I do not know a single family who have adjusted or in anyways changed their Christmas plans in the last week or two due to changes in the state’s latest whims regarding Covid-19. Question: I am a lockdown sceptic but outside my bubble, are there people willingly rearraigning their lives when the state issues new edicts?
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Question…Perry de Havilland (Wiltshire) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Health & medical · Self ownership December 17th, 2020 |
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I don’t pay attention to the edicts. But it’ll just be me and the wife, with parents dropping by briefly for a hug and a gift exchange (outdoors, of course). The usual family get-together will be a Zoom call, just like Easter and Thanksgiving were.
It blows, but Toronto is a hotspot by Canadian standards (and my neighbourhood is worse than most), and killing my dad would be worse than a virtual Christmas.
Strongly of the view vulnerable people should be careful, but other folks needs to just get on with their lives
Who, me? I live in a building for the “active senior lifestyle”. We’re trying to get on with our lives, but much of our lives closed down when the governor said it should. And the building admin says we can’t bring outsiders in. We have had several people catch Covid (including just down the hall) and one of my nephew’s entire family caught it.
Fortunately, I’m a hermit by nature, though of course I/we do have to go out occasionally for food and things. But it’s going to be a rather barren Christmas. At least the vaccines are starting to become available. That’ll help the New Year.
Nope, you are not mistaken, Perry.
Everyone I know is carrying on as usual. Sensible steps, plans made ahead.
The pols don’t seem to understand you cannot just keep chopping and changing at a moment’s notice. People need to plan how much food, how many people, where, and so on.
Changing the rules twice a day just makes them ignored totally, instead of ignored mostly.
I await a police roadblock stopping me and telling me my 90 year old relative must starve to death over the next 2 weeks. We are delivering all the food for him. We will also stay over, because of the very long drive makes a return journey in a day dangerous.
I mean wtf!? The terminology they use gives you an idea of how they view us.
I have a personal exclusion zone, of approximately eighteen inches minimum. Only folk with an explicit invitation get inside that.
I find it … despicable, that the outfit that claims to govern, has made hugging your grandchild, or grandparent a political statement.
I see that prat Prat Hancock, tells us there is a new varient of COVID-19 which is going to keep us all couped up until March next year ( so much for 3 weeks to save the NHS ). New varient of COVID? That would be seasonal Influenza, then.
It probably depends on where you live. Here in Londonderry, NH, the school district surveyed parents over their Holiday plans. The response was such that the district will not be reopening for their few, in person, classes until January 21st. I take that to mean holidays, as usual, for the most part.
Our only change here in the northwest corner of the States is that my wife and I aren’t going over to my parents’ place for dinner.
Which isn’t even forbidden by mandate here; we came to the conclusion that it would be best not to all on our own.
My take is that most people decided about a month ago exactly what they are doing over Christmas, and the constant tweaking has become just background noise. Short of putting tanks on the streets, people are gonna do what they’re gonna do. I don’t mean act irresponsibly, but I think the government and its advisors have managed to make themselves irrelevant, which is quite an achievement in an emergency.
I don’t think giving my mom a hug is a political statement. I can’t imagine local politicians do either – ours have been more reasonable than many.
In general, my personal behaviour has been more restrained than the law has demanded of me, so I haven’t paid too much attention to the law. But I’m in a very good situation for covid (I’m a homebody with a job I can do remotely, I live with my wife and a couple good friends, and I was planning for it in February), so it’s really easy for me to be a stickler.
Here in the UK, the same government – its Office of National Statistics, to be precise – informs me that all through the summer and into autumn, weekly deaths the virus caused or contributed to were a good deal less than the (5-year-averaged) weekly deaths that pneumonia and influenza caused or contributed to, and are now broadly comparable, not far higher.
So by one argument, we are being advised to endure twice as much trouble this Christmas as we have in the past taken to avoid pneumonia and influenza.
By another argument, every winter the BBC tells me the NHS is ‘almost overwhelmed’, due to the meanness of the Tories in funding it. The first part of that statement contains some actual news content. So the usual arguments about how ‘as much again’ could trigger triage and etc. also have (unlike so much virus reporting) some possible news content. (And one may note the different ratios of ’caused’ and ‘contributed’ in the two graphs.)
