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Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

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Craig said:
They would have been far better enforcing shopping on your own by law except under very specific circumstances, preventing them being used as meeting places. During March lockdown, my local supermarket enforced shopping with individual adults only, and it made it by far the easiest and safest shop to visit for me.
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I think this would be a very good and sensible move. I was in our local M&S Food just before Christmas, doing some of our Christmas food shopping. I would normally go with Mum, but went alone. Although the store itself was relatively quiet (I went at 9pm) there was one family of three shopping and a few more couples. When you have a family of three doing the shop they tend to take up a lot of space along an aisle, and I had to weave in and out.

It is much easier to maintain social distancing in a supermarket if everyone is shopping alone.
 
I'm not completly against garden centres being open but they should be responsible and try to mainly sell plants and related stuff for DIY work on the garden. They should focus on the outdoor areas where the risk is lower. Also plants have a limited shelf-life and won't keep forever, so there is a high cost if they don't get sold/used.

But seeing photos of people in The Range buying cushions and lampshades annoys me when other retailers selling homeware but with no food or DIY products for sale have to close.
 
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WillPS said:
I agree garden centres being open is nonsense, but I struggle to see Wilko as being anything other than an essential retailer - thinking about my (small) local store the only portions which aren't legitimately somewhat essential are the garden and homeware departments, which must be less than a quarter of the total floorspace.

B&M is a tougher sell but whenever I go there are plenty of people with trollies full of food, so I'm satisfied they have a legitimate purpose.

The Range are pushing it.

The one that really takes the Michael in my view in is the huge Ultimate Outdoors shop (former Best Buy/Kiddicare unit; a huge space) which has tiny selection of mountain bikes and so stays open on the grounds of being a 'bike shop'.
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The Range are quite possibly the greediest/nastiest/selfish company i have come across (Possibly worse than Sports Direct). I can say this as my partner works there and honestly, you would not believe what goes on, especially during this pandemic. I genuinely feel for anyone who works there.
 
Well, at least this time schools are closed, sort of, and that should make a difference to infection rates. It's a shame the Government continue to defend the decisions they've previously taken which have clearly been wrong, such as saying the tier system worked. If it worked we wouldn't be in this position. I am not surprised though.

The impression I got from Boris last night is that he knows people have had enough of restrictions, lockdowns etc. and this is the last time they'll be able to enforce anything before people have well and truly given up listening. There's no trust, too much fatigue and people and businesses have suffered enough. Use these 6-8 weeks now to get as many vaccinations as possible done, and get the rates low enough that once we open up it won't be enough to overwhelm the NHS, and from Easter things can start to look a lot more normal.

I do think places like Wilko and B&M should remain open, The Range I assume can because they partner with Iceland. However at the moment no where seems to limit numbers inside the shops at all - supermarkets should be. Click & Collect services should be allowed.

I'm just glad schools managed to get that one day of term in, despite the thousands of additional infections it's most likely created.
 
@Rick your last post hits the nail on the head

so many people popping here there and everywhere . There is no need

to me lockdown should be all business bar those selling food and medicine. Only those kids who critically need to go to school should. 11 kids in the wife’s class today out of 24. Only two of those kids have genuine key worker parents.

bloody joke and because of this we will be March/April before thing ease.

As for nipping to peoples houses, it’s rife in our street. One house, there son has mates round regularly. Her over the road this morning had her ‘goods serviced’ by the bloke she’s having an affair with.
The neighbour I’ve seen walk past the window 4 times today. 3 times with shopping bags from the same shop! (For the record, they do drive before any asks)

essential means essential .... but people have different perceptions of the word

what Bojo should have said is ‘only leave the house if your going to die by staying in’
I.e to get medicine, food, doctors appointment or your house is on fire

Rant over.
 
Some interesting comments, I thought the Range was a soft furnishings shop? Not that I’ve ever been in one so certainly not essential.
On the tier system I would say it was working just not given enough time again, next week cases will plateau off and then lockdown will take the credit when in actual fact it will be 4 weeks before any effects of lockdown are known.
Should DIY be open? Well what are people supposed to do in the homes all day, unless they have something to do then they will go nuts.
The government also know this lockdown will be badly observed, already today the roads are as busy if not more so, everyone I speak with has had enough and are going to work as normal.
 
Jb85 said:
@RickOnly those kids who critically need to go to school should. 11 kids in the wife’s class today out of 24. Only two of those kids have genuine key worker parents.
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Those other kids are classed as vulnerable, so have to go in, why are other areas of society not looking into this and saying well the child is safe when there in school but when there at home they aren't?

I know a lot of it is to do with funding, but the lazy arsed parents that can be bothered to look after their children should have them taken off them
 
It keeps coming up, but Garden Centers are clearly essential in my book. A good proportion of the fruit and veg I eat during the summer is home grown. That food is no less essential, and a damn site better for me and for the environment, than the plastic wrapped stuff in a supermarket.
 
