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Woohoo - more inconsistent and unscientific policies! * Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned __ So alcohol

Woohoo - more inconsistent and unscientific policies! * Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned __ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat. * Amateur team sports are not allowed, but elite sport such as Premier League football can continue __ 'Elite' athletes, as is the case for the rest of the 'elites', should not have to follow the same rules as the plebs. * Outdoor sports venues - such as golf courses, tennis courts and outside gyms - must close __ Yeah - let's take a game (golf) that's done outdoors, in groups of 4 or less, and ban it. Don't worry - you're allowed to walk around the exact same golf course for excercise (as that's one of the only reasons you can leave your home), but if you have to swing a club you'll catch COVID.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
I agree with you on the football thing, although the players will be getting regular tests, and the sport generates a tonne of cash. The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple. Also allowing people to order alcohol to be delivered within the hour probably isn't the smartest!
- gruez 6y ago
  >The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple. closing the clubhouse is hard?
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    So now the rule is: "Golf clubs can open but the club house have to stay shut" Then you have to think of all the other sports and possible places people can gather and make rules about those too. My point was that the rules have to be simple otherwise people won't read them.
- gregmac 6y ago
  > Also allowing people to order alcohol to be delivered within the hour probably isn't the smartest! Why? What is the difference vs someone who keeps a quantity on alcohol in their house (other than being exorbitantly more expensive)?
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    The same reason why we have limits of where and when you can buy alcohol - because it's a licensed drug. Why are people confused about this?
- waterglassFull 6y ago
  You can still buy alcohol in stores; by take-away this means in a ready-to-drink fashion. Alcohol delivery to a house is fine unless you're assuming people are still having parties.
  - monksy 6y ago
    Limit the amouunt of pre-prepared alcohol that can be delivered to a house at one time. You shouldn't be an ondemand keg delivery at this point or delivering 2+ cases in one go. Also part of the delivery portion of this is about supporting the pub/bar. Not the access to alcohol. (Otherwise you'd just go to the store)
    - waterglassFull 6y ago
      Yes, this would make sense.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
danans 6y ago
> * Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned Is restaurant takeaway alcohol even a thing in normal times in the UK? In CA at least, the state temporarily removed the normal restriction on takeaway alcohol in order to help restaurants during lockdowns.
- bananapear 6y ago
  Not sure if it’s really that common, but it’s a staple of Friday evenings at City firms if you have to stay late. You order a meal via the corporate Deliveroo/Seamless etc., to the firm-paid limit and immediately call the restaurant and ask for beer of the same value to be delivered instead.
- CamouflagedKiwi 6y ago
  No - but lots of places (particularly pubs) had started doing takeaway alcohol last year in order to have _some_ sales, there was some general restriction-lifting to help with that kind of thing. There's of course not any evidence that it's a meaningful contributor to infection, but lockdown is such a crude tool that it's going to hit it regardless.
- monksy 6y ago
  All states should have done that in the first 2 weeks. It's irritating to see the bible belt/NC wait 9 freaking months to now allow for take away alcohol. It feels like the governments are: 1. Trying to limit the enforcement and severity of actions or 2. They don't know what they're doing. (Which creates more resistance)
foota 6y ago
It does make sense imo to allow elite sports to continue while banning amateurs, there are relatively few elite players so the additional risk overall is low.
- gruez 6y ago
  You can make the same argument for top level ministers. eg. "well it's fine for the PM and the cabinet to ignore lockdown directives because they're only 0.001% of the uk population" It's still inconsistent, bad for PR, and puts the whole government into question.
  - JohnCohorn 6y ago
    I dislike sports, but I do see that making pro sports broadcasts continue could provide the entertainment needed for folks to be happier to stay inside their homes like they should.
    - monksy 6y ago
      I love the fact that they're open and televising the fact that no fans are there. That really stops people from trying to pressure venues from "sneaking in".
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Why not let everyone else sports to stay healthy and strengthen their immune systems, as well as get outside (where it's warm enough) and get the vitamin D they need? Why should people who get paid a million get special treatment over those who are barely making it an unemployed? Being able to shoot some hoops seems more valuable for the 20 year old's mental health than watching some rich top-of-their class play in am empty stadium with cardboard cutouts.
      - Daishiman 6y ago
        Because everyone doing sports kind of defeats the purpose of social distancing.
waterglassFull 6y ago
"__ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat." The problem isn't the take-away alcohol itself, the problem is what people do with it. We routinely get people around our area (East London) who buy take-away beer - stand two meters away from the pub - and drink it with their friends. It promotes people spreading COVID. The UK government aren't confident enough to actually curtail people's behaviour (eg mask wearing in public, fining people etc) that they stop the things that people inherently do. I don't think it's a great policy, but it's a step in the right direction. The science itself is all in the messaging and tone.. but they make it easy to get out of with "valid reasons". Stay home.
- monksy 6y ago
  That's kind of (rolls eyes on pure practical sense) how Chicago is handling this. Our liqour sales are banned after 9pm from stores, and bars are able to do carryout|outdoor (we have some Canadian spies that live here.. so outdoor dining is still a thing [It's 0C or below on average right now.. chill it's a joke]) until 11pm. My best guess for the store liqour sales is that the southside used liqour stores as a bar and would congregate outside, also the limitation of store liquor sales limits people going to impromptu parties. Behavior change is hard to do right, but it also can be changed in completely unrelated but minor inconvenced changes. (I.e. changing a process or labeling may be more effective than a control and punish model) It's also very difficult to communicate for free societies on why a restuarant or bar ban still needs to be in place when the black market succeeds [underground raves/parties etc]. (Sigh "studies that claim most of the transmission in a household vs bars" (well where did that household interact with a different household... ))
- toolz 6y ago
