by spiderwebb » Tue Jan 05, 2021 7:39 pm
The key issue is you do not know whether you have the virus or not and travel outside of your own home, let alone area, is potentially helping the spread.
You can argue over distances all you like, the fact that you might be on the edge of your local authority or the fact that you’re going for a walk up a mountain, possibly meeting no one (or at least the easy possibility of remaining at distance if you do), driving there and back in your car, not stopping in the presence of anyone. Yes, in theory that would be fine.
Unfortunately, the powers that be cannot come up with 65 million different rules, to accommodate all of us. For some the rules will be easy and more flexible by virtue of their postcode, for others not so. Add to that the differing levels of education, understanding and interpretation, not to mention those that refute this whole pandemic, and the rules need to be kept manageable.
I agree that sometimes the rules can seem to be ‘strange’ to say the least, and likewise does it matter whether we have 4 levels or 5 tiers, or 5 tiers plus extended Tier 4 (is that 6 ?).
Personally, I’ve travelled nowhere, except to my extended household once over the festive period (I live alone) and for food shopping, but return to work next week will have me travelling 37 miles each way to a different local authority to do non-essential work in the largest hospital north of the Central belt, but that’s fine of course.
As for mental health, yes it does have an impact and as with the levels/tiers the impact can vary too, but at a time of year when daylight is at its lowest, it can be a struggle.