England is inviting the common people to use their common sense for a short period, rather than command them. As far as the Kilmartins and our many friends in England are concerned, it is the obstacles (intentional and otherwise) put in the way of long-distance travel that will most make this Christmas seem unlike the last.
Here in California, my particular county has been quite schizophrenic. Our Governor was sued successfully for his arbitrary pronouncements, so he now ties restrictions to ICU bed capacity, which is more sensible than the whims of the clamoring press corpse (sic). I’m already seeing some restaurants in the foothills and outlying suburbs stay open and have inside dining in defiance of dictates. The Sheriff so far hasn’t arrested anybody AFAIK. So the cracks are happening. Irish Democracy and all.
As for me personally no plans have changed. All my relatives left CA long ago as the state decayed and jobs were found elsewhere, or Civil Service Retirement pensions matured. I’m an introvert by nature so my plans were always solo, with occasional dinner.
The only change for me was at the start with my hobby. I hosted a lot role-playing games at my expansive table at my home, and when the Wuhan Flu erupted I got a Zoom account, purchased Epic Table (Roll20 is better, but too many nickel-and-dime charges), and ran most of my games online. Annoying, not as fun, but workable. Some of my gamers are old Grognards like me but not in good health. THEY are the ones that NEED to stay home while COVID-19 rampages.
Thought for the day:
It’s not that the spread of Peking Pox caused the lockdowns, but the lockdowns facilitated the spread of the bug. Confining people indoors, away from whatever wan or otherwise sunlight and fresh air they could get is a forbidden issue.
As has been recently trumpeted by the usual suspects, UV “neutralizes” the bug, a bit of basic science known to REAL PEOPLE for over a century.
It is a PLANdemic.
Viruses spread from person to person. If you’re stuck in a house with someone and one of you gets sick, the other one will, I agree. But if you’re stuck in a house with them, how will either of you actually get sick in the first place?
And yes, UV light will kill viruses. But the amount of UV necessary to kill them quickly enough that the virus won’t spread from face-to-face contact will also give you a third-degree sunburn. You can use UV in a contained section of a building’s ventilation system to kill viruses, and I suspect several buildings have done so. But natural UV light isn’t nearly enough to do it that fast. It’ll probably kill the virus in hours, but not in seconds, and it only takes seconds to breathe it in. The big advantage of outdoor contact over indoor seems to be reduced viral loads, because the germs are spread much more widely and rapidly. Higher viral load = worse disease taking hold before your immune system spools up to fight it = more sickness and contagion. (This is also the biggest part of why masks help, from what I can tell.) But there’s limits to that, and the limits are too low to let us do everything outdoors, even if local weather allowed outdoor living for the whole pandemic.
Alsadius: I can confirm your information about the UV light. I occasionally work in jails and in the receiving rooms we use UV light in special housing to kill as much virus and bacteria as possible. They use louvered lampshades to direct all the light horizontal. They are up near the ceiling and normally out of reach, and where low enough that tall people could reach up into them dire warning signs are posted. The effect of the lamps over the years has bleached the upper part of the walls and degraded the paint.
The lamps were installed years ago due to the outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. Many of criminals and beggars have no regard for their own health and hygiene, and much less so for others people (and places), and far too many would be quite pleased to inflict deadly diseases upon the police officers and civil servants.
I am quite surprised, given all the fervor and nigh hysteria about COVID-19, that such lamps were not installed at more public gathering places or institutions. A more cynical person than me might believe that COVID is just panic theater – a slightly more dangerous flu made a modern bogeyman because fear struck people are more easy to manipulate. Having a few friends how caught it – 3 having symptoms akin to a seasonal flu and 1 hospitalized and recovering weeks later – I am not so cynical as that.
My extended family are Scottish and, being good Scots, refused me permission to visit for Christmas because the government disapproves of it, so my plans were changed by proxy.
I do miss the Scotland of the past that had a modicum of rebellion in their souls.
