please empty your brain below
Once you allow people to be 1m apart they'll end up closer than that, and then social distancing is effectively over.

Keith | 23.06.20 - 7:52 a.m. | #

Sweden shows that trying to keep the economy going with minor restrictions still makes it nose dive as much as other countries. There's not the upside people insistently imagine.

toby | 23.06.20 - 8:05 a.m. | #

The 2m rule has not applied for about 4 weeks. I now find people out walking or running will just head straight towards me and then glare if I move out of the way. So much for, "we are all in this together".

RosemaryT | 23.06.20 - 8:26 a.m. | #

The more people wonder around the greater the chance of catching it, for those who cannot afford to catch it.

Southern Heights (Light Railway) | 23.06.20 - 8:40 a.m. | #

God I wish I lived in New Zealand right now.

James Scantlebury | 23.06.20 - 9:11 a.m. | #

Many people now struggle to keep to 2 metres, e.g. in supermarkets, because they are fed up with it all. Reducing to 1 metre removes any margin they are currently allowing. It's also clear and unambiguous, to some extent we are used to it and the signs are all in place. Leave well alone I say.

paul | 23.06.20 - 9:22 a.m. | #

James Scantlebury, I wish I was in New Zealand too, but mainly because without COVID19 I would be. I should have flown out early June to visit my son and his family, and to to join in celebrating my grandson’s 5th birthday. Sadly I can’t see that I'll be there any time this year. I envy them their management of the whole crisis!

Christine Scantlebury | 23.06.20 - 9:41 a.m. | #

Lockdown is all but over for many, and we barely had it "properly" in any case.

The rules have been changed frequently, poorly understood (sometime willfully so) and particularly for the shielding group, this has caused problems.

Eg. the most recent relaxation of the rules didnt apply to the shielding group, yet that didn't stop my elderly parents being visited by relatives. Then they caught coronavirus. Now luckily OK(ish) after a spell in hospital, but a scary time.

People just don't seem worried enough. I am not paranoid, but am very happy to wear a mask and have been doing so in shops etc since lockdown began. It's no great hardship. If this became a widespread practice, I would be more comfortable with some relaxation of the rules but for now, another month or even two of this would be sensible.

Looking at other countries, relaxations have not come until they had much, much lower rates of infection. I don't understand why the UK is special?

It is very unlikely you will get covid, but that is precisely because we are in lockdown. Waiting another month would surely reduce the risk yet further of community transmission to sufficiently low or even negligible levels and provide time to properly implement aggressive contact tracing.

The economy, schools, etc will all, eventually, recover. 60-100,000 people never did.

E | 23.06.20 - 9:50 a.m. | #

What E said.

Malcolm | 23.06.20 - 10:13 a.m. | #

Yes

Colly | 23.06.20 - 10:32 a.m. | #

Concerned by the people in the "UNLOCK" box arguing that those who need additional protection should just wear face masks and let everyone else get on with not wearing them. The scientific evidence suggests that most of the protection from face masks is against spreading the disease, not catching it, so more-vulnerable people are only substantially protected if the people they come into contact with are wearing the masks.

Also concerned by the idea that we need to put up with "a few deaths". Assuming a death rate from COVID at the lower end of estimates (0.3% or so), that's 200,000 people, or three times the UK civilian death toll of World War II. And that doesn't count the people who die from otherwise-preventable ailments because the hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID patients.

When did this "I'm alright Jack" mentality become the norm?

Alex | 23.06.20 - 11:05 a.m. | #

E has said everything I wanted to say.

So I'll be that person and ask if James and Christine are related or if it's sheer coincidence them both having an uncommon (to my eyes) surname. I wish I was in NZ too, to be honest.

James Scantlebury says: As far as I'm aware we're unrelated. Uncommon surname indeed - it's Cornish in origin.

E1W-er replies: Thank you James for replying and satisfying my curiousity! It's a memorable name.

Christine Scantlebury replies: It is indeed a memorable name, gets boring spelling it on the phone though!! As James said no relation to the best of my knowledge. Quite by accident last time I was in New Zealand we came across a plaque commemorating a shop run by one Edward Scantlebury who was very well regarded in Reefton in South Island. Big smiles in the photos we took next to the plaque!

E1W-er | 23.06.20 - 11:06 a.m. | #

Leave things alone.

Lindsay | 23.06.20 - 11:33 a.m. | #

Ultimately the UK was late to implement lockdown and we're going to be one of the first in the EU to really ease it up, it looks like. Our figures are better than America's, true, but as far as the rest of Europe goes, not so much. The only thing that makes me a bit unsure is that it's possibly better if we have a second wave now than in the autumn, and it's doubtful that we'd be able to get rid of it enough before then to prevent that. So perhaps this really is part 2 of the herd immunity strategy...

Muzer | 23.06.20 - 11:58 a.m. | #

Just watched the "final" 5 pm briefing.
I will stick to 2m!

strawbrick | 23.06.20 - 6:51 p.m. | #

I'm in this box. I'm not sure the outside world is real anymore. And I quite like it that way.

Sally | 23.06.20 - 10:04 p.m. | #











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