Coronavirus closures reveal vast scale of China’s secretive wildlife farm industry | Environment

/coronavirus-england-lockdown-shops-park

  • The low-paid need Britain to reopen. But this outbreak isn’t over | Business | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/28/low-paid-britain-reopen-outbreak-isnt-over
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    According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as many as 80% of the bottom tenth of earners in Britain are either unable to work from home or are in sectors that have been closed. This compares with about 25% of workers in the top-paid tenth.

    The continuation of tough controls risks the emergence of a two-tier society, split between those able to work from home, and those for whom work vanishes entirely.

    Resuming economic activity across the country will inevitably bring people into closer contact as businesses reopen and social life gradually resumes, increasing the risks of a second wave of infections later this summer. Such an outcome would require renewed lockdown controls later this year, inflicting further pain on companies and workers.

    For this reason, many restrictions will remain in place. But there are glaring inconsistencies in the government’s approach. People will be able to down a pint at the pub but remain barred from gyms. Teenagers can head to the shops with their friends but their schools remain closed.

    The mixed messages create confusion and erode trust in a government that has already depleted much of its political capital thanks to its late, chaotic, and costly approach to entering lockdown, as well as its double standards over the lockdown behaviour of No 10’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.

    #confinement #Royaume_Uni

    • Déconfinement à deux vitesses encore : ceux qui s’en branlent (comme les politiciens aux soirées électorales) et ceux qui angoissent d’autant plus et restent d’autant plus confiné·es. J’ai des ami·es qui ont du mal, après l’alarmisme du confinement, à se dire que tout va bien, il faut aller travailler-consommer.

      Coronavirus hasn’t gone away. So why are people acting as if it has ? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett | Opinion | The Guardian
      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/17/coronavirus-england-lockdown-shops-parks-social-distancing
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      The people a few houses down have been having parties in their garden. Meanwhile my dad, in north-west Wales, remains in almost total lockdown. There are the geographical discrepancies, but the other disconnect is psychological. People no longer bother with the 2-metre distance rule. Many aren’t wearing masks in shops. People no longer politely step aside to give one another space on park paths.

      There were always people who didn’t observe lockdown, whose way of coping seemed to be denial, or whose perception of risk was different to my own. The strange, Crucible-esque shaming streak that hit the country at one stage seems to have dissipated, thankfully. I made the decision early on not to get het up about other people breaking the rules. Better, I thought, to be able to look back on this, maybe in a few decades’ time, and be able to say that I did my best to protect other people. Better to just privately lose respect for someone, rather than to get on your high horse about it, or try to humiliate them. And anyway, Dominic Cummings put paid to all that. He’s part of the reason why the lockdown has unravelled so dramatically.

      What we are left with are people living in two parallel universes. In one, there are people who – knowing that the virus has not gone away – feel gaslit by the fact that things are opening up when there is absolutely no scientific reason for that to be happening.

      Because of this, it feels almost as though we are going mad.