Interesting to read this about how you guys are experiencing things. It seems to be that it's turning into a battle of health v economy when I think we all know economy = health. (Poverty = really bad health)
In Northern Ireland we are on the last day of what they called a "circuit breaker" which lasted 4 weeks. (I hate that name). Basically we'd reached a point where we had more people in hospital and in ICU than we had had at any point in the first wave back in March/April. Our hospitals were showing to be around 110% capacity.
The first 2 weeks coincided with school holidays so for those 2 weeks the only things open were "essentials" like supermarkets etc. The schools went back and still we had bars, restaurants, hairdressers etc shut down.
Now our attempt at a government can't decide what to do. The law expires at midnight tonight. Bars and restaurants etc have no idea whether to order in food/drink/put their staff on rotas.
The health minister has a report that says the restrictions need to be extended by 2 weeks.
The economy minister says we need shops. restaurants, hairdressers to reopen.
They held a vote. All parties except one (the DUP who have the economy portfolio in our PR powersharing Government systems) voted to extend the regulations by 2 weeks.
But because of our unique historic religious conflict situation we have a "petition of concern" or a veto that parties can theoretically use to ensure that any laws that are proposed cannot unduly impact one side of the community (so if someone brought in a law saying protestant people couldn't be employed as teachers the veto could be used).
The Democratic Unionist Party used this veto to stop the 2 week extension of the lockdown regulations.
So not only has a virus now been politicised, but it's also been religioucised now
