England last day of second lockdown

Tuesday saw the last day of a month long second lockdown.

During the summer when number of cases were low, deaths low, it was obvious we would head into a second lockdown as people were behaving as though we were not in the middle of a pandemic, more and more people on the streets, lack of social distancing, not helped by the crass stupidity of Eat Out to Help Out.

Numbers started to rise exponentially.

No lessons learnt from the last lockdown, we entered too late, and the same mistake repeated, we entered lockdown too late.

I was out of the country when the country entered the second lockdown.

Once again, lessons not learnt, we failed to go into lockdown soon enough.

When SAGE called for a brief national circuit breaker to bring covid under control,  there were 5,594 new cases, 368 people in hospital and 28 deaths.

Two months later there were 20,252 new cases, 16,444 people in hospital and 511 deaths.

One month lockdown. It was not going to be one month as it takes as long as it takes.

But, Wednesday, after one month of lockdown ends  we go into a form of regional lockdown.

Relaxation can only be slowly slowly pause at each step.

Regional lockdown has its merits,  only too soon, and we have no random testing in the community, we are operating blind. When people experience symptoms and seek a  test or end up in hospital, we are seeing results from infections two weeks previous.

Under the  three tier system, shops can open. Lemmings out Christmas shopping. will  turn every town centres into a daily super spreader event, just in time for a spike in cases if relax restrictions for Christmas.

Lockdown should not be relaxed for Christmas. To relax lockdown over Christmas, height of lunacy, especially if allow pubs to open.

Recent large scale trials matched phone data with covid results. Were able to see where the hotspots were, how long people lingered, better able to control the virus once lockdown relaxed.

Also when relax, be prepared to put areas in hard lockdown

In the summer, Newark was a hotspot centred on a food processing factory. Newark should have been put into hard lockdown, no one allowed in or out to control the spread.

In Europe hard lock down.

Cyprus

– mask wearing in the street

– night-time curfew from 10-30pm

Athens

– bars restaurants coffee shops closed

– nigh time curfew was midnight then 9pm

– lockdown

– wear masks in the street

In Athens lockdown means lockdown, cannot go out without permission. Police patrols everywhere, roadblocks.

The streets were deserted. Imagine walking through a major city and no one about, nothing open.

In Cyprus and Athens, €300 fine if in breach of coronavirus rules.