UKC

I noticed today on BBC news the Gove has said he trusts people's common sense, when it comes to wearing face masks. Must in the same way as they trusted peoples common sense when opening pubs etc. Is "trusting peoples common sense" the latest way of the government not making any decisions and then passing the buck if it all goes wrong?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53381000

He obviously doesn't live in Wrexham

Yes

The governments stance is ridiculous, Boris says they might have to get stricter on the use of face masks....like a parent warning children if they don't do the right thing. 

If they want people to wear them in shops just mandate it...

Agreed so many people I have spoken to have said that confusion over what is allowed/permitted since lockdown relaxed is creating additional confusion and anxiety. At least in lockdown most of us understood the rules, now we don't know what to do (or not so) for the best.

Nobody likes hard rules but actually it gives its a sense of purpose and a structure around which we can try to adapt to our 'new normal' life. 

https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/common-sense-is-not-so-common/

Yes I would think so. 

You only have to look at the care homes comment.  

Well for myself I would agree with leaving it to my common sense but for the rest of you.... 

Al

Is it possible that, deliberately managed, chaos and confusion serves those in power? 

It's quite simple, when posed with a conundrum ask yourself what would Cummings do in this situation?

And then do the exact opposite.

I would think mandating face coverings in shops  would ultimately get more people out shopping and get the money flowing again. 

They never gave up on herd immunity.   Most of them have already caught it anyway so they aren't scared of it any more. 

The more evil of them like Cummings and Gove probably figure that politically it is better for them if there is a second wave and it spreads to countries which have had a successful lockdown because then they can argue they were right all along, it wasn't stoppable and everyone was going to catch it anyway.

Bollox, you won't find a much bigger critic of this government than me but this has absolutely nothing to do with herd immunity...and if you think it is better for them if we have a second wave you are so far down the anti-westminster rabbit hole I suspect you'll never see daylight again. 

These would be the same people who voted for Brexit and Boris?

They may have to rethink that...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/immunity-to-covid-19-could-be...

He is correct, though.

He means this 'common sense'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-52754039

The bloke is an utter tool.

How do you achieve herd immunity by just a few thousand of the population getting infected every week?....and his comments about a 2nd wave are laughable

He's talking through his anti-westminster prism which warps his views and throws objectivity out of the window...

It is a virus which will grow exponentially given a chance.  A few thousand a week is not good.

Some of the other statements like having a crash program to get people to lose weight because they think there is a second wave coming in the Autumn/Winter also show their thinking.

They've decided that lock down is over.  They have decided that savings and investments will be protected, rent and interest will be collected and that businesses which depend on revenue will be allowed to fail - looking after the bankers and landowners same as usual. 

They aren't going to lock down again and their 'back to normal' policies are bound to lead to more cases because nothing else has changed.  We don't have a cure and it is just as infectious as it ever was.  We can see what is happening in the US, that's where we are headed - Scotland as well as England because without the powers of a nation it will be near impossible to protect ourselves from a much larger neighbour with high infection rates.

And every time I think I might be overstating things the current set of Tories go and do something even crazier.  

Why ? He is correct to point out that a second wave across Europe would be politically beneficial to the tories. Moreover if would drown out the disaster that a no-deal brexit will bring.

I don't know about Wrexham but he does live somewhere that doesn't have the usual share of wazzacks, numpties and people who generally couldn't give a **** about anyone other than themselves.

Dave

Mask wearing is sociologically fascinating as the uptake seems to be shaped in large part by cultural and political attitudes.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/07/09/1594305988000/Why-are-we-not-wearing...

https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c7...

A 2nd wave in the UK will not be beneficial to the Tories....this is utter nonsense.

Not when you lose all objectively when looking at anything involving them....

You don’t get herd immunity through infection, full stop.  That’s been a reasonable outcome since day 1, but I’m not convinced everyone in government understood that until much more recently.  

But... that “few thousand a week” is the detected fraction of total infections which will be larger by some fraction (less than if used to be, but still > 1).  This persistent rump of infection isn’t decaying fast enough to be gone by autumn/winter, when other coronaviruses and respiratory infections have their peak season.
 

There’s been no shortage of people here and elsewhere ready to use a “2nd wave” as “evidence” to support their weak positions re: lockdown.

To be fair it’s hard to keep much objectivity on the current government.  Until about 8-10 weeks ago their actions looked compatible with a botched attempt to get herd immunity through infection, badly implemented by an incompetent government who didn’t understand the science.  Now it just looks like they don’t really care who dies, especially if they can blame them for being fat etc, and it took a long time for them to figure out how to keep the wheels on society and the NHS as this happens.  If I’m right we’ll see 3 months of “othering” of the many who could die this winter.  As usual I hope I’m wrong. 

Herd immunity has been off the table from the 16th March, there is more than enough to criticise this government for without chucking in nonsense about them pursuing this policy now...

Your point on obesity is equally daft....

The issue is “what is a shop?”. In law a shop has a very loose definition. So it’s very difficult to police, enforce etc. 
 

There is a law already that you must wear a face covering if you cannot be 2m from someone. 
 

Maybe they should just be re-iterating that (which seems to be the line both Gove and Boris are following), Most people seem to have completely forgotten that. Hence the confusion and the illusion they’re saying different things. 

Objectively why has England got daily deaths fifty times higher than Wales, Scotland and NI combined with only five times the population?

Is there something the three devolved governments getting right that Westminster is uniquely getting wrong?

Why is England failing to keep up?

We're both estimating what was in other people's minds based on imperfect data, so at best you think it has been off the table since then.  I think some people in cabinet didn't abandon the idea for another month.  We're both spitballing here.  Mind-march was an emergency stop because they'd got things so badly wrong and we were days away from locking in enough cases to eventually overwhelmed the NHS.  It was then followed by one of the softest lockdowns of affected, developed nations, that took far longer to lower infection numbers than many comparable countries.  Almost as if there wasn't initially an intent to eliminate cases for some reason.

For sure, and I haven't accused them of pursuing this policy now.

Is it?  It seems they've spun the Cummings three-word-generator and it has come out with "War on Obesity".  https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/11/no-10-plans-weight-loss-dri...

The idea that obesity can be reduced enough to mitigate a second wave in the next three months in a way that preserves the health of the people slimming down is at best far fetched.  It's obviously a good step but I've no shortage of cynicism about where this is going.  We've had a couple of instances with posters on here who follow the party line closely effectively blaming obesity over the last few months. I think that will continue.  

Sometimes. Sometimes it does so by accident.

In this instance it's just the blundering of a government hollowed out by brexit's idiocy lacking the intellectual and moral strength to properly handle the situation we find ourselves in. We're the scapegoat.

jk

None of that is relevant to the point being discussed....

It is when you are accusing somebody of lacking objectivity about Westminster.

Objectively, is England acting as drag on UK progress with tackling covid19?

