Those lovely people at the Daily Mail (Daily Heil) certainly think that we should:
There are one or two problems with this newspaper story. Well, there are dozens but I have to summarise to make this post readable. Let's start with the Mail's lying. The vast majority of teachers are against opening the schools at this time. Nobody thinks its a good idea. Everybody thinks its a terrible idea. The unions are doing merely what you would expect in trying to protect their members. The newspapers here heavily support our Conservative government and have seen their physical sales and advertising revenues collapse during the pandemic, so they are pro easing the lockdown.
As I've said many times, easing the lockdown before you have proper test-trace-isolate procedures puts you at risk of losing control of the virus. France has fewer cases than us and better (well... less inadequate) testing procedures and even they are having problems trying to open up.
Schools are a particular issue too. Even the limited re-opening which the government are bringing in will create massive virus spreading centres. The lower end of Primary school is due to be one of the first back. Yes, these young kids are very low risk in terms of dying but they are very high risk in terms of spreading the disease. I work as a primary school teacher myself and let me tell you that the zero chance of getting children between four and six years of age to social distance effectively. Anyone with any experience of a primary setting thinks that this is nuts, which it is.
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> they are very high risk in terms of spreading the disease
This appears not to be true
Kindergartens and primary schools have been open here in Norway for two weeks and junior and senior high schools opened again last week. The high school students work at school on alternate days so that they can sit further away from each other in class. I don't see any reason why the UK should not be able to do the same.
@ninalanyon I hope you are right but fear that you are not. Two weeks is too early to tell whether it changes anything. Also, social distancing discipline is impossible for younger kids.
The government of Norway is far more on top of this than us, with less infections per capita and better testing proceedures.
social distancing discipline is impossible for younger kids.
We don't even bother trying for the younger ones here because they are both less susceptible to the disease and less able to pass it on.
The government of Norway is far more on top of this than us,
On that at least I agree!
I hope that future British governments will fund the NHS better; it does seem that countries with better resourced health systems have done a little better (Norway and Germany for instance).
I hope it all works out in the UK. I have selfish reasons for that, I want to visit family and friends both there and in France.
@Burnley123 I think the biggest problem in the UK these days is that there is so little trust in government and expertise (justifiably at least as far as government goes I think). I think that's the biggest difference between the UK and Scandinavia; broadly speaking we trust the government here to be taking advice from people who understand the problems (as far as the problems are as yet understandable) and acting in accordance (mostly) with that advice. Although here the government closed the schools against the advice of the Norwegian Public Health Institute which has always maintained that it was unnecessary.
So here we have never had a lock down, just advice on handwashing, keeping our distance, etc., and temporary closure of institutions like hair dressers, physios, nail salons, bars, etc., that are unable to maintain a distance between people. So we have always been free to travel, even leave the country so long as we go into voluntary 14 day (now reduced to 10) quarantine on return.
With few exceptions people have stuck to the rules, no one has been fined for an unnecessary journey because no such rule exists yet traffic was down dramatically until a week or so ago when we started to relax a little. And also what rules do exist are crystal clear and not open to interpretation. Some people have been fined, even one imprisoned I think, but that was for flagrant flouting of isolation by someone who was confirmed infected.
On a totally unrelated, and possibly lighter note: there is a nation wide shortage of cannabis and the customs authorities have been discovering a lot more packets of cannabis seed coming in through the post!
@ninalanyon Truat in the government was high for a long time but now their approval rating has gone negative due to multiple cock-ups. Dominic Cummings, the top government aid, has just been caught breaking lockdown to visit his patents, after his wife showed symptoms. This guy is effectively the deputy Prime Minister.
People in the UK are more individualistic than Scandavians and i think that is a case of political culture influencing culture generally. Social democratic countries are big on citizenship and collective responsibility. A lot of people here just dont bother with social distancing in stores because they just dont care.
This is a problem but the biggest issue is the lack of test trace isolate proceedures. We have tested less per capita than even America and the companies hired to do contact tracing have badly messed up.
@Burnley123 I don't think it is possible to get more individualistic than Norwegians. But that doesn't have to come at the expense of trust; that's the big difference between here and the UK now, at least as far as I can tell from what family back in the UK tell me. Here we trust each other, we trust the state, we even trust private companies to a much greater degree than seems to be the case in the UK.
Of course it's possible I'm getting a skewed sample of the UK but it does seem different to me than it was when I left in the mid '80s.
@Burnley123 All that controversy over Dominic Cummings is a load of nonsense. From what we know, he travelled to Durham to self-isolate in a residence separate to any family members. The purpose was to be close to relatives in case he and his wife became too ill to care for their four year old son. He didn't "visit his parents" as far as we know. You make it sound like they went up there for a jolly, when he had a legitimate reason. I don't see how he broke the lockdown guidelines. It was a long way to travel I suppose, but they were in a car, so not really much chance of spreading it.
@Burnley123 I wasn't aware he had stopped on the journey. I will have to go and re-examine that.
I really am not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it. If Dominic Cummming really is guilty of lying, then he should resign and probably Boris Johnson as well. I suppose Cummings does come across as a bit of a sociopath at times.
