Except that it’s already been demonstrated numerous times now that the stricter the rules and the harsher the penalties, the greater the drive for people to flee.
Hell, it’s the script of a million zombie movies, playing out exactly as expected.
In typical Brit fashion, they’re reinforcing the standard class issues, by which they tell all the peasants to stay put for the plague while the gentry hit the road and go to their countryside castles.
Rebels are we, born to be free, just like the fish in the sea
Just saying… NYC saw an exodus during strict lockdown, D.C. and surrounding areas didn’t see the same thing, because it was couched as advisories and asking people to do the right thing. And they largely achieved the goal, keeping rates lagging through the year, with people mostly complying.
All stick and no carrot doesn’t really help all that much.
OT but sorta related:
Bummer.
My hubby is obsessed about the numbers, I get long lectures at lunch and at dinner every damned day because we are both working from home. Yet, he has organized group hikes (“it’s okay, we’re outside”), has had meetings with a literature group in our garden while the weather was warm, then inside but with wide-open windows for ventilation after it got cooler. I have refused to participate in these social events because I want to keep the contact down as close to zero as possible. And he’s insisted on the cleaner – kept windows and doors cracked while here so ventilation, but hubby doesn’t seem to understand about surface contacts (his reaction “well, he was cleaning…!” is not sufficient for me).
Rant over. Now we wait for more info. 
That happened here too, in the beginning. People who lived in the NYC area told my sister there were richies getting out of the city and renting houses out in the burbs for like 50K a month.
Good luck! Sounds like it’s reasonable to be optimistic.
Keep us appraised. Here’s hoping neither of you have contracted it. I’m assuming the “he” who tested positive is your cleaning guy and not your husband.
Yes, we have a very lovely Nigerian guy, married to a German woman, who has started a very reliable cleaning service a number of years back and who now has a bunch of employees. We discovered him in the early days when he was pretty much a one-man show.
Prince Harry made the right choice.
And, the US response. This is impossible, it’s like the flu 2 and we’ll wish it away.
My mother nearly had hysterics while visiting me in the 60s to find that each sheet of the semi-waxed paper they called toilet paper in public loos had printed on it “property of HM the Queen”.
Prince Harry made the right choice.
[/quote]
For many, many reasons.
We just got an email from our guy’s wife. He’s asymptomatic, had gone to the hospital on the 17th (Thursday) because of a blood pressure issue. There they routinely tested him and he had a “light positive” which was followed up on Friday the 18th with a “definite positive”. The health authorities asked for contact information for the 15th and 16th (presumably because the first test was “iffy”) – we saw him on the 10th, so we are outside of the window of concern.
As the German authorities have been pretty conservative in their handling of the situation, and also because they now have 3/4 of a year of experience, I am reading this as we are okay. However, hubby is called our GP tomorrow (who is authorized to carry out covid testing) to see what they have to say, just as another level of reassurance.
But I won’t have a sleepless night now, whew. Thanks for the good wishes.
EU travel restrictions. What about US? Are we doing anything at all to keep out this variant? I’d guess we’re not, since it’s flowing in from Whitelandia
It only makes sense to restrict travel from areas that are doing substantially worse than you…
A Christmas Peril
The Old Less Effective Shot
Bleak House
Or: Hard Times
‘This Christmas was like no other, in those years around the sea town, except for the distant sound of vans and distant yawps of the voices on iphones. I sometimes hear before I sleep. I can never remember whether it was 6 carfuls of families fleeing COVID from London when I was 12, or 12 families spreading infection when I was 6.
All the Christmas families rolled towards the air b and b’s, like a virulant new strain heading for a refuge that was our town. I plunge my hand into the sanitizer and get whatever mask I can find…’
Nice parody of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.
We listen to Dylan recite that every Christmas Eve and it does not get stale.
