There are some areas that from the behavioural point of view, not medical point of view are extremely problematic and not really talked about much. One is the government calling it self isolation rather than what it really is which is quarantine. The second aspect which is more important is the length of time. So originally people were self isolating for 7 days earlier in the pandemic, now people are told to observe much stricter measures not leaving the grounds of a property at all and for 10 days or 14 days depending on how whether it's a test or someone believed to come in contact with someone who tested positive (although some others can leave depending on circumstances but let's not get into that). This just looks complete nonsense to the population and aside from economics and other factors will be why only 20% of people were sticking to it.
People might get very upset about writing that, until they realise that France had an open debate about it and then recently reduced quarantine from 14 days to 7, for the same reasoning. That's not encouraging people not to quarantine, it's something that's clearly not working and difficult to make to work with higher than 20% of people sticking to it.
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I believe a lot of the stuff the public was told at the start has stuck in their heads and has a greater weight than anything said since around June. So washing hands, worrying about sanitiser being around, think of it as a mild illness in most people (interesting with the long covid debate). Early comments talking about herd immunity. Early comments talking about immunity. The only exception to this is masks where that one came much later and people have taken on board. Probably because of those daily political press conferences why people stopped listening, among other reasons.
It is difficult to get a population to do anything for more than a few weeks and I agree that the moving goalposts make it vastly harder.
It's funny that around election time they fall over themselves backwards to really get to understand what message works and how people are engeaginging with it. But when it comes to situations like this which really do need to be understood it's a total void. Early on much of the advice was just re-enforcing annual flu message. Which to most require little change or effect and is taken as a given in many peoples mind.
They become one a off change which tend to be easy to accept. Covid requires behaviour change day after day so the message needs to change. Telling people what
not to do is easier than advising them about what to do in the right way and in the right circumstances. But that's not happening. Leading to what we have now and most not having a clue what the right things is to do. Add in the mass of SM rubbish and other crap that's now had time to build up. which early on was less mainstream and you have even a bigger problem. Much of the main steam media has just added to the fire. The Government ,wider political debate and the media using mostly scientific and clinical language as throw away sound bites with little context did and continues to make it worse. Something which Whitty, Valance and others have had to learn quickly.
Your right about June and not much has worked since which most likely is largely off the back of mid may and the big push of the "Stay alert"
message. Which lead to the continuing confused messages about what might be possible to do or not. you can't expect. The relative secrecy and lack of transparency around the government has just compounded it. You can't just go for one extreme to the other without backing it with clear messages and clear information.
Who did come up with "self isolation" ? It look's to be the widely used term in many placers WHO seem to like so maybe it's just been taken as read that's what you call it. I agree it's use is problematic quarantine is mostly understood it's been in use long enough. Was that thought to be outdated or not user friendly enough? I've not seen any back ground to why it's fallen from favour.
Do you know which counties have a high compliance rate with self isolation that don't use strict enforcement to back it up?
Do any that have that approach also provide support when you're asked to do it or do they just expect you find a way as we do?
The 500 quid idea just won't do it it's more than that what's needed.
