priority now that doesn't mean we should be neglecting people's mental health, or their need to get out to exercise and prevent other health problems. Doesn't the link between vitamin D deficiency and higher mortality from Covid suggest people should be getting out more? Perhaps not to the pub, but still.

This situation isn't quite as simple as The Economy vs People's Lives.

[Fambo Number Mive]

It would certainly be good to encourage people who can to do indoor exercising each day*, and for people who can to go for a short walk once a day especially on sunny days. The latter would need to be combined with a campaign about 2 metre distancing as most people where I am don't seem to bother with this.


*having said that I'm struggling to motivate myself to do press-ups/sit-ups these past few days.

[BlodwynPig]

Yes- everything I said does not apply to Tim Martin, he can fuck right off.

Glowering still.

I've still got a snooker cue to give you. Shall I post it?

[Blue Jam]

It would certainly be good to encourage people who can to do indoor exercising each day*, and for people who can to go for a short walk once a day especially on sunny days. The latter would need to be combined with a campaign about 2 metre distancing as most people where I am don't seem to bother with this.


*having said that I'm struggling to motivate myself to do press-ups/sit-ups these past few days.

It might be a good idea to distribute free vitamin D supplements as some people have suggested. Going outdoors certainly helps but we haven't had many sunny days lately.

I have tried exercising indoors but it's cardio I'm having a problem with. There just isn't the room in my flat or garden to go running or cycling, and that's what I need right now to try and strengthen my lungs and lose weight and increase my general fitness, partly to get my asthma under control but also as a protective measure against Covid.

I'm fine with closing the gyms but people need other options.

[bgmnts]

Get Team Body Project I say, some decent cardio workouts in your living room.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Boxing is the best cardio workout you can do, so I recommend getting a punching bag, Century BOB, or VR + boxing game. Or use your fella as a live replacement.

[Blue Jam]

Boxing is the best cardio workout you can do, so I recommend getting a punching bag, Century BOB, or VR + boxing game. Or use your fella as a live replacement.

I am thinking of getting an Oculus Rift so I can play Beat Saber. Will depend on some good news about my job though!

Glowering still.

I've still got a snooker cue to give you. Shall I post it?

Sorry *looks sheepish*

If posting's not too much trouble you could do that, but I would have to post you a nice bottle of wine or something in return. Not playing much snooker here of course, but I'm fine with the snooker halls being closed. Even if the table is 6ft by 12ft it's hard to maintain social distancing in a sports bar.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

I do agree with Blue Jam, people can't live like this much longer and it doesn't make you Toby Young to think so. Another reason we can condemn Toby and Harley-Brewer and all the rest of the 'lockdown sceptics' is that they've completely poisoned the well over the genuinely very important debate about how we re-open once we can.

I ate out to help out once, when I went to buy a sandwich to take away from the place round the corner from work and they told me it was half-price if I ate in the place. I couldn't finish it because I found the whole thing so uncomfortable. Although i did save £1.25

This also happened to me at Pret round the corner from work. I never eat in there anyway, usually take it to the park or back to the office and the guy told me I could have it half price or whatever the discount if I sat inside with other people but would pay for the privilege of not potentially getting or spreading covid. Completely fucking mad. The policy was not just attracting people to covid insecure environments, it actively cost more money to do the genuinely covid secure thing.

Can't wait for the week of the inquiry devoted to it.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I am thinking of getting an Oculus Rift so I can play Beat Saber. Will depend on some good news about my job though!

Yeah that's a good workout too. Definitely makes it more fun when there are challenges/points etc involved. The Oculus Quest 2 is the same price but with better resolution/fps (although has the downside that you have to have a facebook account to use it) so deffo give them both a look, although they're both great. Good luck with the job news!

[chveik]

The economy is quite important for allowing people to buy food and pay the rent and remain alive.

that's not the lockdown's fault, it's because governments aren't supporting people well enough

[Cuellar]

Whether or not people can live like this is - apart from in a purely financial sense - a moot point, isn't it? We're going to have to.

[bgmnts]

If people can go through wars and plagues and environmental disasters, then people can mask up and steer clear of getting pissed off their face or stuffing their gullets with restaurant food for a bit can't they?