  There isn't any science there, just conjecture from the government on how their restrictions will alter social behavior. It's rather mind blowing to me after seeing extremely well funded and massive projects like the war on drugs in the U.S. fail, to now where the government thinks it can successfully push society in the right direction with even more drastic measures.
f6v 6y ago
> So alcohol spreads COVID? This always gets me. Isn’t it obvious that alcohol consumption is a social activity? Not all of it, but to a large degree. Limiting the consumption seems logical. Of course, you can’t assess the impact of individual measures at the moment, as you need a controlled experiment and proper statistics. But is this measure really something to be that upset about?
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  > Limiting the consumption seems logical. Lots of "plans" seem logical and this is precisely why technocracy is a vexation on society. Unintended consequences. The presumption of knowledge and control. All of these elite presumptions are illusory and fundamentally hubristic. You know why "limiting the consumption" of alcohol is a dumb suggestion? We have tons of evidence that it was a massive failure: Prohibition and the War on Drugs. No matter how well-intended you are - it'll backfire and people will ignore it. Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Millions of years of evolution have seared into their biology the instinct to be social. The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Not only folly - but abuse. But seriously, it's bizarre. The obdurance of so-called experts set on working against the grain of every human instinct, as though that's likely to maximize the success of their plans.
  - f6v 6y ago
    > The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Do you really want to go down that road? Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? Didn’t think so. You see how folly your argument is?
    - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
      > Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? This is non-sequitur. A better comparison is like legally enforcing abstinence to eradicate HIV. If you can't get the idea that isolation is counter-intuitive to humans and damaging to their health and psychology, and therefore bound to be hard to get compliance, I'm not sure what to say. This is why jail is jail. Isolation is unnatural. It's punishment. No one voluntary chooses this.
rusk 6y ago
Alcohol spreads COVID. Not exactly ... but it breaks down social barriers and can cause people to be careless. If we had banned or at least curtailed alcoholic sales I can guarantee you probably the numbers would be half what they are now. A big problem is that once you close pubs clubs and other outlets then people start having secret house parties and these are very hard to police. I guarantee you, that even the best intentioned host will have a super spreader event on their hands before long. It doesn’t take many - 10 even to churn the virus among themselves and then head off home to give it to whomever is there. I’m really sorry that you feel your rights are being curtailed, but what we are living through is hopefully a once in a lifetime event that if we could have just knuckled down at the start and endured some discomfort we would be pretty much over it by now. So much for that “blitz spirit” all we hear is moan moan moan ...
- djsumdog 6y ago
  This is complete and total arbitrary nonsense. You're taking a conclusion and trying to walk back a path of logic to some type of justification. Let's see this for what it is: arbitrary decisions that curtails the human rights of all human beings by politicians who are figuratively drunk with power. They are banning things for the common people while they leave their regions, have expensive $1k dinners for their political backers and ignoring all the rules they've imposed on the population. From Canada to California to the UK, we watch elected leaders ignore the bullshit rules they put on people, either because they think it doesn't apply to them or they've seen the numbers and know the risks are bullshit. We're talking about a disease that's literally has over a 98% survival rate if you're under 55 (which causes people to spout more "long COVID" narrative media non-sense). 100 years from now, do you really think scholars will see 2020 and 2021 as anything other than the largest cast of mass hysteria to date? Let's isolate the elderly and vulnerable, or anyone who wants to be isolated, and let the rest of the world evaluate their own risks again.
  - rusk 6y ago
    Sorry but this is derived from actual contact tracing (not the UK where they haven’t really bothered but a culturally similar neighbour) - but of course you’re so outraged that’s what matters more. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overloo... This article is about 6 months old, and we’ve moved on even more since then. It’s so saddening to see so many bright people unable to keep up. Tell me again about Sweden sad lol
edoceo 6y ago
If England stopped football there'd be riots the next day.
- haunter 6y ago
  They did back in the spring and there were no riots?
- rusk 6y ago
  You do realise that England stopped football before even the government got their shiz together?
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Clearly I did not. Been a lot to keep up with last few months.
dahfizz 6y ago
This reminds me of how the Massachusetts governor closed hair salons and golf courses ... between the hours of 9:30 pm and 5 am. I'm sure ladies getting their hair done at midnight were the real super spreaders /s. Honestly, its not hard to see how government's hypocrisy and inconsistency fuels conspiracy theories. Another example is the Massachusetts mask mandate that explicitly requires masks when nobody is near you. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, that this is just to remove ambiguity and make enforcement easier. But its not hard to imagine the reaction of someone who is prone to tinfoil hatting when they are told they must always wear a mask outside, even if miles away from the nearest human.
uncledave 6y ago
Takeaway alcohol is not banned. This point was a crap article by the Independent who didn’t read the actual guidelines. Why the downvotes. It's on page 18 of the issued document. ffs.
Someone 6y ago
Takeaway alcohol sales run a real risk of alcohol consumption on the streets in the neighborhood of alcohol sellers. That, in turn, can easily lead to loose interpretation of social distancing rules. The argument for allowing elite sports to go on typically is to give the population some distraction during lockdown (it’s a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses) As to golf: if you allow that, why wouldn’t a group of four people be allowed to kick a football around? Tennis be allowed? Also, part of lockdown is the prevention of people mixing over longer distances. A local outburst of COVID-19 is bad, but if the infected move home over tens of kilometers (as, I guess, is quite normal for golf), you’re asking for a much bigger problem. Having said that, it is safe to assume the government is far from an expert on what are the risky things to do. Nobody is.
iso1210 6y ago
A lot of it is virtue signalling, and that's not a bad thing if you want people to actually think "we're all in this together" Young people can't play football, so rich old white men play golf or go grouse shooting Premier league footballers don't care much if they're playing or not, but the average person wants to watch it on TV. Food delivery is fine, but they don't want people buying alcohol and meeting on the street to drink with friends

