Will you go shopping on the high street now?

[trystan]

Here we are faced with a virus which causes fatality for some, but there still in no vaccine, no treatment options. As the world eases itself outside again, shops are reopening.

So will you be hitting the shops now?

Will you stay at home and watch your neighbours come home with shopping bags full of goodies?

[KGarrad]

From tomorrow, Monday 15th June, on the Isle of Man there sill no longer be a need for social distancing

Shops will decide for themselves whether to keep any restrictions. Tesco (my local supermarket) is keeping some restrictions, but relaxing it's rules.
Non-essential shops have been allowed to open, with restrictions, for 2 weeks now.

It's been working well, in general.
True, some people really don't like one-way systems in shops, or having staff telling them whether they can enter shops.
But they can always vote with their feet, and stay home.

[Millmoor]

There have been times in my life when I have looked forward to some retail therapy and in particular to browsing in bookshops and record shops. For me this is not such a time. I will continue to have my weekly visit to Tescos and otherwise avoid shops. Moreover since the one thing I would really like to do is to sit down in somewhere like Costa Coffee , have a cappuccino , do the crossword and watch the world go by is not on offer I will give the High Street a miss . Instead I will play some socially distanced golf!

[Romilly]

I won't be rushed off to the shops here in Hertfordshire.

In New Zealand, they waited for the virus to be eradicated before reopening anything.

My impression here is that the government is prepared to take a gamble on people's lives, in order to restart everything.

Romilly.

[trystan]

It's a reasonable compromise - after all, without an economy there could not be a health service and many more people would die.

Without livelihoods the social problems in themselves would be catastrophic.

That's why we're encouraged to kick-start the country again by going out shopping.

[LizzieW]

Where I live, where half the population is over 60, you wouldn't know there was a problem apart from the shops being closed.  People are out and about as usual, walking dogs, talking to neighbours (from a distance) going to the supermarkets, the post office etc.  Of course, we are miles from any towns or cities and the rate of deaths has been less than 5 per week since 1 January which I'm sure is not much more than the average for the local population.  When you think that in a one mile radius of my home there are 27 care homes for elderly and/or mentally handicapped and not one of them has the virus.  My husband's bowls club opened up again 2 weeks ago, although they are only allowed to play in pairs (one against the other) and on alternate bowling greens.  I don't understand the alternate bowling greens because even if a bowler stood on the edge of a bowling green they would still be more than 2 metres from someone standing on the edge of the adjacent bowling green.

Personally, and I know others have different opinions, I think the whole thing has been totally mismanaged.  The government was working quite sensibly until the media started panicking everyone and, of course, Boris getting the virus and having to go into hospital has rather coloured his view, when even he has said he knows that he was more ill than others around him, Matt Hancock for instance, because he is very overweight.

We were only 2 weeks behind Spain in the lockdown, yet in Spain everything seems to be back to normal.  My grandson who lives in Madrid shared a photo of himself and about a dozen friends all sitting round a table having a meal and - as he says - in Spain you don't have your own meal on your own plate, everyone just dips in and out of the tapas. 

Now we've got doctors saying in public what they've been saying in private for weeks, that many of the deaths recorded as Covid were not actually Covid at all.  They had been pressurised into putting the virus as a cause of death on the death certificates, even if the patient hadn't been tested positive.  Professor Karal Sikora said recently "Doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates and that the virus would be mentioned on death certificates when there was "any hint" that it could have been the cause, without proof, as well as retrospectively over the phone".

He also said that the total number of deaths over the period, should be looked at and compared with what is normal to get the true number of extra deaths, possibly from Covid.  In fact the number of deaths expected for June are already much lower than usual, probably because people with illnesses that would have caused their death over a few months actually died during the peak of the pandemic. 

Of course, it could end up that more people have died because of lack of medical care directly caused by the unavailability of it, because the NHS has come to a shuddering halt. Hospitals have become mostly coronavirus-receiving stations and cancer patients are no longer a priority.  It's been estimated that up to 60,000 cancer patients could unnecessarily die because of a lack of treatment or diagnosis.  I heard of a man who with an operation on his lung had a 98% chance of living.  His operation was cancelled and his family held his funeral a few weeks ago.

It's not only cancer, when my husband went out to buy his paper, he passed a cottage where a lady was sitting on a chair whilst dead heading her roses.  My husband said that was a good way to garden.  Her response was that she was supposed to have had a replacement hip operation but that it has been cancelled indefinitely and now she can barely stand, never mind walk.  We've forgotten all the patients like this woman because of the panic that our media stirred up. 

I had a routine follow up appt cancelled at my local hospital - I wasn't bothered about that as I already thought it was unnecessary, but I was due to have a repeat colonoscopy in June/July this year and received a letter from the hospital to tell me they wouldn't be sending me an appointment and they "hoped I wasn't too inconvenienced by this!".  I don't think there will be too much of a problem as I have colonoscopies annually and can probably, safely, miss one out, but imagine if you have symptoms of cancer and you don't get an appt that you need and the hospital says it hopes you're not too inconvenienced.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

[Milliepede]

Absolutely no to hitting the shops tomorrow.  It's as much as I can do to go into a supermarket for milk at the moment.  I order online as much as possible and will continue to do so until I feel "safe"

[groom]

I certainly won't be hitting the shops tomorrow, but that will be no different to what I did anyway. I hate shopping and can see no point in going just for the sake of it. I do most of my shopping on line and have done for years, unless I am away on holiday or at my caravan, when I do shop in the supermarket.

[Lisajb]

No. I don’t want/need anything, other than a food shop on Wednesday.

I am vulnerable, having T1 diabetes anD reduced kidney function, and don’t believe a word that BoJo & Co say,

I have snatched an eye test appointment for Monday pm.