I noticed that Whetherspoon have started talking about re-opening their pubs. It was interesting listening to Boris last night where he made the comment that opening pubs would be a bad idea. I guess that is as close as it can get to a Conservative Prime Minister saying to a major Conservative donor in public “Don’t be so dumb”.
Of course this led to news programmes coming up with pub landlord interviews.
One major landlord described how he would ensure social distancing in his establishment. Now I did have a little to do with contamination control in my work life. Not a major expert, but I did take part in an international review covering four European countries. I can say that the ideas he was putting forward might not be the ones I would choose.
But it was the next comment that made me want to comment. He said “We will be checking temperatures at the entry. But if you have a bracelet showing you have been tested and that will get you to the front of the queue for entry.”
As one friend said, A test is like an MOT – it doesn’t guarantee your car is safe 10 minutes after it leaves the test station. In fact, with COVID, by the time you get the results you could have become infected.
This got me to thinking – the people that really are safest to hang around with are not the people that have been tested (remember a test station is a place with a high number of infected people). No – the people that have worked at strict isolation (those over 65 for example) are actually the safest people to mix with.
If you are the sort of person lining up to get in to a pub then you are not the sort of person that should be allowed in the pub. The people that should be allowed in the pub first are the people that are not interested in going in to the pub first.
This is an interesting conundrum – the people that have been most isolated are the best people to release from isolation. But of course, there is no economic benefit in giving them priority. I wonder if we should start an exclusive club for those in strict isolation?