Quote Originally Posted by jackal2 View Post
The problem is, as you acknowledge, that the "Stay Home" message was beginning to lose its effect anyway. It has served a purpose, more successfully than some ever expected, but lockdown fatigue has definitely been setting in. The Government knows people are becoming more restless and active, so the task is to try to keep the public onside by acknowledging this reality, but doing so in a phased and cautious way.

As such, it's necessary to adopt a more nuanced position that can't be summed up as easily in two words. 'Stay Home' meant stay home. 'Stay Alert' in effect means we know you're going to go out more, but please keep up your social distancing and don't get complacent. Rightly or wrongly, it's trusting the public to use their common sense, which ultimately any Government has to do in a free society.
You certainly make more sense than anyone else on the right here, but I think a big mistake the government made early on was advising us not to go out rather than telling us not to go out, which is what they did after a while. We now seem to be back to the advisory stage, which given the earlier failure seems highly irresponsible. At least Scotland and Wales have maintained the sensible strategy.