//I dunno. My 22 year old son thinks the restrictions should be kept in place.//
Have you asked him why?
//As far as I can see, the main thing that could be delayed is opening nightclubs and getting married with more than 30 people? Everything else is already allowed to open//
Sorry, bednobs, but your remark displays a spectacular lack of understanding. Consider this if you believe the continued restrictions are having no effect:
- The government has been (and is still) borrowing £1bn a day to fund its various munificent schemes.
- The travel industry is on its knees and many companies may not survive. This sector contributes about £150bn (around 7.5% of GDP) to the economy just for UK tourism alone and employs (or rather did employ) around 2.5m people.
- The hospitality industry (value £60bn, 3% of GDP, >3m jobs) has taken a massive hit and is still haemorrhaging around £200m a day. Those paces that have reopened are running at considerably reduced capacity and many outlets that have survived cannot currently break even.
- When “non-essential” shops were forcibly closed the retail sector suffered a net loss of more than 10,000 outlets – about 17,000 shops closed and never reopened, offset by around 7,000 new openings. This decline continues/
- Town centre cafes, snack bars and other food outlets have been devastated by the “work from home” directive. Many of these have closed permanently and many more will whilst the WFH “advice” is still in place.
That’s just a flavour of what this is doing to the country. I won’t go down the healthcare route but it is quite clear that far more people are now suffering from lack of adequate healthcare to address non-Covid ailments that those suffering from Covid.
//…but the big problem is that at its current level of vaccination, most of the country is still a breeding ground for new and nastier variants that arise from the easily transmissible delta,//
Vaccination does not stop a person contracting the virus or passing it on. It also does not counter variants developing. What it does do is reduce the likelihood of an infected person developing serious symptoms. Just shy of 30m people have now been fully vaccinated. Nobody knows what percentage of the population this is because nobody has the first clue how many people live here. But using the generally accepted 67m as the total population it means almost all people over 40 either have had, or have been offered two shots.
It is clear to me that this government has surreptitiously slid into a “zero Covid” strategy and a sizeable proportion of the population has slid with it. If that is indeed the case restrictions will never end because zero Covid is unachievable. All its previous (ever changing) conditions for the lifting of restrictions have been met. Now the relaxation is postponed “just in case.” As I keep saying, the government should come clean as to precisely the strategy it is following. Parliament should be allowed to debate the matter and a free vote held to decide the way forward.