This was always true Matey

Funny how people want to go to beaches and on Antifa demonstrations, but are less keen on going into schools, if they are teachers and teaching unions.

I said several weeks ago, when Boris changed the slogan from ‘Stay at home’ to ‘Stay alert’ that the practical effect of the changes was the ending of the lockdown, he just didn’t say he was ending it, because no politician could, given the media we have now. It was a very sly move to be honest, change the law so the police have virtually no power to stop anyone doing anything (in England at least) while keeping the rhetoric (and ‘advice’) of the lockdown. The media fell for it, and missed the big story – the lockdown was over weeks ago.

I have some sympathy for the police, but for a different reason. There’s no accounting for the stupidity of people when it comes to the seaside and nothing short of Chinese style lockdown will stop them.

On Saturday some idiots decided to go tombstoning off Durdle Door in to shallow water. Apparently one planted himself and had to be dug out. This required 2 helicopters, one at each end of the beach, so all the sun bathers had to be herded in to the middle, with no chance of social distancing. Looking at the size of that crowd there was probably enough space for them to following social distancing guidelines before the helicopters arrived.

As long as everyone was calm and didn’t start shouting at each other it will probably have been safe and there won’t be an outbreak, if we are to believe the current science, but it still means enforcing social distancing is a waste of time and money.

The government is simply following what people are already doing to give the illusion of still being in control. Traffic around me was noticeably heavier last week, and completely mental at the weekend with day-trippers on their way to the beach.

@Andrew M “There are two parallel Britains.”

Not quite parallel. There’s plenty of people enjoying beaches and BBQs who still claim to be fearful of returning to work.

. . . lots of businesses just can’t re-open–unless they do it en masse. One by one Plod will pick them off.

Worse than that, Mr Ecks, is that a lot of businesses won’t be able to reopen when allowed because they won’t have any customers.

I’d disagree with the “policing by consent” nonsense. British police haven’t been policing by consent for years. There are people who will “consent” because the police & courts can make it very unpleasant & expensive not to do so. And others who are not subject to that restraint who are largely unpoliced.

Thanks to businessman Simon Dolan’s legal challenge, we can now see that the lockdown was NEVER about the science:

https://www.paulchaplin.life/blog-original/lockdown-boris-violated-sage-advice

Dave Ward: “Thanks to businessman Simon Dolan’s legal challenge, we can now see that the lockdown was NEVER about the science:”
If your link wasn’t so elliptical I would say it was hyperbolic.
The problem with cocooning but otherwise letting things rip was always going to be the people who can’t or won’t cocoon, and were going to clog up the hospitals. Once that became plain then lockdown became more or less inevitable.
Johnson senior’s fantasy trip to the pub on 17th March probably made it plain what was going to happen without a lockdown.

“were going to clog up the hospitals”: why is that worse than what transpired i.e. hospitals grossly underemployed because patients are scared to attend them, or are refused treatment?

Well, if the Chinese flu had turned out to be the new black death, I believe the intention was to treat the young to young-ish in otherwise good health and let those on the fringes of poor health take their chances. A sort of very generalised pre-triage given that once the hospitals had become full, everyone outside would have been buggered anyway. So they needed to clear the decks first.

In general I think that was a reasonable course of action with the knowledge as it was at the time, and not just because I’m young-ish and in reasonable health!

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that turfing out infected elderly patients into care homes without even informing the staff was tantamount to medical negligence, and leaving the lockdown doom-mongering running for far longer than needed will have probably killed more people than the virus.

Was there ever any evidence that the mortality wasn’t skewed heavily by age and that young/healthy were at any particular risk. One article on the mortality rates in the Imperial model suggested they were in line with typical age adjusted rates, it assumed mainly older people would die

As I’ve been saying – it all comes down to trust.

At the beginning, here in the US, everyone was willing to do what they were told was necessary. As time went on though, it became obvious that while extrememly contagious, the disease wasn’t as dangerous as we were told. And then the experts contradicting each other, states issuing nonsensical and contradictory orders, etc – that trust was lost.

So people started thinking for themselves again. And they decided that the government was full of hooey so they’re out doing what they want to do.

Scared? It takes a rather hyperactive imagination to read any scaredness into what I wrote above.

And on IT it’s cleaning up after twats like you that keeps me in highly paid contracts, so feel free to carry on recommending using Windows XP and trusting in disabling javascript.

@Dave Ward June 1, 2020 at 1:15 pm

Re: https://www.paulchaplin.life/blog-original/lockdown-boris-violated-sage-advice

Sunday Telegraph FP “Exclusive” on minutes is due to Simon Dolan’s legal challenge disclosures

Appalling that Telegraph didn’t give credit to Simon Dolan