If so, why?

I am accusing them on the basis of the fact they think the Tories are pursuing herd immunity and that a second wave would benefit them.....this is utter nonsense.

I think you're right about the current 'thinking' but that they're underestimating the public reaction (in economic engagement and anti-government sentiment) to living with a deadly epidemic. I suspect as the public mood sours with the turning weather and with Christmas party spreader season looming they'll bottle it. Britain's position looks to be becoming increasingly exceptional (in a bad way obvs) as our peers reduce the prevalence, death rate and as their economies get back up onto their knees the prospect of a totally out of control outbreak crippling the country in new year just as their bungled brexit bites must be worrying even the dimmer ministers despite their majority and distance from the electorate.

I'm still clinging to the hope the few remaining adults in Westminster face up to their responsibilities and bring this to heel in Autumn since it's still just about in their interest and ability to do so.

jk

To be honest if you look at excess deaths England is still the worst but not by multiples. Best is NI, second Wales and close behind England comes Scotland. 

Of course that could change given people still dying in England, the possibility of a second wave etc...

Edit.

The numbers reported in England at present are actually cases spread over weeks so the headline Jim era must be handled with care. Some excellent analysis of the data in this conversation which also clearly illustrates the correlation between housing density and Vivid deaths. Looking at Edinburgh, I can also see that deaths tend to cluster in the poorer parts of the city.

https://twitter.com/__ambell/status/1282601456663760896?s=19

Really interesting point, which I hadn’t even considered. 

I don't know the ranking for total excess deaths but I agree it's not a multiple (taking into account populations).

That's the issue. England does not seem to be keeping up with Wales, Scotland & NI for reducing Covid deaths now. Again taking into account populations.

That's probably true worldwide and useful information for targeting public health policies but doesn't explain why the public health policies in England are working less well.

It would drown the total disaster that will be a no-deal brexit into a bigger disaster they can blame on bad luck.

It also means they can pass through all sorts of authoritarian legislation without anybody protesting and use the exceptional powers they’ve been handed over for much longer.

Objectively, they are the most abject, destructive, anti-democratic, authoritarian government this country had for a century, if not longer.

What we are seeing quite clearly is that they are using coronavirus to concentrate power and authority in number ten. It also allows them to ditch all budgetary constraints and fiscal prudence and use these funds to satisfy political and private interests at will.

This is an old article, but I don’t believe much has changed, other than it’s probably got worse. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30255084

Lots of HOMO, lots of people travelling to work together, etc etc. 

Yes. The media will have you believe it’s a simple problem and solved easily by passing a law. Then the next week they’ll publish a headline about new draconian laws making people wear masks in their own homes. 
 

There is no confusion, other than that introduced by the media for their own ends. 

Thanks for confirming my point...

It doesn't explain why Westminster is failing to keep up on Covid suppression  with the devolved governments.

Media confusion rather than cabinet confusion? Did you not spot the different Gove Vs Johnston messages?

Same media but little confusion in Scotland where mask wearing went from 20% or less to 95% or more on Friday.

Any time I see an appeal to common sense the alarm bells ring. It's a logical fallacy. 

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Common-Sense

Yes, my suspicion is that lockdown in England ended too soon. Probably due to concerns over the economy. Wales, Scotland and NI contribute a fraction of the amount England does so could continue lockdown for a little longer.

I understand that details matter, but come on this is stretching things if it's a rationale for cumborigove to be avoiding mandating masks in shops...

"A shop? What is it?"

"It's an enclosed building with things to buy and other people inside, but that's not important right now. And stop calling me Shirley."

“A face covering must be worn by all people using a shop, which is any indoor establishment which offers goods or services for sale or hire, when the shop is open. 

You do not need to wear a face covering in hospitality premises such as cafes, coffee shops, restaurants or pubs. Or in money services businesses such as banks and building societies.

It is strongly recommended that staff wear face coverings even when 2m physical distancing is applied. However, there is an exemption for staff where 2m physical distancing or Perspex screens are in place.”

So customers have to wear masks, but the shop staff don’t? 
 

And she said they don’t want to be enforcing it and are hoping people will follow the rules. 
 

How is that any different to England. Other than they’ve passed a law. Certain people on this forum would be looking to drive a bus through that statement if it was made by Boris. 

See above. The Scots managed to say exactly the same thing with one person. But somehow they’re correct? Hey ho. 

Passing the law is the necessary and sufficient difference. Passing the law is the message. It is mostly a message as enforcement is rarely required.

If incidence of the virus has been reduced quicker then definitely correct.

Can you explain how people who are exempted from this law will be able to prove they are exempt.
 

Already people on public transport are pointing fingers at people not wearing face coverings. Are you happy to introduce a law that differentiates people like this? 

Why would people have to wear face coverings in wide open shopping centres or in garden centres, markets etc. 

Considerkng the risk of catching the disease in these environments is now vanishingly small. 

No sure, but people in 75 or 100 countries where masks are mandatory in varying circumstances are managing it.

The FM has specifically mentioned policing should be by the police and not the general public. Has the PM done that?

Indoor shopping centres lack the very rapid dilution of a modest outdoor breeze.

Garden centres usually have greenhouses and an indoor bit selling seeds, tools, books, chemicals etc lacking the very rapid dilution of a modest outdoor breeze.

Outdoor markets - I suspect businesses are encouraging mask usage to make customers feel safer. I don't think it's a legal requirement. Good idea though as avoids coughing over produce.

Unless we manage R the non-zero number of cases will grow as it did in March.

This is England you’re talking about. Everyone thinks they’re a policeman.
 

Actually, everyone thinks they’re a prime minister. 

Yep. But managing the R with a measured and targeted response is better than OTT measures. We will have arguments in shops, people demanding to be admitted because they have asthma, and people demanding other people are thrown out for not following the rules. 
 

We will see, I suspect the government will bow to pressure from the public regardless of the actual scientific measured risk. They’ve done too good a job of scaring a good proportion of the people stupid. 

Yes but it didn't.

The point is that wearing a mask allows people to get closer and to mingle in confined spaces with less risk of infection. That's how you can open shops without starting a second wave, hopefully. It will have an effect on the next few months not what happened in the past.

Wearing masks allows us to get some normality back into our lives, probably, maybe.

Funny how so many* countries including Scotland (early days) are generally coping with masks.

*75 or more?

Cue pantomime response - "Oh yes it did!" (reduce virus quicker)

Scotland - 9 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 per day (7 day average, 7th-13th July)

England - 500 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 per day (rolling average, 9th July)

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-trends-in-daily-data...
see spreadsheet "Trends in daily COVID-19 data: 13 July 2020"

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
see figure labelled "Daily number of lab-confirmed cases in England by specimen date"

Fewer infections, better economy - get on with it!

When did face coverings become mandatory in Scotland. Was it a long time before 7th July?

