[vl]

To everyone paranoidly sitting is strong isolation I’m saying “What is your exit strategy? The virus is not going away, there will be no vaccine for many months. Are you planning on sitting it out for a year? Two? Ten? If not, you might as well go on with your life while taking reasonable precautions and practicing hygiene.”

[ben_w]

I don’t think paranoia means what I think you think it means.

Like most people on the site, I am well adapted to the conditions forced upon us by this pandemic.

What I can’t do is go travelling, what with the airports being closed to tourists, the hotels being closed, and the airlines cancelling any flights other than repatriations, etc. — and I can’t go to local museums, because they’re closed.

I can’t go to a pub to hang out with local furries, because the pub is closed. I probably can’t go to the large furry convention that was going to happen later this year in my city, because the hotel it would be held in is currently being used as a pop-up hospital. Even if I got around the airport problems by learning to fly (I have the money and time for lessons but not for a plane), I couldn’t go to any other cons instead because their hotels have also been converted into pop-up hospitals.

I can go for walks, but I can’t go to any parks, because they’re closed.

I’m also not comfortable with selling my old home in the UK and buying a new one in Berlin — but that’s not because of risk to me, it’s because of the situation in the UK. It’s not really a “hobby”, but it is something I had planned to do and have put off because of this.

I’m not into music or dancing or spectator sports, but those are big parts of most people’s lives — now impossible because their venues are closed.

The only thing I can do is walking (on sidewalks), passive a/v entertainment, MOOCs/etc, and video games.

Suits me, but if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it.

[meheleventyone]

It's not an either or situation where one size will fit all is it?

If you live in an area that's a hotspot then you need to have tighter restrictions than if not. If you know you're in an at-risk group then you need to have tighter restrictions.

Our restrictions and daily routines are naturally going to have to shift about as the virus ebbs and flows. Which is why a good local testing and contact tracing regime is essential to end the most draconian lockdowns. If you don't even know how the virus is distributed locally and can't quickly act to quarantine people who have been in contact with someone who is infected then it's very hard to say mingling together is a great idea. That said the risks of kids playing together in a neighborhood seem pretty minor if otherwise people are keeping to themselves. The likely negative consequence is that if one family has a member that tests positive then all the others in the neighborhood will need to quarantine until they can be tested or enough time passes. Here that's 14 days if you're not symptomatic or 7 days after the symptoms go if you are. Then the less likely consequence is that you're the vector that passes on the infection and it kills one of your neighbors.

We're relaxing our restrictions here a bit in Iceland on Monday and I'm really interested to see how that goes.