BigT said:
...and are going to work as normal.
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Work is a specific exception to the Stay at Home rule. Of course people should absolutely be working from home if possible (certainly in my industry, as of today a good 95% of office staff (that weren’t furloughed) started working from home), but in many cases that isn’t possible, and in those cases work should continue (unless vulnerable and shielding).


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Islander said:
Work is a specific exception to the Stay at Home rule. Of course people should absolutely be working from home if possible (certainly in my industry, as of today a good 95% of office staff (that weren’t furloughed) started working from home), but in many cases that isn’t possible, and in those cases work should continue (unless vulnerable and shielding).


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But that’s the point they aren’t working from home, they are GOING to work as normal hence the roads being nearly as busy as a normal working day.
Nothing like in March when the roads were empty.
 
Spark said:
Those other kids are classed as vulnerable, so have to go in, why are other areas of society not looking into this and saying well the child is safe when there in school but when there at home they aren't?

I know a lot of it is to do with funding, but the lazy arsed parents that can be bothered to look after their children should have them taken off them
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Trust me when i say, these kids aren’t vulnerable. This particular school is in one of the wealthiest villages in the UK.

these are mothers who want them out the way for coffee chats.....

I get your point though. There are certainly those children that are safer / fed / etc better by being in school.

the work of Rashford and others has really highlighted this.
 
From what I've seen it appears that roughly 40% of children are still in school, which seems far higher than I expected it would be and makes you wonder if 'closing' schools will really have any significant impact. Out of interest, those of you who do work in schools, how does this compare with the numbers you had in during the initial lockdown back in March?

The key works list seems really quite long. At a push I could probably claim to be a key worker and therefore if I had kids send them off to school, despite the fact I am working from home.

I went out for my usual walk after work this evening and the roads did not seem much quieter than they have done over recent weeks. In the first lockdown I think a lot of businesses/organisations just sent staff home regardless of whether they could carry out their jobs. All of the office buildings where I work were closed down, if you were lucky enough to have a laptop then you could do your job from home but for the many who did not then functionality was initially limited to Office 365 apps online.

Now many office buildings have been made 'Covid secure' (although I still wonder how many have adequate ventilation to reduce the risk of airborne transmission) and employers have found ways of working that mean they can bring staff back in. There will not have been the mass sending of staff home like there was last time. I know we still have staff in the office who can do decent amounts of their jobs from home, although it is more efficient being in the office.

I would like to hope that the measures will be enough to bring the R below 1. But I am not convinced that it will fall much below 1 as it did in the first lockdown, especially with the new variant. There also seems to be a growing proportion of the population who just don't care anymore which does not help matters. We really all need to pull together over the next couple of months or this is simply going to go on for much longer than any of us want it to.
 
Didn’t the Range buy freezers during the first lockdown and start selling frozen food just so they could open?

I guess we could argue any store is essential and should be open, book shops for reading and mental health, the range and home bargains for toiletries and light bulbs, clothing shops for warm clothes in this winter, I mean I could argue that having spa’s open is essential for relaxation and state of mind lol

And I suppose who can blame any business for trying to stay open and make money rather than go under and have to lay off loads of staff. Problem is it’s unfair for the other businesses which have had to close and puts more money in the bigger companies. Tesco and Amazon for example have made a fortune from Covid.
 
GaryH said:
And I suppose who can blame any business for trying to stay open and make money rather than go under and have to lay off loads of staff. Problem is it’s unfair for the other businesses which have had to close and puts more money in the bigger companies. Tesco and Amazon for example have made a fortune from Covid.
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This is my bigger issue, many businesses are closing and having issues making money and avoiding permanent closure. So an independent homeware shop can't open, but The Range selling small amounts of essentials can open making it even harder for the independent shop to make money.
 
Rob said:
From what I've seen it appears that roughly 40% of children are still in school, which seems far higher than I expected it would be and makes you wonder if 'closing' schools will really have any significant impact. Out of interest, those of you who do work in schools, how does this compare with the numbers you had in during the initial lockdown back in March?

The key works list seems really quite long. At a push I could probably claim to be a key worker and therefore if I had kids send them off to school, despite the fact I am working from home.

I went out for my usual walk after work this evening and the roads did not seem much quieter than they have done over recent weeks. In the first lockdown I think a lot of businesses/organisations just sent staff home regardless of whether they could carry out their jobs. All of the office buildings where I work were closed down, if you were lucky enough to have a laptop then you could do your job from home but for the many who did not then functionality was initially limited to Office 365 apps online.