3 kids at 3 universities – all of them coming home. Two already here. 4 out of the 5 of us consider that we have already had the lurgy – only the youngest officially so. Fresher Flu had cv19 in it too this year.
We will do what we always do except Grandma will be without family on Christmas Day on the other side of a Zoom screen, and similarly so for her 90th birthday a few days later. I think if left to her, she’d have come but she doesn’t want the kids to think they killed her if anything were to happen. That was a truly wicked part of the ‘nudge’ controls to which we have been subjected.
In Minnesota, USA:
Closing down Christmas gatherings is the now-accepted norm. Closing down all gatherings is the norm.
We’re a huge progressive enclave here. There was a great investment in the “Pandemic! Death!” scenario here that conveniently allowed for some voting irregularities, plus it fed the “Trump is killing us all!” BS. Now that the election is over, the usefulness of the narrative may be gone, but the narrative remains. It’s a combination of a lot of people too dumb to know how they’d been handled, plus some who put a lot of effort into drumming the whole crisis up and now don’t want to make it TOO obvious by backing off.
Although:
One nephew works in the funeral system. One sis administers nursing homes. One niece is a nurse. Another sis was just sick with it. I tested positive after being with her (but am perfectly fine.) It’s not a dumb group, and there are competencies that are relevant, and there is recognition that this IS a serious health issue.
So, there’s a middle ground somewhere we need to find. Shutting down society and bankrupting 30% of small business and destroying an entire young generation just as they start working is NOT that middle ground. But neither is “it’s just the flu.”
(I’m sitting in New Mexico. Very high Covid rates, and deaths. Everything is closed. Can’t hardly buy gas. But all government employees are still receiving full pay.)
Question: I am a lockdown sceptic but outside my bubble, are there people willingly rearraigning their lives when the state issues new edicts?
Who knows? Here in Missouri the state isn’t issuing any edicts.
But neither is “it’s just the flu.”
For people like my son (19 yrs) it definitely is not the flu because their chance of dying or getting sick from CoVid is considerably lower than the flu. This differential is (fortunately) even greater for young children.
But fortunately for him, there is no flu this year. It was vanquished by CoVid.
Steve D.
I am so cynical about the attribution of Covid to official statistics that a near absence of flu-related fatalities over the winter months would come as little surprise to me. It would beg the question of why I along with millions of others received my nhs flu jab a couple of months ago although questions like that usually don’t get asked.
Back to the topic. Just the 3 of us; me, my somewhat nervous brother and his wife. None of their kids or other family. FaceTime calls a-plenty including one to our 99 year old mother in her care home, soon it will be a year since we’ve seen her face to face. She’s tough though, viruses take one look and move on to something easier.
We are reducing Xmas gatherings a little, my mum and the wife’s parents are in their eighties. The only not particularly vulnerable person who is not coming for Xmas dinner is my brother.
Just over a month ago I took a 150 mile round trip to collect a piano that I had bought on Ebay. I passed matrix signs telling me that only essential journeys were allowed. I have commented elsewhere that such rules are unenforceable. Another commenter pointed out that there are now ANPR cameras everywhere checking on your tax and insurance. These could easily repurposed so that naughty travellers could be posted fixed penalty notices in no time.
On the question Perry asks, the answer appears to be ‘yes’ so far as the UK is concerned. The BBC has a page devoted to people who have decided to change their arrangements; the tone of the piece is of course thoroughly approving.
No, there’ll be no changes to our our Christmas plans – it’ll just be my wife and I as usual (we have no family nearer than 200 miles anyway).
But what has changed this year – not just for the festive period, but since March – is that we’re not patronising the hospitality sector. I simply refuse. Masks, ‘track & trace’ – no, I do not consent. Businesses need to understand that the wages of compliance with insane, illiberal government diktat is bankruptcy. They need to understand that until they ditch the BS they’ll see no more of my hard earned. And those local businesses that send me advertising are getting responses stating precisely that.
Our household views the pronouncements of Handcock, Valance and the rest of the “Lockdowners” with contempt. Sure, WuFlu is real enough, but overblown and overhyped for something which struggles to kill even the elderly. Reasonable measured precautions are being taken but the Diktat’s from London and Edinburgh are being firmly ignored.