CodeGlitch 6y ago

I agree with you on the football thing, although the players will be getting regular tests, and the sport generates a tonne of cash. The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple. Also allowing people to order alcohol to be delivered within the hour probably isn't the smartest!

gruez 6y ago
>The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple. closing the clubhouse is hard?
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  So now the rule is: "Golf clubs can open but the club house have to stay shut" Then you have to think of all the other sports and possible places people can gather and make rules about those too. My point was that the rules have to be simple otherwise people won't read them.
gregmac 6y ago
> Also allowing people to order alcohol to be delivered within the hour probably isn't the smartest! Why? What is the difference vs someone who keeps a quantity on alcohol in their house (other than being exorbitantly more expensive)?
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  The same reason why we have limits of where and when you can buy alcohol - because it's a licensed drug. Why are people confused about this?
waterglassFull 6y ago
You can still buy alcohol in stores; by take-away this means in a ready-to-drink fashion. Alcohol delivery to a house is fine unless you're assuming people are still having parties.
- monksy 6y ago
  Limit the amouunt of pre-prepared alcohol that can be delivered to a house at one time. You shouldn't be an ondemand keg delivery at this point or delivering 2+ cases in one go. Also part of the delivery portion of this is about supporting the pub/bar. Not the access to alcohol. (Otherwise you'd just go to the store)
  - waterglassFull 6y ago
    Yes, this would make sense.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

danans 6y ago

> * Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned Is restaurant takeaway alcohol even a thing in normal times in the UK? In CA at least, the state temporarily removed the normal restriction on takeaway alcohol in order to help restaurants during lockdowns.