I'm fairly sure I'm an explorer and ninja cat gangster.

The drag that England represents to the UK's Covid response predates masks in Scotland.

My point was that face masks aren't the reason why cases in Scotland are lower than they are in England.

And my point is that the policy* in Holyrood is definitely "correct" compared with Westmister's.

I think the same is true for Stormont and the Senedd. 

*judged by reduction in Covid cases as evidence of competence or correctness

Well in that they all came out of lockdown slower, yes.

Seems July 24th is the date.

My common sense tells me that compulsory face masks are being introduced for almost entirely economic reasons.

Everyone will have to get a mask and wear it. Then they can open theatres, have fans at footie matches, singing in church, and so on. The mask will keep you safe. Shop, go to work, go on holiday; spend spend spend.

Pubs and restaurants are admittedly something of a difficulty, in terms of consistent messaging. But it's all good, and we're keeping you safe. Whack a mole.

Good. Economic benefits as well as health benefits.

Well it’s simple, before they passed the law, masks were worn by only a few people in shops, on the day it came in force it was pretty much everyone wearing them.

That’s not what I asked. I’ll try and simplify it. 
 

Scotland: One leader says, everyone must wear a mask, we will clamp down but we’re expecting you to use your sense and we hope we won’t have to. 
 

England. One leader says everyone should wear a mask, we will be clamping down if you don’t. Another member of the cabinet adds we’re expecting you to use your sense and we hope we won’t have to. 
 

The Scottish leader is a saviour. The English leaders have got it all wrong. They’re all saying the exact same thing. 
 

As I say, some people are just looking for excuses to bash the government. 

It’s a good excuse, and they thoroughly deserve a bashing.

Simplification rarely helps to characterise things accurately.

The English leaders, as of their latest utterances on Monday, are not all saying the same thing because they're not agreed on whether it's appropriate to mandate. But, the context is more important - they've vacillated on the issue for months and hardly ever worn masks themselves despite regularly being in situations where it would be appropriate to do so. They've generally given the impression that masks aren't that important and, as with so many issues, are only about to do the sensible thing when they look hopelessly out of step. While there are a handful of issues on which they're only too happy to lead, as a cabal faced with an unprecedented situation where they have less control than they would like they have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of leading (the key word here), effectively. And that is being seen in comparison with many other national leaders; only comparisons with Trump and Bolsonaro do them any favours on Covid.

Looks like its gonna be compulsory now. Im glad that i get all my shopping online.

Having to where something  that covers my face  in the summer  seem like hell but yet they let people get drunk and mix really close and dont do anything to stop it. 

Just about done with  this government  and year now. Have the priorities all wrong

wearing a mask in a shop seems like hell......lol!

 May have been a tad ott in that  reply.  Just had enough of all this stuff now

Sorry ill edit my comment  But anyway. I wont be going to any shop while that rules  is in as i dont agree it with it. 

And dont see why I should  be doing the rules when they dont care/stopping piss heads breaking the rules. 

 Goverment are being a massive bunch of hypocrites with stuff like that.

  But ill go away now  indont want to offend anyone  Or start a row.

You don’t need it to be mandatory to insist people do it. There’s already a rule. 
 

The problem is, if you don’t mandate it in all shops, people will go to larger shops where a mask isn’t necessary. 
 

It’s nothing to do with public health, it’s all about the economy. 
 

If people are wearing face coverings in shops they will be constantly adjusting them and spreading their virus into the products when they touch things. 
 

It’s a nonsense as the incidence is something like 0.6 in 1,000 now and a large number of those people will be isolating due to contact tracing. 
 

Stay 2m apart, or wear a face covering and wash your hands. It’s remarkably simple. 
 

If people are wearing face coverings in shops they will be constantly adjusting them and spreading their virus into the products when they touch things. 

So true... see the people that wear them are alway fiddling with them.

Use of facemasks seems to be common in countries that have successfully suppressed COVID19 - they appear to offer some protection, and serve as a reminder of what to do.  Things don't have to be 100% effective to be rolled out, and I see the usual 'what if ery' starting to appear    .  The UK government looks bad from abroad as yet again it's confused and reactive in it's messaging and policy

We were in a queue to get into a shop the other day, only one person was wearing a mask, and my wife counted he touched his face to re-arrange the mask 6 times in the 2 or 3 minutes we were waiting to get into the shop...

Personally, its online shopping for me now unless absolutely necessary. I am not so much against putting a mask on myself, more there is nothing remotely pleasurable about being surrounding by people hiding their faces, constantly reminding you of the pandemic in the most visually invasive way possible (when all I really want to do is forget about it....)

I don’t understand what is so bad about wearing a mask. I’ve been wearing one in shops since March.

The only problem I had was a couple of guys coughing at my face on purpose and laughing at me upon seeing the mask , as, apparently, wearing a mask to be respectful of others is something to be riled at for some.

I don’t get it.

Call me negative.  Which  am this whole thing has given my one massive mental issuse and taken me to some very very   dark places. 

But   i dont think they will ever be a "cure".  It  just turn into another  winter flu  which kill many 1000s  a year too we just deal with. 

There are some things i dont understand. Swine flu killed like  500000 people but the goverment never step it has with this abd tha was. But then i dont think it came  to the uk.

Let alone the exact thing could happen next year. Plus the how messed up the world is gonna be after..

So fair play ro those being so positive  about everything  i dont know how you can do it. 

Obviously  condolences  to anyone on here that may have lost someone recently.

At the moment I think that's the most important single thing about masks - you can't have a better reminder of the urgent need to keep a distance and monitor your own behaviour in relation to others. Granted, reminders on face touching and handwashing are critical too, but nothing says 'new normal' better than normalised mask wearing.

I guess we'll see how things go over the next few weeks / months / years, but better to direct more behavioural change now IMHO.

How you didnt deck them i dont know but im very protective  about my personal  space  and was before this whole thing.

But then  there people  that wesr masks and gloves currently. Then come so close to you because they have them. 

It’s a possibility that there is no solution for a while, decades even. I don’t think many people want to acknowledge this possibility but it’s a very real one.

The problem is that it is a far more serious illness than the flu.

What we have to do is adapt, instead of hoping for a miracle. Things like masks are a small part of the changes we can make. We have to get used to this I’m afraid.

We all agree that it sucks balls, for sure, but that’s the shit shower we’ve been given now let’s try to make it work...

If they are going to announce making this mandatory today (which I don't mind) they really really have to clearly explain the procedure for doing it...and clearly explaining anything is something No. 10 seem utterly disinterested in doing. 

EG: "Put on mask, clean/gel hands, enter shop, do not touch face/nose/fiddle with mask while in shop, leave shop, clean hands, remove mask"

And if this message (or one similar) is not drummed home repeatedly then the benefits will be undone. Some people still think spitting in the street is okay or leaving their shit all over the park, the same people that probably think the virus wont get them because they're "hard" and they aint gonna wear some stupid mask (and if they do they'll probably dump it on the street when they leave the shop). 