Christmas will be the same as last year, a quiet affair focused upon family and friends. The only need for a headcount will be to make sure there is enough turkey to go around.
@ bobby b – I take it you are no longer in Watertown, SD? I was going to renew my offer, I’ll be driving through on Sunday evening. Never mind, glad you are well.
On the UV thing, I rather think there are two parallel mechanisms – the ability of UV light (ie sunlight) to kill the virus, and then the action of UV light (ie sunlight) in synthesizing vitamin D. I read some interesting research that seems to suggest that it’s not the end product (vitamin D) that boosts resistance to the disease, but rather the byproducts of the synthesis.
I just got back from Yuba City, CA, and it was brilliant sun every day – I took full advantage. I’m going to start wearing short-sleeve shirts at work, as the constant blue light from the fab shop will produce a suitable tan in no time.
Incidentally, I noticed in that part of CA that there was a lot of Irish democracy going on – people wearing masks into and out of stores and restaurants, but immediately removing them inside and ignoring the social-distancing nonsense. The more, the better.
Here in MI, our idiot governor continues to issue sweeping edicts that are being mostly-ignored. The only areas of compliance are now in the bar-and-restaurant business, which is being cowed into submission by threats to business and liquor licenses – another good reason to take that authority away from the state and restore it to local governments. But even there, quite a few business owners are deciding that it’s worth risking the wrath of the state to try and save their business, and enforcement is – variable. Me and mrs llamas actively look for restaurants that are open in defiance of the governor’s diktats. As far as track-and-trace goes, when we are even asked, I refuse to put anything on a common list – where others can see names and addresses. When offered a secure format, I provide an entirely-fictitious name, address and phone #. I figure I can do that, and give the state one-less reason to harass the business owner, while still confounding the attempt at a database state. I suspect that a great number of other do the same.
Christmas? Same plan as always. Glorious non-compliance with the Whitmer-fuhrer’s ukases. They can kiss my ass.
llater,
llamas
Ed Turnbull (December 18, 2020 at 9:55 am), the last group I would pick on is the hospitality sector. If you book a restaurant by phone, they know your number anyway. You only need masks to get too and from table. It is annoying, but you are victimising the wrong sector by not enjoying hospitality as usual.
If you can find a ‘speakeasy’ restaurant, I quite see you would patronise it in preference, but the civil servants will still get paid whether the restaurant near you goes broke or not.
That said, each to their own. I would avoid a restaurant that refused to accept my wearing a face-shield instead of a mask (since this whole thing started, just one once tried to, but retreated to ‘when you next visit’ – which I never did 🙂 ).
Guido’s opinion poll gives one answer.
Public opposes Christmas bubble law, yet plans to form Christmas bubbles. Only 39% support the relaxation (49% say they oppose) but 50% will be taking advantage of it as against 36% who (some for natural, not self-restraining reasons) will not be taking advantage of it.
If we think every answer to a pollster is uninfluenced by the question then I could not better Guido’s summary:
My own take is that what people say they will personally do is a better guide to their true thoughts than what they will virtue-signal when no action is involved. But one must remember the latter when considering what support any of us might get for whatever we might ever do.
” rearraigning”
There’s a freudian typo right there…
@Llamas
‘When offered a secure format, I provide an entirely-fictitious name, address and phone #.’
I read early on in the pandemic, a restaurant owner innocently declare that he hadn’t realised how many famous and historical figures were patronising his business.
I am spending Christmas at home in my London apartment with my dear wife; we have a friend over on Christmas Day and hope to see a few people over the days off, but taking it carefully. I am not going to see my 86-year-old Dad in Suffolk until he gets his vaccine, which should be pretty soon. The old fellow is in pretty good shape for a man his age (retired farmer) but he is being careful. I cannot see other family members for a short while.
It is annoying, but I have run out of energy debating or ruminating over the Kafkaesque situation in which we find ourselves. My view is that once vaccines are given to the most vulnerable, everyone else ought, as Perry said higher up, to get out and about and the entire apparatus of emergency powers must be pounded into dust, no ifs, no buts.