Now many office buildings have been made 'Covid secure' (although I still wonder how many have adequate ventilation to reduce the risk of airborne transmission) and employers have found ways of working that mean they can bring staff back in. There will not have been the mass sending of staff home like there was last time. I know we still have staff in the office who can do decent amounts of their jobs from home, although it is more efficient being in the office.

I would like to hope that the measures will be enough to bring the R below 1. But I am not convinced that it will fall much below 1 as it did in the first lockdown, especially with the new variant. There also seems to be a growing proportion of the population who just don't care anymore which does not help matters. We really all need to pull together over the next couple of months or this is simply going to go on for much longer than any of us want it to.
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I can definitely understand your concerns, but I have a few things I’d like to point out that will hopefully alleviate some of your worries.

With regards to schools and who can go in; it’s worth noting that children are only eligible to attend if both parents or primary caregivers are key workers. If you could go in with only one key worker parent, then the number eligible would rise quite significantly; if that was the rule, I would technically be allowed to attend sixth form because my mum is a physiotherapist. But as far as I’m aware, the rule is that you are only allowed to attend if you have don’t have at least one parent working at home or can present a compelling case as to why you can’t work from home (e.g. vulnerability).

That does whittle down the numbers quite significantly; I couldn’t give you an exact number, but out of our school of nearly 1500 pupils and probably over 100 staff, my Physics teacher who was working on site said that there were less than 100 people on site today including staff, so that is probably well under 10% of pupils when taking into account that a fair few of that amount would be staff. In fact, it’s said that during the first lockdown last spring, the government actually expected around 20% of pupils to attend school, but the amount ended up at 2%.

My Physics teacher also mentioned that the testing facilities that were originally intended to facilitate the return to school before the lockdown was announced had still been installed, so everyone on the school site now has to get periodically tested.

There’s also another major thing we have now that didn’t exist last March; vaccines. Even though the amount of people currently vaccinated is far from enough to induce herd immunity, 1.3 million people have already had their first dose of vaccine in the United Kingdom, including 23% of all over-80s. This is using the Pfizer vaccine alone, so now that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved and has entered circulation, which the government has far more doses of and is far more practical to roll out, the speed of the rollout should increase substantially in the coming weeks. Loads of new vaccination centres are set to open across the country over the next week, and with the government’s new chosen dosage strategy, many, many people should be at least partially protected fairly soon.

From what Boris has said, I get the impression that the measures alone are not what the government is relying upon to get the R number below 1 and the strain on the NHS down. Vaccination will play a substantial role, too, as well as things like test-and-trace which didn’t exist in March.
 
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Our local Range has an Iceland in it so makes sense for it to be open I guess.

Whenever I've nipped in for some groceries 90% of the staff are not wearing masks. It's infuriating. So many people are taking advantage of the sunflower lanyard.

I work in 4 separate supermarkets every day (chocolate sales/account management) and it's starting to get me down. Every day is a constant reminder we are living in a very weird moment in our lives.

The general supermarket staff are the real unsung heroes of the pandemic. They wear a mask all day, every day (unless you work in The Range, Apsley) under stressful conditions. The Christmas period is difficult at the best of times and the staff put in a lot of work physically and mentally. Believe me wearing a mask all day whilst lifting/stacking heavy boxes of chocolate is not nice - these guys have been doing it on a daily basis whilst surrounded by utter morons. They often can't afford to take any time off work for a break but still crack on with a smile.

Makes it even more insulting when you constantly see fully grown adults refusing to wear a mask for a 20 minute shop because it's 'uncomfortable'. Selfish pricks.

Disclaimer: not a dig at those with genuine conditions which means it's difficult to wear a mask. Unfortunately the numbers don't add up though - I personally know of two people who have got hold of sunflower lanyards with no health conditions whatsoever. They hand them out at supermarket customer service desks to anyone who asks.
 
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@Matt N

It is not true that both children's parents have to be key workers for them to be eligible to come into school.

The list of vulnerable children has also been massively extended, including to include those who have little access to technology at home.

14 in class today, up from 12.

2 more confirmed as coming back for next week.

That's running at over 50% capacity.
 
I really struggled wearing a mask at first, and will admit that I tried to put it off for as long as I could (I do have a legitimate exemption through being autistic). We now have no choice, and have to wear a face covering when at work - even behind Perspex screens. I can cope with it, but I still hate it, and do sometimes take it off when not in customer-facing areas just so I don’t have anything over my face for a few minutes and can be less stressed. It’s always on when in customer-facing areas unless I have to remove it for customers who rely on lip-reading.

Part of the problem is we can’t really enforce the face covering rules, as we don’t have the authority, and to do so would cause way more issues than it would solve. We do have customers who have legitimate exemptions, but there are some that just won’t for whatever reason, and these are the people that truly frustrate me. I honestly wish we could do more to enforce it and help to keep everyone safe.
 
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