For this to work the messaging must be clear and unambiguous. Perhaps for the first time ever.

I agree up to a point but, as we've seen only too clearly in recent months (as if we didn't need reminding), there are plenty of people that do stupid / unhelpful / antagonistic things all the time. That's not really the point right now though - it's about establishing new social norms. There are always people that buck social norms (and that's often a good thing), but social change is effected in lots of ways including, perhaps surprisingly (and I'm not being sarcastic), by changes in government policy.

The main thing is what most people do, not everyone. Once most people have got used to masks, and with regular reminders about the other crucial measures (and ALL shops I've seen have got sanitiser positioned so you appear anti-social if you don't use it), I think most of us will stop touching / adjusting etc. pretty quickly. It's all about social pressure.

I think you’re taking it a bit too far there. The object of wearing a face covering is IF someone has it they don’t produce the droplets. 
 

It’s down to other people not to be sticking their fingers in their mouths after picking things up. 
 

What we have to remember is there are less than 2 infections per 10,000 people a day at the moment. And those infections are not isolated incidents, they’re happening in factories and (pubs?). You are highly unlikely to pick it up walking past someone in a shop.

It’s all smoke and mirrors and pandering to people and the press. If people feel better that others are wearing face coverings then that’s job done, if they don’t, then it’s counterproductive. People, en masse, aren’t very good and judging things, that’s why we have speeding laws. A
 

I still believe the science is; while infections are high and there’s lots of random people wandering around with it, face coverings are worse or ineffective. As the incidence reduces then face coverings will limit the spread even further IF you are close to someone, otherwise they’re just a massive exercise in reassurance. 
 

Yes hand sanitisers are at the shop entrances are key, absolutely as is peer pressure but I still believe the messaging (especially at the beginning) must be hammered home (and I'll be amazed if it is). People constantly touch their faces and use their phones (a germ platter if ever there was one) in the supermarket now which is probably just as bad as fiddling with a mask. This new way, whether we like to or not, is so alien to people (especially the swathes that won't want to do it) that they (govt) can't just say "use a mask" and leave it at that. There has to be more or the masks won't be effective. 

I do agree - I guess they've given themselves a week to sort the messaging out. Stay alert.

It’s almost gone, apart from a few outbreaks. As long as we stay alert I’m pretty sure it’ll stay at numbers well below flu. You can’t have a virus like this circulating. Flu doesn’t actually ‘kill’ that many people. They don’t keep flu death figures, only figures for outbreaks that affect care homes etc. People who are old and infirm will die but this virus is killing people who would have lived for years and survived flu or at least been vaccinated against it. 
 

I’m pretty sure it won’t be in wide circulation again and kill ‘thousands’ a year. 

My point is, if the rumours are true, that they are doing this whether we like it or not. So the science in the short term is now irrelevant. So for face coverings to not make things worse there needs to be some messaging. I recently worked in an environment where face coverings where compulsory (not a medical situation) and watched the security guard pull down his mask in order to cough into his hand, he then pulled his mask back up as someone approached the gate. He then handled their pass with his cough covered hand. Some people just don't get it. 

I sincerely hope you're right there!  

I don’t see a problem with that. It’s now down to the person who took the pass not to stick their fingers in their mouths. It’s a one on one situation. It’s not a crowded tube train with a hundred people all breathing in each other’s droplets. It’s not an office with 10 people in it. And remember even at the beginning we had tube trains and offices full of people and R was still only 3. 

The chances of the security guard being infected is minimal. The person taking the pass will now be wearing a mask. 
 

The aim of the mask is to stop droplets from spraying out and being breathed in. The whole objective is to keep R down. 
 

11 people died yesterday and excess deaths are now negative. If they continue to go even further negative, people are going to ask some serious questions over how many fit and healthy people the virus has actually killed. The 3 people I know who have died were not healthy individuals. It is killing healthy individuals but not 50,000 of them. 
 

 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

I think the world has learned its lesson. California shut down today as cases rise. 
 

We now have testing and we have a public who are taking it seriously. We didn’t have that in March and we were possibly the 2nd or 3rd major country to have an outbreak. When people ask why we had it so bad compared to everyone else, I think we can safely say we were the test case and everyone saw what was happening here.

Usa have make it way way worse they are hitting 2nd peak for sure? 

I wasnr taking it seriously for a very a while  i was still going in the office dispute  having laptop and that.  

Still hasnt stopped  he goinf some dark dark places during lockdown.

For now I don’t see any reason to think that wouldn’t be the case. There is still no vaccine or fully effective treatment, there is still most of the population suceptible, nothing has changed except the implementation of social distancing. Relax that and I don’t see why it wouldn’t start all over again.

They are still in the first peak...

They haven’t had their first peak if you look at it as a whole. It’s a big country. Each state will have its own peak. 

It’s not being relaxed is it? 

It’s still 2m without face covering.

Like in the pubs?.....I think you have more faith in the public than I do. 

How much time do the general public spend in pubs? From my understanding pubs are being closed at an alarming rate because no one is going there. 
 

I can go to my local any night of the week and stand 2m from everyone. Friday and Saturday if there is something on it’ll be busy. 
 

But couple that with outbreaks being localised, I’m fairly sure an outbreak in Leicester isn’t going to affect anyone in my village pub. You don’t just mysteriously catch it. 

Except all those European countries that took mitigation measures long before the UK did, countries that on the who have done better or much better than us. I remember discussing with colleagues in the staff room when Ireland closed it schools (a bit of time after some other European countries) that surely the UK would close it schools too. It just seemed so clear that it should be tried as a signal to the rest of society if nothing else, but I think it was about a week and half before UK schools closed.

History teaches us that common sense is very unreliable. It often leads to lowest common denominator outcomes and popular rather than sensible choices, e.g., populism, referendum politics with lousy outcomes, persecution of minorities etc etc.

and likewise you can't apply the experience of a village local to that of pubs in cities.

Pardon? Do you not see any news?  The UK was a long way behind Spin, Italy, China the US and a lot of other European countries.  One of the questions the UK gov needs to answer is why they didn't heed the lessons from countries that were some weeks, even months ahead of them.

I'm sorry to be rude but you're rewriting history to fit your purpose

You can’t, but you can shut down a city quite easily if there is an outbreak. And we know that people will start showing symptoms about 3 days and pubs are supposed to be operating pre-emptive tracing by having a booking system. 
 

You can’t have a booking system in shops. 
 

Let’s look at this rationally please. Different situations have different measures in place. 

The virus already got here from Wuhan. The virus can get to your village pub from anywhere in the world.

The only thing preventing the virus getting to your village pub is people thinking "it can get here" and taking precautions.