One of the big political rows that could brew this year will be any sense that the government is trying to retain these powers beyond “V-day”, as it were. I think there will be real anger then if Mr Johnson and his colleagues try and mess this about.
I hope everyone on this blog is in as good spirits as can be. This has got to be the strangest year I have ever lived through. In some ways my life has been pretty orderly and pleasant. I am so lucky to have a lovely wife and a network of friends whom I can still talk to. I am conscious of the fact that others are not so well placed.
Once this is all over, it will be vital to re-establish friendships and connections. And fuck “new normal” or whatever else comes out of Whitehall or Davos.
We had our choir party as usual last night, (10 households). Today we had our school staff party. On Christmas day we are meeting up at my brother’s and we will have over 20 around the table! Covid what covid? I live in London!
I will be sitting here staring at the wall – but then I did that last year.
As for the edicts of the government – the polite thing I can say is that the Opposition parties would be even more extreme.
Someone who has carefully read the government orders and adjusted their Christmas plans accordingly? I can not think of anyone Perry.
Oddly in spite of the vaccines (which were are constantly told are “safe and effective”) various governments are still pushing “lockdowns”, at some point the talk of Covid will be dropped and a “Climate Change Emergency” will be the new reason for the various orders and restrictions around the world.
Americans – enjoy yourself if you are in a Free State, what freedom you have (in those States that still have some freedom) comes to an end on January 20th 2020.
The world will be dominated by the People’s Republic of China and the Davos Crowd – what is left of Freedom of Speech (and-so-on) will be exterminated.
The celebration is not going to be in Davos in January – it is going to be at a lakeside resort in May.
There the Super Rich and the representatives of the Woke Corporations and Governments will celebrate their victory over ordinary people.
As has often been pointed out – the future will be a boot coming down to smash human faces.
“Forever?” – I would say NO.
I think their sick and depraved system will collapse – not at once, but eventually.
I will not see freedom again – but if you are young and strong you may well do so.
An optimistic note to end on.
Merry Christmas.
Llamas – dang, I would have said yes! But right now I’m at Quartzite, Arizona. I think we just trades parts of the country.
I’ll admit I’m mostly obeying these edicts. For now anyway.
@ bobby b – are you at the campground in Quartzite that mrs llamas has me looking at for a winter break? Is it any good? Have a PleasureWay class B, looking for good warm spots. But first, I have to make it to Cavalier and back.
llater,
llamas
I mean Devil’s Lake State Park, shoulda said.
llater,
llamas
Oh, and BTW, breakfast tomorrow at Star Coney Island in Howell, MI, open in open defiance of Sturmbannfuhrer Whitmer’s orders and doing lined-up-round-the-block business. I’ve a long drive ahead of me, I’ll be bunkering for the trip. Any of you deadbeats show up, it’s my treat.
llater,
llamas
Not sure. I mostly boondock in my C, and so I’m in the BLM landmass south of the town of Quartzsite. Not really a campground – no hookups or sites or . . . anything . . . but desert and mountains and (in January) maybe a million RV’ers (but it’s huge, and it works.) There are campgrounds all around, too. Out here, it’s all about how long you can make your tanks last.
https://freecampsites.net/#!829&query=sitedetails
llamas, I sent the wrong link above.
Should have been:
https://freecampsites.net/#!7657&query=sitedetails
I will be going to Christmas with around 60 of my extended family, 10 aged around 70-80 (dad and his five siblings and partners), around 30 aged 40 to 60 (my siblings and cousins and partners), and 20 aged 1-25 (my cousins’ kids).
I don’t expect any distancing or masks.
We of course can do this because we defeated COVID in April and have lived free since May 14, other than international travel.
There is an occasional leak from the border quarantine facilities. The last case resulting from one of those is now more than four weeks ago.
Oh well, I see that Boris has now gone full retard and cancelled Christmas in London and the South East.
All I want for Christmas is a no deal Brexit and for him to piss off in the new year, and for him to take Princess Nut Nuts and the Green New Deal with him. I can’t stand the sight of the man any more.
