Problem is, if you're on a low wage you get £500 for 2 weeks to tide you over (less than minimum wage). Everyone else gets nothing at all.
So a lot of people who are warned they may have been in contact with someone infected have a huge incentive to shrug and ignore it.
I think the system needs to be split, and improved:
A) If you test positive, make the checking regime draconian, along with the punishment. You don't self-isolate? There WILL be consequences. But provide decent financial support.
B) Give everyone else a much better carrot.
In the long run, the UK Government will probably save more by dampening cases down and keeping the economy going with a greater degree of normality than it will by being parsimonious with aid and incentives.
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Prue Leith, avowed Brexit supporter, seems to only just have woken up to Brexit's potential to destroy the quality of UK food, and hurt British farmers.
And magically she's all hand-wringing and smelling salts.
For over 6 weeks now, COVID-19 cases across the UK have grown at approx. 7% a day. (It's not an exact fit, but it's close enough to indicate how the pandemic is progressing.)
That means the problem got twice as big every 9 days.
Yet Boris Johson STILL dithers and delays!
He's planning to talk to MPs on Monday.
At the current pace, that means 22% more cases than now.
Imagine taking the same approach to a forest fire, or a patient bleeding out? It's unconscionable!
Even small sustained improvements would make a big difference, if we start NOW.
At 7% growth a day, we would be closing in on 100,000 daily cases by the end of October.
But if we could slow growth to 6% a day through stricter measures, we'd be at HALF that.
Has anyone else entered a new stage of pandemic fatigue? (NOT the same as lockdown fatigue!)
The summer wasn't great but it was "ok-ish", but now everyone's being whipped back to school, uni etc. while the virus rages like a forest fire, the situation is much less tolerable...
What really grinds my teeth is that there appears to be a sliding scale with "different, but relatively safe life" at one end and "very dangerous normality" at the other, and the UK government is pushing hell for leather for "normality".
We are ALL condemned by their choice.
And the other problem is Trump.
He normalises such beyond-the-pale behaviour that the UK Government can do literally whatever it wants and yet it will NEVER be as bad as what he's doing. So they feel empowered to run wild.
After factoring in the missing COVID-19 data in England, it's clear that cases are rocketing in every part of the UK.
The graphs below show 7-day new cases per 100,000 population, in each of the 4 nations. They're based on the specimen date. (The date that samples were taken.)
You can also see the impact of the stricter lockdown measures in Scotland and Wales over the summer. Cases there fell much further than in England, to a very low baseline.
But now, sadly, everywhere in the UK is being hit - badly.
Also worth noting: every part of the UK exceeded the UK Government threshold for imposing a quarantine (20 new cases per 100,000 over a 7-day period) since the beginning of September. Now we're almost 4x that.
In other words, if the UK were a foreign country, we'd quarantine it!