Yes, but you cannot state that everything is fine because everyone is two metres apart based on a little bubble of village life. I live in the city, I can see the public spaces, the beer gardens, the insides of pubs, restaurants and the street side tables and can categorically tell you that people are not two metres apart. 

I’m in central London now. It’s like a ghost town. Some people are in pubs and close together. It’s unlikely they’ll catch anything due to the low prevalence. If they do, they’ll be tracked and traced and will isolate. 
 

Multi factor approach to different situations. 

Absolutely. Precautions that weren’t being taken in December-March while the virus was quietly spreading around. 
 

We now are taking precautions both pro-active and reactive. 
 

If you allow every pub outbreak to grow to a thousand cases like it did in Leicester we're doomed. Thankfully I think some lessons have been learned from Leicester so local authorities & NHS are getting timely information from track & trace.

Time will tell if track & trace is working but Leicester destroyed confidence that a pub outbreak would even be noticed.

I think on the flip side I think there are people who do not understand that a large part of the population would prefer living "normally" with a slim risk of dying of coronavirus than spending the rest of their days skulking around at 2m radius or wearing face masks. 1 in 2 people will get cancer (that may well kill them) yet very few people are prepared to make lifestyle adjustments to mitigate the risk. CV is just another thing (on an already long list of things) that can kill you, and not particularly near the top of that list either.

There are other things going on in Leicester that made the outbreak more serious.

1 in 2 people will be affected by cancer. Not 1 in 2 will get it. 

That might have been a weakness of using a centralised Serco system in England rather than long established local NHS & local authority contact tracing as is done in most countries & elsewhere in UK, mostly with greater success.

We've come down from daily cases of around 5000 and daily deaths of 940, to cases around 500 and deaths in the teens and twenties without masks. 

Figures the day before announcement of mandatory masks were 530 cases and 11 deaths. So how low do we have to drop before this mandatory requirement is lifted? The hygiene and other precautions have sufficed for me while working through the 'peak' so why now do I need masks with dubious results? I'm concerned that having a bit of material held to my face will be more likely to transmit the virus to me than what has evidently worked for me to date.

Actually unsure whether I'm willing to comply.

A mask made little sense before because people weren’t out and about, if they were they kept their distance. 

Now they’re out and about with less chance of keeping their distance the chance of infection will increase. So wearing a mask makes sense to help keep that risk down. 

If you’re worried you’ll catch the virus from your mask remove it so you can fold it inside out and wash it straight away.

That’s assuming a mask actually does make any difference. 

This is a good point, I think people would be more likely to be enthusiastic with this sort of thing (face masks) if a firm end date or more likely end-condition was specified where the law is removed (e.g. daily cases below X), then people might be in a mindset of helping a known goal rather thinking it is a freedom being removed in the long run.

So when would you say they are likely to lift the mandatory requirement? 0 cases 0 deaths daily?

Also people never stopped going to supermarkets at any point during lockdown. So where's the logic in making them mandatory there? If it was just small shops I wouldn't have a problem to be honest.

No idea, good question though. Maybe we’ll just need to adapt, and wearing them becomes a way of life?

Again, I presume the logic is all about numbers. Supermarkets were empty a few weeks ago. Much busier now. Bear in mind supermarkets use air conditioning, which carries potential additional risks.

11 deaths was a Monday (yesterday) and it was 148 deaths on Friday

Latest 7 day rolling average is 85 deaths per day

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Germany peaked at about 250 deaths per day and it's now down to about 5 per day - reduced by a factor of 50.

You mention UK peaked at about 940 per day and it's now down to 85 per day - reduced by a factor of 11.

We're recovering slower than we should be.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/

I mean population behaviours at the community level. 

Is that not the sort of think locals in Leicester know about?

Contact tracing is only any good if you can contact people who want to be contacted. 

Again it’s about defining ‘shops’ and at what point does a supermarket become crowded? At the moment all the shops have queues outside and can only serve a few customers at a time and everyone has to queue 2m apart. 
Add masks and everyone can just bundle in, grab what they want and queue. The checkout staff are then reasonably protected. 
As people start going back to work and popping out at lunchtime it’s going to get a whole lot busier. 

It’ll be fine though. We can rely on people using ‘common sense’? Not sure whether to laugh or cry......

As long as a proportion do it’s not a problem. It’s essentially herd immunity but using masks. Not everyone needs to wear one all the time but if enough do it makes transmission extremely hard or unlikely. 
 

Remember if it takes 14 days to get rid of the virus, there are 500 new cases today, cases are reducing by about 40% a week. In 2 weeks time there will be about 7,000 people in the whole country with it. A good proportion will be self isolating or in hospital.

Self isolating or in hospital doesn't matter (so much). They spread the disease before they felt ill. Hence for masks to be effective they need to be worn by people who feel healthy.  

Recent news reports have been that half or most of the transmission is "silent transmission" by infected people who are presymptomatic or will remain asymptomatic.

"We found that the majority of incidences may be attributable to silent transmission from a combination of the presymptomatic stage and asymptomatic infections."

"Our results indicate that symptom-based isolation must be supplemented by rapid contact tracing and testing that identifies asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases, in order to safely lift current restrictions and minimize the risk of resurgence."

Quotes from URL below.

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/02/2008373117

Actually, I was being sarcastic. Common sense doesn’t exist, it isn’t a ‘thing’. It can’t be measured, calculated or defined in any way. It’s a cop out when people don’t know what it is they want from others. Much easier to say “oh just use common sense”.

Hence my despair.

That’s not the point at all.

If 7000 are infected, let’s say 1500 were infected in the last 3 days. Then that’s only 1500 out of 62m people walking around infected and able to infect others. If a very conservative 60% of them and us wear masks that leaves 600 people trying to infect the whole country. 
 

I suspect 60% will be closer to 90% which would theoretically be 150 people left roaming around trying to infect people. Which matches the R of 3. 
 

See what I’m saying?
 

It’s not like back in March where those 1500 people would have been wandering around none of them wearing masks and spreading it everywhere while people were hugging each other, shaking hands and sharing drinks. 

This 'new way of life' mentality is not something I have or can get behind. Every time I hear that phrase or others like it I internally cringe. If you are going to mandate I wear a mask every time I enter a public space for the rest of my life you better damn well present a very thorough study/inquiry and allow for a public vote for approval. We are not under martial law so should not be blindly accepting these decisions.

Supermarkets were not empty a few weeks ago, it's the one place everyone, bar the extremely vulnerable, has continued to visit this entire time. I was queuing for entry and checkout weeks ago and I'm not doing that anymore.  Supermarkets have used air conditioning throughout and have not been considered a transmission hot-spot to my knowledge, so why now this retroactive explanation?

Also seems that you won't need a face covering in a pub or restaurant. I get that you have to eat/drink but sitting across from people in a less well ventilated and more enclosed space than supermarket, for way longer periods of time, is more of a risk. I'm calling shenanigans, I cannot find any consistent logic for decisions being made.

