Bargaining

But seriously. The virus doesn’t agree to step back for five days, and I find the bargaining language people use about this decidedly odd. They seem to think that if they promise it’s just five days and they promise not to infect each other on purpose then the virus will do its part and all will be well. Like:

One of my daughters lives with her boyfriend in London, and the other lives in a flat share. The three-household rule means I can see them both. It’s a rubber-stamp, and it means that in your conscience you can know you’re doing the right thing, and abiding by what the government deems acceptable.

But none of that makes any difference to anything. It doesn’t become safe because “the government” says it is. There is no rubber stamp. The conscience isn’t relevant, and you really can’t know you’re doing the right thing until two weeks later.

A different person:

It seems a sensible compromise to allow some level of mixing at an important time of year for lots of people. I think there was a risk that the government would just say you could do anything, and mix as many households as you like, and that would certainly be really bad.

But there is no compromise. There is no sit-down with the virus where you agree to social distance most of the time and the virus agrees you can have five days off. It doesn’t work like that.

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