Obviously would be easier if the govt actually did anything and rich people actually paid their taxes so govts could do something, but ho hum.

The economy is stupid and makes no sense.

Thinking about it, it makes me a bit sad as I thought maybe this forced change would get a lot of people to think differently, think about the society we live in, what's important, what needs to change etc? But no, literally all flock back into the pubs and buy buy buy fuck fuck fuck eat eat eat consume consume consume profit profit profit.

[mobias]

Thinking about it, it makes me a bit sad as I thought maybe this forced change would get a lot of people to think differently, think about the society we live in, what's important, what needs to change etc? But no, literally all flock back into the pubs and buy buy buy fuck fuck fuck eat eat eat consume consume consume profit profit profit.

Thats what made me depressed and slightly shocked last summer. The rate at which it all went back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. I mean it was understandable, in so much as it was understandable people jumped at the chance of getting their lives back, but I was disappointed that so many people just wanted the same old again. Maybe there will be a slower more subtle change in peoples attitudes over time though. I think people in the UK are definitely going to have to get used to holidaying within the country more and learning to appreciate what they have locally. I think thats a given.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

If people can go through wars and plagues and environmental disasters, then people can mask up and steer clear of getting pissed off their face or stuffing their gullets with restaurant food for a bit can't they?

They can do it for 'a bit' yes, but we're now a year in. I've seen my parents once since February 2020, my siblings not at all, I've had maybe three in person social events since March 2020 and my life currently consists of going to work and then coming home to sit in my house and nothing else. Can't just be me who's feeling at the very end of my tolerance for this.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

NAH even if the pubs are open air and 3 meters apart, they've not covid secure. It's totally offensive bullshit. It's the same as TV shows recording and sports teams playing, being in bubbles. Fuck OFF with that.

I agree that pubs can't claim to be covid secure. It's a corporate buzzphrase hiding denial and insecurity, it means nothing, it has delivered nothing. Pubs themselves have tried their best largely, but inevitably failed.

People are concentrating on the wrong thing. Rather than blaming schools, pubs, or whatever scapegoat du jour, we should expunge covid from the community, automatically rendering venues covid secure. Pursue a zero covid policy as per mobias outlines upthread. Close the borders, enforce tougher sharper lockdown measures, close schools, workplaces etc and get everyone home for 14-21 days barring essential workers who are put on a phased rota/return.

Obviously that will not result in the permanent eradication of covid, but it will allow civil life to restart and buy us all additional time during the vaccine rollout.

People will cry 'economic damage', but the damage is done when you lurch from one lockdown to another because it was a bullshit piece of nothing, inbetween, milquetoast, gutless half measure followed by an increasingly weary distrusting populace. It is economic self harm to try and parlay and negotiate with a virus so dangerous that it cannot co-exist with regular life.

We have dragged this all out unnecessarily and to a great social and economic cost. It is tragic that quite intelligent left leaning people are now so worn down by lockdown life that they can't see that it isn't to do with lockdown as a concept, but how the government have chosen to implement it.

[MrMrs]

Couldn't agree more brother.

[flotemysost]

They can do it for 'a bit' yes, but we're now a year in. I've seen my parents once since February 2020, my siblings not at all, I've had maybe three in person social events since March 2020 and my life currently consists of going to work and then coming home to sit in my house and nothing else. Can't just be me who's feeling at the very end of my tolerance for this.

Definitely not, there must be loads of people in a similar boat who aren't lockdown skeptics or irresponsible in any sense, just really struggling mentally by this stage. I've likewise not seen my family since February 2020, single with fuck all chance of meeting anyone, live on my own (which tbf is less isolating than living in a cramped flatshare with someone I wasn't close to, as I was during the first lockdown - and as many many people still are) and work from home, so aside from my daily walk, my life is the same four walls and staring at a screen day and night. Generally start and end every day with a laqer and a wank cry and wondering what the fucking point is at the moment.

