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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

> Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable.

I can understand why people want things to look forward to - and why businesses and people whose jobs will reopen would want dates in advance so they can plan.

But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.

That's what they did with the second lockdown - announced upfront that it was from to 31st October to 2nd December. Then they kept to their timetable and reopened things even though every metric on https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ made it clear we hadn't stopped the second wave - and now we have a third lockdown.

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> But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.

Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.

This is also why I mentioned criteria - even if not a fixed timetable, we could at least know what sort of criteria would trigger a rule change. I.E. when we get down to X cases per day, X deaths etc etc, the schools will open. If it keeps falling then the rule of six reapplies in outdoor public spaces ...

At least something rather than just being locked down indefinitely.

I agree the lifting of Lockdown 2 was a really poor choice.

> Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. After the second timeline turns out to be completely made up, people will stop trusting them and add "more distrust of government" to their despair.

So come up with a timeline that's not made up, then.

In the absence of Government leadership, I've had to do it for myself - I have a set date beyond which I will no longer follow social distancing. If I didn't have that, I'd have snapped long ago, which is strictly a worse outcome.

People individually snapping and choosing to do whatever they want is more dangerous than the alternative of the Government explicitly announcing that lockdown is a time-limited policy (and as such providing more support to the hardest-hit individuals).

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Well, if that's even a good analogy, since lockdown is clearly nowhere near perfect, it's trading life for life.

Again, I think that's why criteria need to be set out, rather than a strict timetable.

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