That’s by day of reporting not by day of death.  You may have missed this but there has for the last few months been additional reporting delays over weekend deaths and the actual number is much higher.  

Closer to 150 people probably died yesterday which suggests around 15,000 people per day were being infected a few weeks ago.  

That means we are currently 5-6 doublings away from NHS meltdown, and it appears R is currently about 1.  Restrictions are being eased and autumn is coming.  Now is not the time to be chucking out dismissive statements that are - for whatever reason - wrong by more than an order of magnitude about the scale of the problem.

All fair points. No disagreement there. I’m just saying you may need to at some point. We blindly accept all sorts of rules created a long time ago, and only question them when new info comes along and the status quo is challenged. Maybe we’re at such a point.

You already have the answer, numbers and risk. You must live somewhere very different from me.  Yes, I was queuing outside shops but the numbers of people a few weeks ago were significantly lower in any of the supermarkets I visited than they are now. 

There may be no logic, but I would suggest the answer is fairly obvious as to why that’s the case.

You are of course missing all the people who  have recovered and that the infections are reducing by around 40% a week. The R is not close to 1. It is close to 1 in some areas. In some areas there is no virus.The 7 day rolling average for new cases is 1500. 

Mostly people don’t use logic, they use emotion to make decisions when they’re under pressure.

If someone does something that doesn’t appear logical to you, then you are missing something. 

I don’t know what context you have here - you haven't explained it and damned if I can figure it out from your message.  Regardless, doesn’t excuse you being wrong by 10x to 15x in your count of daily deaths.  

What is your source for this?  It is in direct contraction to the PHE data, the Worldometer data and the most recent ONS survey.  For example, to quote the ONS survey [1] [...] then analysing data for the five most recent non-overlapping 14-day periods (Figure 1), these estimates suggest the percentage testing positive has decreased over time since 27 April, and this downward trend appears to have now levelled off.

That part in bold means R is about 1

See above.   See also the Worldometer 7-day rolling average of detected cases below - also level.  You'll find much the same in the PHE weekly Surveillance Report.

R is about one right now on a national level.  Sure - there are some localised outbreaks but they're not the only reason R is not much less than 1 on a national scale.  Quite literally, the numbers don't add up.

I have no idea what you’ve looking at on worldometer. The one I’m looking at for the U.K. clearly says 7 day rolling average 500 cases for July 11th. And 85 deaths. 
 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

The thing about exponential decay is it never gets to zero. The longer it goes on the flatter it gets  

I even put a screenshot on.  To go along with my point that there is absolutely no support in the Worldometer, PHE or ONS data that  the infections are reducing by around 40% a week

Detected cases.  If we have ~ 100 people a day dying, that implies ~10,000 people a day being infected 2-3 weeks ago.  Which was what I said before.  

Going off deaths from the most recent 7-day rolling average, the decrease is ~ 10% a week, going off cases (which lead deaths by 2-3 weeks) it's a 10% increase.  So R could be between 0.9 and 1.1; hence I split the difference and said ~1. 

So you recognise that your statement about 22 deaths yesterday was rather wrong then...  As I said you can't use a single day's reported deaths from the weekend due to reporting lag.  

The thing about exponential decays is that it's a mathematical concept.  The problem we have is not that we're into the slow tail of exponential decay, but that the exponential constant of proportionality is rising towards 1 - this is not "the maths", it's a mixture of real world factors.  Partly I suspect the progressing relaxation of measures and partly the contribution of sectors for which R was never that low - they naturally go on to dominate the R value of the tail.  In other words - if we can't irradiate it from the care system in the next two months, it's going to be a difficult winter.

The difference with cancer is you're choosing whether to mitigate the risk to yourself via lifestyle choices - you can't pass cancer on to someone else. Sadly that's not the case for Covid and it's a potentially dangerous mindset. 

Agree.  The biggest risk to most people isn’t through covid but through the social, financial and health effects that a future, larger round of infections could unleash on the NHS.

If you’re right about deaths only being 1% and 10,000 cases 4 weeks ago that still only puts us at around 6,000 a day. I understood it to be around 3% of cases yang resulted in death  

In any case the wearing of face coverings should push that down further. 

I believe it's more straightforward than that: wearing a mask is a tacit acknowledgement of mortality. A large part of the population do not want to engage with the fact that they are going to die, and come up with all sorts of random excuses like free will or misinterpretation of stats etc to avoid it.

We saw the same thing with seat belts; even now my brother plugs in his seat belt behind him when he thinks he can get away with it. I blame the milkman.

I think conservative thinking has always encompassed the notion of less rather than more state interference-  and how much of it .....this has confused the issue, hence the emphasis on personal common sense  in support of that principle. But it is  at odds with the obvious advantages of a law vis a vis face masks., I personally think state interference is beneficial and supersedes this principle in this case. We do value our freedoms, but not much to loose a freedom of choice when you have a deadly  disease about...That's where I think the common sense lies and some conservatives don't seem to have much of it.

There are plenty of cases where one's behaviour impacts others (and can even send them to an early grave). Still driving around in a diesel or petrol car for example? Those fumes cause fatal lung diseases for people living high pollution areas. People have been merrily passing on flu to others which kills thousands each year. As a society we have been tolerating those risks. The only difference with CV is that its new and people are scared of it.

“Being new” is not the only difference.  

The diesel cars that you mention don’t have the ability to take the NHS off a cliff, as very nearly happened with this virus, and reducing the risk to others from a diesel car without changing its owner’s lifestyle isn’t as simple as putting a mask on the exhaust.

Your flu analogy isn’t very valid - at least not in the last century; the spiking death rate associated with this virus is exceptional within the lifetime of anyone posting or reading here.  Without the lockdown we could very well have had half a million dead during April - that high death rate causes major problems in just about every way imaginable, even if it’s a short term event and it’s mainly bringing forwards deaths from the next 12 months.

The problem with this virus is perhaps that far too many people were never scared of it, and many didn’t - and apparently still don’t - understand that it was never directly about them, although the consequences of getting it wrong would very much become about them and everyone else - once the ball was dropped the choice became a shattered and broken NHS (on which we all depend directly or indirectly) or an incredibly long and damaging lockdown (which we got).

No we haven’t. We have been actively reducing those risks. CV is no different just we have to be a lot more active because it’s a lot more deadly to more people at the moment. 

Common sense is only applicable to everyday ‘common’ experiences. Common sense doesn’t apply when dealing with complex systems. eg you can’t put someone in a car Having had no lessons or experience and tell them to drive off down the road and just use their common sense. 
 

The people lacking common sense are the people who have been told of the risks and still take no action. 