bananapear 6y ago
Not sure if it’s really that common, but it’s a staple of Friday evenings at City firms if you have to stay late. You order a meal via the corporate Deliveroo/Seamless etc., to the firm-paid limit and immediately call the restaurant and ask for beer of the same value to be delivered instead.
CamouflagedKiwi 6y ago
No - but lots of places (particularly pubs) had started doing takeaway alcohol last year in order to have _some_ sales, there was some general restriction-lifting to help with that kind of thing. There's of course not any evidence that it's a meaningful contributor to infection, but lockdown is such a crude tool that it's going to hit it regardless.
monksy 6y ago
All states should have done that in the first 2 weeks. It's irritating to see the bible belt/NC wait 9 freaking months to now allow for take away alcohol. It feels like the governments are: 1. Trying to limit the enforcement and severity of actions or 2. They don't know what they're doing. (Which creates more resistance)

foota 6y ago

It does make sense imo to allow elite sports to continue while banning amateurs, there are relatively few elite players so the additional risk overall is low.

gruez 6y ago
You can make the same argument for top level ministers. eg. "well it's fine for the PM and the cabinet to ignore lockdown directives because they're only 0.001% of the uk population" It's still inconsistent, bad for PR, and puts the whole government into question.
- JohnCohorn 6y ago
  I dislike sports, but I do see that making pro sports broadcasts continue could provide the entertainment needed for folks to be happier to stay inside their homes like they should.
  - monksy 6y ago
    I love the fact that they're open and televising the fact that no fans are there. That really stops people from trying to pressure venues from "sneaking in".
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Why not let everyone else sports to stay healthy and strengthen their immune systems, as well as get outside (where it's warm enough) and get the vitamin D they need? Why should people who get paid a million get special treatment over those who are barely making it an unemployed? Being able to shoot some hoops seems more valuable for the 20 year old's mental health than watching some rich top-of-their class play in am empty stadium with cardboard cutouts.
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      Because everyone doing sports kind of defeats the purpose of social distancing.

waterglassFull 6y ago

"__ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat." The problem isn't the take-away alcohol itself, the problem is what people do with it. We routinely get people around our area (East London) who buy take-away beer - stand two meters away from the pub - and drink it with their friends. It promotes people spreading COVID. The UK government aren't confident enough to actually curtail people's behaviour (eg mask wearing in public, fining people etc) that they stop the things that people inherently do. I don't think it's a great policy, but it's a step in the right direction. The science itself is all in the messaging and tone.. but they make it easy to get out of with "valid reasons". Stay home.

monksy 6y ago
That's kind of (rolls eyes on pure practical sense) how Chicago is handling this. Our liqour sales are banned after 9pm from stores, and bars are able to do carryout|outdoor (we have some Canadian spies that live here.. so outdoor dining is still a thing [It's 0C or below on average right now.. chill it's a joke]) until 11pm. My best guess for the store liqour sales is that the southside used liqour stores as a bar and would congregate outside, also the limitation of store liquor sales limits people going to impromptu parties. Behavior change is hard to do right, but it also can be changed in completely unrelated but minor inconvenced changes. (I.e. changing a process or labeling may be more effective than a control and punish model) It's also very difficult to communicate for free societies on why a restuarant or bar ban still needs to be in place when the black market succeeds [underground raves/parties etc]. (Sigh "studies that claim most of the transmission in a household vs bars" (well where did that household interact with a different household... ))
toolz 6y ago
There isn't any science there, just conjecture from the government on how their restrictions will alter social behavior. It's rather mind blowing to me after seeing extremely well funded and massive projects like the war on drugs in the U.S. fail, to now where the government thinks it can successfully push society in the right direction with even more drastic measures.

f6v 6y ago

> So alcohol spreads COVID? This always gets me. Isn’t it obvious that alcohol consumption is a social activity? Not all of it, but to a large degree. Limiting the consumption seems logical. Of course, you can’t assess the impact of individual measures at the moment, as you need a controlled experiment and proper statistics. But is this measure really something to be that upset about?

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
> Limiting the consumption seems logical. Lots of "plans" seem logical and this is precisely why technocracy is a vexation on society. Unintended consequences. The presumption of knowledge and control. All of these elite presumptions are illusory and fundamentally hubristic. You know why "limiting the consumption" of alcohol is a dumb suggestion? We have tons of evidence that it was a massive failure: Prohibition and the War on Drugs. No matter how well-intended you are - it'll backfire and people will ignore it. Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Millions of years of evolution have seared into their biology the instinct to be social. The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Not only folly - but abuse. But seriously, it's bizarre. The obdurance of so-called experts set on working against the grain of every human instinct, as though that's likely to maximize the success of their plans.
- f6v 6y ago
  > The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Do you really want to go down that road? Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? Didn’t think so. You see how folly your argument is?
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    > Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? This is non-sequitur. A better comparison is like legally enforcing abstinence to eradicate HIV. If you can't get the idea that isolation is counter-intuitive to humans and damaging to their health and psychology, and therefore bound to be hard to get compliance, I'm not sure what to say. This is why jail is jail. Isolation is unnatural. It's punishment. No one voluntary chooses this.

