Yes, forgot to include “and not kill my host” in my comment 
Johnson has just announced what is essentially Xmas lockdown - “Tier 4” for London and SE, only Xmas day relaxation for everyone else.
A lot of young people have just about lost a year of their lives. When you are 18 that is quite a lot. And young people are innately selfish, they need to be to develop independence. And old people may not have more much time left. Lots of reasons not to wait any more. Without a clear and firm direction that says “you must not travel” then people will.
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Well it appears that my friends won’t be able to travel to the UK for Xmas now as their families all live within the new Tier 4.
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[quote=“ptf, post:22, topic:33060, full:true”]
Johnson has just announced what is essentially Xmas lockdown - “Tier 4” for London and SE, only Xmas day relaxation for everyone else.
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Do your parents live in London or SE? As that’s now tier 4 so you will be breaking the new rules announced just now. No travel in and out of tier 4…and no visiting people’s houses.
My daughter and grandson are in tier 4… difficult times ahead, I fear…
Quick update - we are now NOT going.
BUGGER
Ps- got our covid tests results through after just 6 hours and they were negative.
(Johnson you can shove his World Beating Testing System - it does not compare to France).
That must be so frustrating.
I confess I felt much the same when I realised that booking leave & a ferry ticket to try to get to Brittany in early Feb was, shall we say, unwise. Even the Feb ½ term trip might be overoptimistic.
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Why is the variant more easily spreadable? Has it grown wings or bought reboks.
Viruses mutate, it’s what they do…seems to be more contagious but not more severe.
Yep got that but what makes it more contagious?
They don’t know yet, but it seems to have a faster growth rate. So maybe people are shedding far more, so easier for others to get a nose full of enough to infect (or tongue…that seems to be important)
It’s not clear whether it is, but unless you are a virologist possibly the best plan is that if the virologists say it is more contagious, believe them.
That said how successful a virus is at getting itself transmitted depends on some basic factors - how many (or few) virus particles you get exposed to, how well they get into your cells and how long you excrete virus for.
The new variant has quite a lot of mutations in the spike protein - this is what helps it get into cells so it might just be that you need to be exposed to fewer virus particles to get infected, it might be less likely to cause severe illness - so you don’t feel unwell enough to stop social interaction because you feel like crap, rather than because the government has told you that you must stay at home.
On the whole though I go with - if the scientists are telling you it spreads more easily I’d probably give them the benefit of the doubt.
The political angle though is that Johnson has, once again, resisted calls to do the bleedin’ obvious before being dragged to it by overwhelming pressure of events - ending up looking like he hasn’t an effing clue how to manage a pea soup in a brothery, much less a response to a global pandemic.
Still, at least, unlike Trump he isn’t sitting on a million shots of the Pfizer vaccine but refusing to tell the company where to deploy it.
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Meeting up with other households indoors is against the rules in Tiers 3 & 2 as well, so going to stay with families in those areas is against the rules too, right? Especially now there’s not the ‘Christmas bubble’ few days. Looks like we are cancelling our trip now 
Insofar as the depredations of homo sapiens are destroying the planet by wanton consumption, we should have clear insights into the ‘mindset’ of coronavirus, whose ‘selfish’ and ‘heedless’ modus operandi we replicate exactly on the natural environment.
The biter bit? 
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Oh I certainly do, found some reports of the mutated virus and its 31 mutations. As you said the spike protein seems the more logical.
The PPE should still form the same barrier as before if worn and that is the part the gov should tighten up on. The minimal restistance a surgical mask produces should be law except in the most extreme cases. This week I had a brief conversation with a BAME community member not of course wearing a mask. She told me that she was exempt and I asked why as perfectly capable of carying on conversation despite shopping bags.
John…
are “exempt” people incapable of transmitting covid…???
It has baffled me that “exempt” folk see it as their right to go into shops et al… to mix with the masked public… yet not wear a mask themselves ???
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bet you didn’t get much of an answer! And I really don’t see why it’s impossible for people even to use the half shields that fit on your chin.
The UK exemption rules are pathetic - while notionally it’s for people with a medical need it can include “mask wearing would cause distress” which is pretty much a universal get-out and no proof, note from doctor etc is needed because that would be discriminatory.
I did a quick count up of how much money the gov could have earnt in just my journey to town and £600 in 20 mins isnt bad when you extrapolate that its very profitable. Problem is we are so PC that everyone is scared to say anything.