There are plenty of differences. Along with what Wintertree just said, people are right to be scared of CV - even if you recover you could still have long term health problems, it would seem to spread more easily than the flu and the fatality rate is higher. It's nothing like the flu and and part of it's rampant spread is due to misunderstandings like this. 

I didnt say it was like the flu, I said we as a society tolerate the risk of passing flu on to others with consequently possibly fatal consequences.

Really I was not talking about short term, more the balance of adjustment in the long term if no vaccine is found, and the levels of risk people are prepared to tolerate vs the lifestyle they wish to lead. Lets take an example - say in a year we have no vaccine, but treatments that save 80-90% of cases that would be currently fatal, people will still die, but it will not in that case look really any more dangerous than flu. Do we then say the risk is acceptable to go back to normal?

I took you to have implied saying it was like the flu when you said "the only difference is that CV is new and folk are scared of it". However, I agree with your point about the long term, I guess we just don't know what level of severity we will be looking at in a years time and what impact that will have on our behaviour. Even if it's treatable to some extent that's still a lot of hospital beds and a scary prospect if what happened this year happens again. 

I would call that irresponsibility. So on that level there has been governmental obfuscation between the notion of leaving it to individual common sense and actively grasping collective social responsibility.Individualism versus collectivism. And it is not doing us much favour.

Technically I'm in the vulnerable bracket and therefore get an annual flu vaccine.  Not been offered one for Covid 19 yet.

Everyone has rights and responsibilities. Common sense normally determines how you execute those rights and responsibilities  in normal everyday life. What I’m saying is when you get a situation that is not normal and everyday then common sense doesn’t and shouldn’t apply. At the point where common sense no longer applies you have to stop and think and maybe do some research or learning. 
 

If the research tells you to wear a mask in crowded area where you can’t maintain 2m distance, and the government tells you to wear a mask, then common sense is back on the table. Everyone should be able to work out if it’s a crowded space.
 

Do we have a law because people can’t work out what constitutes a crowded space? Do we have a law because people can‘t read their speedos?

No. We have a law because a significant minority of people who do have common sense, don’t actually care about the impact their actions have on others. Or rather we have a law because a significant number of people don’t trust their fellow countrymen to toe the line. 

As Boris says, we trust you to wear masks, we don’t want to come down hard on you, but we will. 

Everyone laughs - so now you have a law. 

And it’s all Boris’s fault? Where’s the responsibility? Several years ago everyone was complaining about the ‘nanny’ state. Now everyone wants laws passed to govern everyone’s behaviour. 

I see your point about personal responsibility given a chance, people don't get it and therefore a law has to be imposed so why blame Boris... well, because waiting for that process to be followed has possibly cost lives. Normally, that process should take its course but is there the luxury to go through that process in this case or should one just go to law pretty quickly? I think it should have gone to law quickly. But your last sentence is a huge exaggeration. I don't think everyone is conceding to state dictatorship because of one law. Well, I hope not!

The only thing it will have cost is reduced sales or inconvenience to people who can’t cram into shops in large numbers all at once. 
 

The difference it will make to me is that next Saturday I’ll walk straight into Sainsbury’s to do my weekly shop saving me an extra 10minutes of my Saturday so I can sit in the garden or watch TV instead of standing in a car park. 10 minutes I’d have more than likely used by not planning my shop properly and popping backwards and forwards several times during the week. 
 

People will now start popping to the shops to buy a pint of milk and buy some ‘extras’ while they’re there instead of planning their big shop. 

You’re obviously a believer in ‘common sense’.

Can you please tell me how it’s measured?

Smell - Odor

Sight - Diopter

Taste - Ph (amongst others)

Hearing - Decibels

Touch - not exact but could be attributed to response to pressure

Well, health workers (and similar) are going to have to wear them full time whilst at work for the foreseeable.  Seems to me that the least you could do is stick one on for the 10 minutes it takes you to go into a shop and buy a paper and fags, thus helping to reduce the duration of said foreseeable. 

Here you go. A few definitions of what the word ‘sense’ means:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sense
 

So it’s not actually a ‘sense’ then?

You know the point I’m making. It doesn’t exist, it’s not a ‘thing’. Relying on common sense makes absolutely no sense.

Some people don't like any rules, and others are misinformed to be nice to them, plain stupid in some cases. Like the woman who said, "wearing a mask can kill you because you die from carbon monoxide poisoning".

Leaving this sort of shit up to people's common sense is a recipe for more deaths.

Why are you using a % of cases, surely you need to know how many people catch it? If only ten people catch it, and 90% of them recover than that's one person, if 60M people catch it, then that's a different story.

It really isn't anything like the flu, and there are a growing number of people who will never fully recover.

If the right thing to do was so bloody obvious, our glorious leaders would have no problem clearly communicating what it is to everyone, would they?  Well, unless their competence level was set to " can't find their own arse with a flashlight"...

Common sense is a knowledge we all have gained from common experiences. 

We all know not to put our hands into a flame. We have all either been taught or learned not to. 

If you come across a new situation that is uncommon then using common sense from other experiences can sometimes assist you. Sometimes it can put you in a very dangerous position because you have made incorrect assumptions due to your lack of specific knowledge. (A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing). 

Couple this with hindsight bias, where everyone else thinks they already knew what was obviously going to happen, but didn’t stop it happening. You have the illusion that no one is using common sense. 

Thank god someone agrees. Drives me bloody nuts when people talk about common sense. 

We all have common experiences? Really?  Where did you get that definition from and how does that apply to the current situation? I live in one of the most unpopulated parts of the UK, how can my experience of C-19 be the same as someone in London?

I won’t debate this with you, I just live in hope that people who use the expression ‘common sense’ will one day see the light. Ever the optimist. 

I've long thought an appeal to common sense is a cop out.  

The discussions I saw/participated in on UKC and in real life made it abundantly clear to me that the exponential mechanic of the early stages of a pandemic are totally outside the intuitive grasp of many people.  This is no slight to those people, it's just that they've not been exposed to that kind of mechanic enough to develop the relevant intuition; contrary to what some may think intuition and "common sense" both derive almost exclusively from our life experiences.  

To me it's common sense  that when faced with a potentially serious risk in February/March, we should have erred on the side of caution in the absence of certainty.  Something ironically DancingOnRock has argued against at great length on the grounds that "we didn't know" XYZ back in March.  (despite plenty of published medical evidence on e.g. asymptomatic / presymptomatic transmission actually being known back then...)   Which just goes to show that one person's common sense is not another's....  Although in my case erring on the safe side was more properly justified through the principle of assessing (probability x consequence) in risk management...

I’m pretty sure everyone has gone out in the rain and got wet, everyone has found out a flame is hot etc. Those are common scenarios and everyone has common knowledge of them. 
 

Unless you and I have been on some unique wet weather training course and no one else knows that rain is wet. 
 

Looking at a crowded shop and being able to tell it is crowded doesn’t need specialist training, or some insight into the workings of Covid-19. Its common sense. 
 