rusk 6y ago

Alcohol spreads COVID. Not exactly ... but it breaks down social barriers and can cause people to be careless. If we had banned or at least curtailed alcoholic sales I can guarantee you probably the numbers would be half what they are now. A big problem is that once you close pubs clubs and other outlets then people start having secret house parties and these are very hard to police. I guarantee you, that even the best intentioned host will have a super spreader event on their hands before long. It doesn’t take many - 10 even to churn the virus among themselves and then head off home to give it to whomever is there. I’m really sorry that you feel your rights are being curtailed, but what we are living through is hopefully a once in a lifetime event that if we could have just knuckled down at the start and endured some discomfort we would be pretty much over it by now. So much for that “blitz spirit” all we hear is moan moan moan ...

djsumdog 6y ago
This is complete and total arbitrary nonsense. You're taking a conclusion and trying to walk back a path of logic to some type of justification. Let's see this for what it is: arbitrary decisions that curtails the human rights of all human beings by politicians who are figuratively drunk with power. They are banning things for the common people while they leave their regions, have expensive $1k dinners for their political backers and ignoring all the rules they've imposed on the population. From Canada to California to the UK, we watch elected leaders ignore the bullshit rules they put on people, either because they think it doesn't apply to them or they've seen the numbers and know the risks are bullshit. We're talking about a disease that's literally has over a 98% survival rate if you're under 55 (which causes people to spout more "long COVID" narrative media non-sense). 100 years from now, do you really think scholars will see 2020 and 2021 as anything other than the largest cast of mass hysteria to date? Let's isolate the elderly and vulnerable, or anyone who wants to be isolated, and let the rest of the world evaluate their own risks again.
- rusk 6y ago
  Sorry but this is derived from actual contact tracing (not the UK where they haven’t really bothered but a culturally similar neighbour) - but of course you’re so outraged that’s what matters more. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overloo... This article is about 6 months old, and we’ve moved on even more since then. It’s so saddening to see so many bright people unable to keep up. Tell me again about Sweden sad lol

edoceo 6y ago

If England stopped football there'd be riots the next day.

haunter 6y ago
They did back in the spring and there were no riots?
rusk 6y ago
You do realise that England stopped football before even the government got their shiz together?
- edoceo 6y ago
  Clearly I did not. Been a lot to keep up with last few months.

dahfizz 6y ago

This reminds me of how the Massachusetts governor closed hair salons and golf courses ... between the hours of 9:30 pm and 5 am. I'm sure ladies getting their hair done at midnight were the real super spreaders /s. Honestly, its not hard to see how government's hypocrisy and inconsistency fuels conspiracy theories. Another example is the Massachusetts mask mandate that explicitly requires masks when nobody is near you. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, that this is just to remove ambiguity and make enforcement easier. But its not hard to imagine the reaction of someone who is prone to tinfoil hatting when they are told they must always wear a mask outside, even if miles away from the nearest human.

uncledave 6y ago

Takeaway alcohol is not banned. This point was a crap article by the Independent who didn’t read the actual guidelines. Why the downvotes. It's on page 18 of the issued document. ffs.

Someone 6y ago

Takeaway alcohol sales run a real risk of alcohol consumption on the streets in the neighborhood of alcohol sellers. That, in turn, can easily lead to loose interpretation of social distancing rules. The argument for allowing elite sports to go on typically is to give the population some distraction during lockdown (it’s a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses) As to golf: if you allow that, why wouldn’t a group of four people be allowed to kick a football around? Tennis be allowed? Also, part of lockdown is the prevention of people mixing over longer distances. A local outburst of COVID-19 is bad, but if the infected move home over tens of kilometers (as, I guess, is quite normal for golf), you’re asking for a much bigger problem. Having said that, it is safe to assume the government is far from an expert on what are the risky things to do. Nobody is.

iso1210 6y ago

A lot of it is virtue signalling, and that's not a bad thing if you want people to actually think "we're all in this together" Young people can't play football, so rich old white men play golf or go grouse shooting Premier league footballers don't care much if they're playing or not, but the average person wants to watch it on TV. Food delivery is fine, but they don't want people buying alcohol and meeting on the street to drink with friends