The local council has sent out a message which I’d summarise as “yes, we know officially you’re still allowed to do most things, but the numbers are rising so please be sensible”. Only with more of a scary tone to it.
I can’t see asking people to be sensible working this time when it hasn’t before; and generally I’m getting the same feeling I had in March, of “we all know we need greater restrictions, it’s just a matter of when the government will admit it”.
Part of my issue of the approach is each tier is each tier is a muddled mess.
If I’m a pub landlord do I buy a commercial barbecue and start serving burgers to have a ‘substational’ meal on offer?
At no point do the restrictions mandate a full shutdown, it’s a half hearted approach to try and keep ‘the economy’ going. Does transmission increase after 10 pm? Surely throwing everyone out the same time is worse.
(Rant over)
I think this is why a circuit breaker is so compelling, it’s simple. Stay at home for two weeks, massively reduce transmission.
(Slight aside, I have a friend who advises the police on what new legislation means. She’s currently dealing with guidelines released sometimes after they’ve been officially announced, or released about an hour before they become law, or occasionally with whole paragraphs repeated due to copy and paste errors.) Argh!
It’s very odd talking to my colleagues at the moment. Our office is in north Yorkshire, close to the border with Lancashire. That means people based near the office are in tier 1 restrictions (meeting in groups of no more than 6, 10 pm curfew for pubs and bars), My whole team is in tier 2 (no household mixing indoors), and people in Lancashire are in tier 3 (no household mixing in most places, lots of pubs/restaurants etc. are shut).
So while some people are telling us about their socially-distanced walks and trips to the pub, other people in the same meeting aren’t allowed to see anyone they don’t live with.
We don’t have storage space for two weeks’ worth of food.
I believe that one of the accepted reasons for not staying at home is to obtain food (it was last time anyway).
I will concede that simple isn’t the same as practical.
I’ve had to stop following someone I know on social media because for her 28th birthday she’s had by my count at least 10 small parties/gatherings to keep under the rule of 6. Whilst it’s technically not breaking the law/rules I don’t think it’s really in the spirit of them to be mixing with so many households.
Another one of my friends who had been shielding for 6 months celebrated not having to shield by playing a 7-player game of Battlestar Galactica. 
Meanwhile, in Japan land, H is planning a family trip in a rental car to stay in an Airbnb at a hotspot for tourism. I’m basically opposed to the whole idea, but I feel like I have to go along with it for the sake of marital harmony.
Do Cylons count in terms of maximum group numbers?
It will be interesting to see what happens in Wales. Our new cases are about 1000/ day currently, but I believe hospitalisations lag by 10 days and deaths by a further 10 days. So, what I’d expect is for those 3 statistics to keep climbing through the lockdown. It’ll be easy for lockdown opposers to look at those numbers and say that it didn’t work.
However, the real impact is going to be seen in a month. Especially if we can our testing and our track and tracing sorted out (apparently Wales doesn’t use the Serco system they have in England, ours is run by Public Health Wales and is much better - although I may be wrong).
We have the strange situation for the first week in November where our youngest (year 7) will be in school, whilst our eldest (year 9) will have home learning for a week. The school have got that well set (by the look of it). My wife and I are both Optometrists, so we’ll both be in work through the circuit breaker.
If Wales comes out in a much better place than England by the start of December then the Government is going to look even more negligent than they currently do.
I have my first appointment as part of a COVID vaccine trial on Monday 
Good luck! I’ve signed up for one but they haven’t asked for me yet.
If nothing else, I get to find out whether I had COVID in March, or just another garden-variety respiratory infection.
We’ll press our thumbs for good luck and a good outcome for both you and the trial.
Vaccine seems imminent over here. Federal ministry has asked states for recommendations where to set up vaccination centers. obviously that means it will take another half year or so… but I’m glad they are thinking ahead.
I got asked if I’d like to be part of regular testing: the Office of National Statistics is trying to get better-quality sampling. I said yes, of course.
My sister’s been doing that - she says the nose swabs are quite unpleasant!
This is true. In fact the whole swab thing is unpleasant. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty minor.
I’ve been on the receiving end of three tests so far. First one was unpleasant, but fine. Felt like I had ants at the back of my nose for a day or so.
Second one, I was prepared. Still made my feet twitch, but hey. Gotta do what you gotta do. Highlight: After spending 10 minutes donning his PPE the GP complained (good naturedly) that playing dress up wasn’t why he got into medicine.
Third one. Oooh boy. My wife had the pleasure of getting a test a say or two before I needed mine. She informed me that the Ministry of Health had decreed that the swabs needed to go “deeper for longer”. There was a small amount of glee on her part when I decided I should probably go get a test.
I can confirm the test was indeed longer, but I dunno about deeper. Turns out I have poor depth perception for anything internal. This wasn’t helped by the doctor cheerfully telling me that a nasal swap was entirely unnecessary and mouth swabs have been proven to work just as well by South Korea.
Hopefully three will be enough for me, but I have a toddler who attends preschool so I imagine I’ll be back at least twice more. All told I’m grateful the tests are freely available and easy to access. As @chrislear said, overall a pretty minor test.
The swab wasn’t fun or comfortable but I found it unusually synesthetic. I was overwhelmed with the taste of a green number 7.