Wearing a mask is not common sense. It was hotly debated whether they made things better or worse. So wearing a mask is not common sense. 
 

I suspect your issue is not whether or not common sense exists (it certainly does), its the way that people frequently use the term inappropriately. 
 

If you’re told to wear a mask in crowded shops, then the wearing the mask bit is taken care of. Now use your common sense to work out of a shop is crowded or not. 

Although you were only looking at the immediate risk of death from Covid and ignoring all other Long term risks. Which is normal human being behaviour.

I like your posts because they are always logically coherent and well argued, and this is another example.

I think that the problem you highlight is cultural. Because science and technology have been so successful, people seem to think this is the answer to every problem, they can’t make any decision without it anymore.

I don’t think he is ignoring them, it is just that the long term term risks are more or less known and bounded, whilst the potential risk of a virus you know nothing about is unlimited.

You can mistake a stone for a bear a 1000 times, but you can mistake a bear for a stone only once. 

Where did I say that?  I have spent many words on the long term consequences of disrupting the NHS, and it seems that erring on the side of caution in the immediate term in March would have reduced the number of cases and therefore reduced the duration and severity of lockdown and and hence many long term consequences, as well as reducing the number of people suffering long term health effects.  The mutation potential and long term health effects of covid infection were almost totally unknown back in March which represented a long term risk we couldn’t begin to quantify - again a sound risk management approach demands extreme caution until the risks are understood.

Still, what was evidence based logic for many of us back in Feb/March was not worth a damned it seems.  We should have called it “common sense”...

measured in dG (DeciGumbits) a logarithmic comparison scale relative to the standard Gumption which is kept in an ivory box somewhere, possibly in Grimsby)

It is rumoured that a Gumption exists locked in a lead lined box somewhere in Whitehall but that the present government has not been let near it for fear they'll lose it or break it.

No argument there. As you’ve said that’s  knowledge. 

Define crowded. You couldn’t have picked a worse example to cite ‘common sense. 

Hilariously you’re now doing this yourself. Can you not see the irony? Giving examples of ‘common knowledge’ as evidence of common sense. And examples of ‘common sense’ which are anything but.

As above.

I despair, I really do.....

Incredibly, I find myself defending the loathsome Gove;

The reality is that any “rules” the Government laid down on wearing of face masks, (or maintaining social distance, or frequency of use of hand sanitiser...), could not be enforced by the state, and getting the population to enforce them could end very badly indeed;Two stories on the BBC today where arguments about not wearing face masks have led to murders, in France and the US. 

So issuing guidelines and appealing to common sense is actually the sensible option. 

Maybe read those definitions of sense again? If you think sense only refers to the 5 senses I can see where you’re having difficulty 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense

Where you can’t be more than 2m apart?

So do I. They are really simple concepts to understand. And if the general population can’t understand them, I think ‘Wear a mask in a shop” could well be too difficult for them as well.

Exactly. Deaths and NHS. What about all the other factors? 

You have time after time ignored how you manage a shut down and the economic effects and the behavioural aspects of large numbers of the population. 
 

Anyway we’ve been here before several times. 
 

It’s not possible to apply common sense to a complex situation where you don’t have all the variables and you can’t see the future or have any past experiences to draw on. 

No, I have not.

I have - repeatedly - made the case that there was all the evidence and reasons in the world to support the benefits of a lockdown a couple of weeks before we did, and that other countries were able to do that, and that we had a baffonic idiot of a PM counter-messaging with his crap about shaking hands in a Covid affected hospital.  

It’s a pointless law. Unenforceable. There’s a guy comes in by tube to my office counts the number of people on his carriage not wearing masks. They wear them to get on the train then take them off. 
We have a team of security guards at our entrance telling people to put their masks on before they enter the building. Don’t need a law for that. 
 

And ignored the impact of shutting down the world’s financial centre! 

Which is a sector that - as other posters have pointed out before - has highly effective disaster recovery plans including ones specifically tailored to pandemics.

Oh, and we had 10 weeks in which to reasonably start warming up plans for off-site working until it was needed; as it was due to almost incoherent government behaviour the planning actually started on week 10 ready for action on week 12.

Most businesses weren't shut down - only those who depend on public footfall or public interaction were significantly mothballed.  Pretty much everything else carried on using either established or ad-hoc disaster recovery plans.

Bit insulting. I can easily argue it’s you that’s having difficulty. Definition of common sense is 

“Common sense is sound practical judgement concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge that is shared by ("common to") nearly all people”

You’re obviously not prepared to question any of the details of that definition, but here goes. 

What constitutes “sound practical judgement”? Coming from a climbing website it’s somewhat astounding that you can’t see how this is questionable. Climbers make rash and dangerous decisions all the time, all of which could be argued show they have poor abilities to make “sound practical judgements”. 

“concerning everyday matters” - you’ve agreed these are exceptional times so how can my ‘common sense’ help me, given how it is only limited to everyday matters.

“basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge that is shared by ("common to") nearly all people” - surely you can see how that just doesn’t exist? People make countless varied decisions about every conceivable situation. The notion that we all have a shared understanding is nonsense. We may have the knowledge, but our ability to judge is unique to every one of us.

Anyway, I accept you’re a believer and I will fail in my efforts to show you the light.

Health workers need to wear them as they are at more risk of infection in hospitals/passing it on to the vulnerable in care homes. I'm not going to be emotionally blackmailed into compliance because of that. If you can offer a satisfactory reason why the sudden need for masks in supermarkets despite dropping infection rates and deaths while we've been visiting during the entire crisis without them then I'll reconsider. But of course the masks aren't so important that they can't wait 2 more weeks until they are mandatory, and they aren't mandatory in pubs/restaurants where your closer to people in smaller spaces for longer. Guess your asking me to disregard sense making to show solidarity? What could go wrong.

I'm more offended that you'd think I'd waste my time reading newspapers or smoking though.

Because the shops are about to get a whole lot more crowded. The advice was issued weeks ago that if you can’t distance by 2m you can reduce that distance to 1m if you wear a mask. 
 

Apparently the general public are ignoring the mask requirement and just reducing to 1m. So we need a law, which takes time to go though Parliament because we are a democracy. 
 

If you don’t like it. Lobby your MP to vote against the law before it is passed. 

You don’t make sound practical common sense judgements when climbing. Who takes someone climbing and gives them a rope and harness and tells them to get in with it and use their common sense?

You have been told to wear a mask when you can’t distance by 2m. Use your common sense to determine whether or not you can distance yourself in any given environment. If that’s too hard for people then we take away their ability to make a decision and we just say “in shops”. 
 

It’s a bit like passing a law that no one can touch any surfaces without wearing gloves because some surfaces might be hot.  

Indeed. And most of those businesses were planning for weeks in advance. The government was listening to those businesses.