Yesterday I would have said people were quietly avoiding the regulations, while still taking measures to avoid catching Covid-19. But in the last few minutes I’ve heard from both our kids saying that they probably won’t be able to come to us for Christmas.
Führer Johnson and commissar Hancock, have decreed a tightening of the imperial decree*.
On a tragic note, a number of patients have died in a Turkish hospital.
Under the circumstances, I’m wondering if the nine unfortunates died with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19?
Definitely gagging for a dose of that!
I am aware of a rumour, from a source well-connected to the parliamentary Conservative party, that Mr Alexander Johnson intends to resign in the New Year.
That may well be true (his stated, but private, intention), but that intention may change. In any event, it occurred to me that this latest gesture of destroying Christmas is possibly one of spite from a spurned Messiah, who perhaps is baffled that letting Remoaner/Marxist scum who infest Public Health having complete control of the country doesn’t turn out well, the only other plausible explanation being that he is too dumb to see that he is being played by those scum who can scarcely believe their luck and keep pushing it, finding in the Prime Minister not so much resistance as a super-conductor.
And Mr Farage, you really should put a Bill of Attainder in your next manifesto, to sort out the State criminals of 2020.
And let’s restore the Commonwealth, and be done with the chocolate teapot of a Monarch, who is neither use in defending the citizens of this country from her government, nor ornament. If the Queen cannot stop this evil done in her name, she is no use and a burden, if she can stop it and has not, she is herself complicit in evil.
@Niall (December 18, 2020 at 1:50 pm) I would hardly characterise my refusal to patronise any hospitality, or indeed other ‘non-essential’, business as ‘picking on’ them. (I’ve postponed my planned new car purchase because my local dealer sent me a long condescending email describing how they would keep me ‘safe’. An assurance that their premises are free of snipers, IEDs and armed insurgents is all I ask of them in regard of my ‘safety’). The simple fact is this shitshow will end when sufficient people stop complying with the diktat, and that includes business owners. At present compliance is high because many fear enforcement action, but if a sufficient number refuse to comply enforcement becomes impossible. The end of this nightmare is within the gift of the people, but until they see that, and act accordingly, we’re stuck with it.
The system of ‘track & trace’ is not remotely comparable to booking a restaurant by phone, which you must surely realise. With a normal phone booking you’re not required, by state mandate, to give your name and address. Which can lead to some goon phoning you and telling you to quarantine – regardless of any symptoms – for two weeks, ten days, whatever the hell it currently is. Now, I could, of course, give false details but I prefer my defiance to be overt rather than covert. As for masks, all I’d say is read the SIs (and I’d recommend the legal analysis on the subject at laworfiction.com), you’ll see that the mask regs have loophole big enough to sail an aircraft carrier through – *anyone* can claim a legit exemption to having to cover their face. (However, here’s a weird thing: when challenged on being sans face nappy and I respond with a terse “Exempt!” I feel rather like Joss Ackland in ‘Lethal Weapon II’ sneering “Diplomatic immunity!”. But maybe that’s just me, others may experience a sort of “Molon labe!” moment. 😉 ).
You are right though: if I could find a local speakeasy I’d certainly be giving it much custom.
I tried the British “mainstream media” today.
Essentially everything is illegal – but the “Opposition”, and the msm, say it should be even more illegal.
The arguments presented in the media are essentially gibberish – not just about Covid, about everything.
Yes. Staying at home and avoiding the elders just to be safe.
Ed Turnbull (December 20, 2020 at 11:49 am), I have only ever had to give a phone number, not also my address, in any restaurant allowed to be open – thus rather like a phone booking.
– Track and trace largely fails at its official purpose for reasons explained in the article quoted from in a SQotD just above.
– Widespread track and trace does make it statistically easier for the authorities to track you, but in an individual case the difference is slight.
These things are bad, but the destruction of many small businesses seems to threaten the greater statistical harm to liberty to me. Lockdowns are not best protested by taking revenge on their chief victims, or by shifting more people out of independence into dependence on the state. Who among those who desire lockdowns regrets it when one more small restaurant goes bust?