This is a response to Mr Southwell and for consideration by all. Its subject: our obligation to self-isolate. Mr Southwell, You are confused. 1.This first became apparent on 2.6.20 when you wrote: “Government advice remains to stay at home apart from exercise. This necessarily means that if you can have your shopping delivered you should do so.” The advice included four exceptions, not only exercise, also shopping. And the advice did not “necessarily” mean that if you could have shopping delivered you had to stay in. That was an assumption of yours. It is not justified by anything that I can find that was ever said by the government. Tell me where and when that was said. 2. On 3.6. 20, you wrote: “You are probably the only person on this thread who didn't understand that 'Stay at Home' meant, among other things get your shopping delivered if you can”. Your statement that “'Stay at Home' meant, among other things get your shopping delivered if you can’” is absurd. Words mean what words mean. “Stay at Home” means “Stay at Home”, nothing more, certainly nothing as specific as “get your shopping delivered if you can”. 3. You are suggesting that, at some point in the sequence of instructions given by the government, they stated in bald terms “Stay at home” but gave people no idea how they could get food, so that they needed to work out (“understand”) how to get food, not only that but also that they could not go out if they could have shopping delivered. You suggested (3.6.20) that you and others were able to understand that, but I alone did not. Your argument depends on whether, as a matter of fact, the government ever ordered people to stay at home but left them to work out (“understand”) that they could go out to shop. It is inherently improbable that the government would order people to say at home but not tell them how to get food. Please, tell me when the government gave such a bald, unhelpful order? Date? Your argument depends upon it. If you cannot, your suggestion is predicated upon an event that never occurred. It was on March 23 that the government first told everyone (and not only those displaying symptoms) to stay at home. Far from leaving us at the mercy of inference or having to “understand” how we could get food, it set out those four exceptions, one of which was buying food. No one needed to “understand” anything. It was spelled out for them!You have also suggested that this permission depended on the impossibility of having food delivered. There is not a word to that effect in the 23.3.20 statement. I have no idea what gave you that idea. Another contributor made the same suggestion. When I asked him to explain where the idea came from, he failed to do so. Can you?
Andrew Farmer ● 1787d