Obviously if every day of this means someone's relative/loved one doesn't end up on a ventilator then of course that's worth it, and I've got things very cushy in terms of having a job, roof over my head, family still alive etc. And I do also realise the above might be some people's idea of heaven. And there are undoubtedly some very important lessons to be taken from the changes this has brought about, especially around consuming, social inequality and the environment (though whether this government will actually heed them, I very much fucking doubt).

But it's absolutely not flippant or insignificant for people to mourn their pre-lockdown lives, and to imply that's the case just feels unnecessarily patronising and divisive.

Edit: the uncertainty is what's really tough for lots of people at the moment, I think. Yes we can live like this for a period of time - 2020, 2021, 2022 maybe. But every time I read something suggesting that basically this is just what life will be like for the foreseeable future then it unceremoniously yanks away any crumb of hope or positivity and makes me question the point of it all a bit. Sorry if that's triggering for anyone.

Of course people have lived through wars, famines, decades of false imprisonment etc. and of course we also have to be realistic. I'm also pretty certain the majority of people who are sick to the teeth of lockdown are just as angry as anyone else at the government's jawdropping incompetence, willfully missed opportunities to have a lockdown that could have actually made a difference, and irresponsible harebrained money-making schemes patronisingly tarted up as a return to normality.

But I do sometimes wish there was a bit more sensitivity for people who are really struggling with the prospect of an indefinite future of no social contact whatsoever - speaking for myself at least, just one "lockdown isn't that bad" or "well, this will probably be life forever now" comment is enough to really tip me over the edge at the moment. I probably need to stay away from this subforum/the news in general for a bit tbh.

[BlodwynPig]

They can do it for 'a bit' yes, but we're now a year in. I've seen my parents once since February 2020, my siblings not at all, I've had maybe three in person social events since March 2020 and my life currently consists of going to work and then coming home to sit in my house and nothing else. Can't just be me who's feeling at the very end of my tolerance for this.

No it's not just you. But you will just have to suck it up - it's not your fault, it's the inept and corrupt system of government you were only too gleeful in ushering in in 2019.

[Cuellar]

I could do this for years to be honest. It's like being a teenager again, without the arseache of having to go to school.

[DrGreggles]

Not seen my girlfriend in a year, but caught the 'vid 10 days ago due to one person being impatient and infecting everyone in the office*.
Yes, it's shit, and no one wants to be locked down, but this thing is SO FUCKING EASY to catch/transmit that it's a small price to pay to prevent loads more deaths.


_{*luckily not too many were in}

[bgmnts]

They can do it for 'a bit' yes, but we're now a year in. I've seen my parents once since February 2020, my siblings not at all, I've had maybe three in person social events since March 2020 and my life currently consists of going to work and then coming home to sit in my house and nothing else. Can't just be me who's feeling at the very end of my tolerance for this.

If you feel yourself flagging, just think of all the deaths.

[Uncle TechTip]

No it's not just you. But you will just have to suck it up - it's not your fault, it's the inept and corrupt system of government you were only too gleeful in ushering in in 2019.

The fuck? You've had more influence over this government than most of us - what's your excuse?

[Ferris]

We can't fall out now - that's what the virus wants! The war is out there, man; out there!

...think I'm genuinely going a bit mad from all the pent up stress and anxiety. Sorry.

[BlodwynPig]

The fuck? You've had more influence over this government than most of us - what's your excuse?

Do fuck off you mindless cretin. I've done more in my sleep than you will ever achieve in your miserable sad sack of a life.

[earl_sleek]

Yes we can live like this for a period of time - 2020, 2021, 2022 maybe.

There's no way this is going on until 2022. I think once this lockdown is lifted that's it - too many people won't tolerate another one and will prefer to take their chances, regardless of the effects on others. Which makes it even more important that it isn't lifted too soon.

[MrMrs]

Be nice

[dissolute ocelot]

If you feel yourself flagging, just think of all the deaths.

That doesn't stop people dying from smoking, over-drinking, lack of exercise, mental health, it's not going to make any difference now.

[Uncle TechTip]

Do fuck off you mindless cretin. I've done more in my sleep than you will ever achieve in your miserable sad sack of a life.

You're such a pillock, and insecure too. Thanks for doing stuff in your sleep though.