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🚨Important changes to lockdown/self-isolation regulations from 5pm

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

£800 'house party' FPN & police can now access track & trace data

https://t.co/k9XCpVsXhC

 “Large gathering offence”

As trailed by Home Secretary last week there is now a fixed penalty notice of £800 (or £400 if you pay within 14 days) for participating in an gathering of over 15 people in a private residence
Fixed Penalty Notices double for each subsequent “large gathering offence” up to £6,400

Compare:
- Ordinary fixed penalty notice is £200 or £100 if paid in 14 days
- Holding or being involved in the holding of a gathering of over 30 people is £10,000
Second big change:

Since September has been a legal requirement to sell-isolate if you test positive/notified by Track & Trace of exposure to someone else who tested positive

Police can now be given access to NHS Track & Trace data if for the purpose of enforcement/prosecution
This will make it easier for police to enforce people breaking self-isolation rules. Currently there has been practically no enforcement.

Data says only a small proportion of people meant to be self-isolating are fully doing so. https://t.co/LcwKfQ6PVx
But obviously this raises important human rights questions because police will be given access to information about our movements and social interactions.

They are only permitted to use that data for the purposes of Covid rules enforcement - but will they?
- Will data be kept safe and secure?
- Can police resist the temptation of using the data for other criminal enforcement purposes?
- Do we want the police having this information at all?
- Is enforcement going to make things better? Or make people less willing to share info?
As I said in the tweet quoted above, track & trace has mostly failed but we don't know if because police haven't been able to enforce. Could equally be lack of follow up, bad messaging, basic incompetence. As with all things Covid related, don't assume enforcement is the answer
Covid regulations table now updated https://t.co/5A0SJvCGWP
Important point made by @mikarv that the ability for the police to access Track & Trace data does *not* extend to data caught by the NHS phone app. See my thread on the self-isolation law https://t.co/Bn8WQJvMWn
I also made a YouTube video on the self-isolation law - nb. as the description says the self-isolation rules have subsequently been amended to reduce the isolation times down from 14 to 10 days in certain circumstances https://t.co/CxgnH6MekA
Good question. As far as I can tell (as usually you have to piece together two bits of law to figure it out) it is the contact details (including name, address), the notification of positive test/exposure, the period of isolation. So...
... should not include the details of who they came into contact with, however the police may be able to figure that out if they piece together multiple notifications given at the same time.
Don’t forget the police don’t necessarily want to be doing this either https://t.co/QUhfmMh03C

More from Adam Wagner

Adam Wagner
Adam Wagner
@AdamWagner1
🚨New lockdown regulations just published, in force tomorrow

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 3) and (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

https://t.co/L5jwlTDaIE

(Thread)


These are not a new set of regulations: they are amendments an old set of regulations

Which we thought were gone! But they are back

Welcome back No.3 regulations

A quick thing before we continue!

I have been analysing these laws for free for 9 months now - if you want to say thanks and have a few £ to spare please give to my @LawCentres fundraiser

They give free legal advice to people who need it

They also amend the All Tiers regulations

Oh god it's all amendments by paragraph references

Basically all of England now in Tier 4 and Tier 4 is amended but not by a huge amount

This really is a terrible way to make laws on the fly - who can possibly understand it?!


So, to explain, you need 2 documents open if you want to understand what is going on:

All Tiers regulations (Tiers 1-4, 2 December as amended) https://t.co/IraPQ112ak

And amendments https://t.co/L5jwlTDaIE

No sensible way of doing except by track changes, on it now, back soon
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Adam Wagner
Adam Wagner
@AdamWagner1
A short thread on why I am dubious that the government can lawfully impose charges on travellers entering the UK for quarantine and testing (proposed at £1,750 and £210)

1/

The UK has signed up to the International Health Regulations (IHA) 2005. These therefore create binding international legal obligations on the UK.

The IHA explicitly prevent charging for travellers' quarantine or medical examinations.

https://t.co/n4oWE8x5Vg /2


International law is not actionable in a UK court unless it has been implemented in law.

But it can be used as an aide to interpretation where a statute isn't clear as to what powers it grants.

See e.g. Lord Bingham in A v SSHD https://t.co/RXmib1qGYD

/3


The Quarantine regulations will, I assume, be made under section 45B of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984

https://t.co/54L4lHGMEr

/4


That gives pretty broad powers but I can't see any power to charge for quarantine. Perhaps it will be inferred from somewhere else in Part 2A?

But...
UK
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Adam Wagner
Adam Wagner
@AdamWagner1
A year ago, the idea that you could close every restaurant, café and pub in the capital without a Parliamentary vote or even a debate would have been unthinkable. Today we have allowed government by executive decree and it now seems normal. Covid lawmaking has corroded democracy

To explain: since March, the government has used the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act 1984 to pass lockdown laws - over 60 (I have listed them here https://t.co/5Z1p3gVjbX).


The lockdown laws have imposed stringent restrictions on movement, freedom of association, family life, religion etc. But each and every lockdown law passed has used the super emergency procedure which allows the government to pass them without a parliamentary vote for 28 days

The government did this for months before MPs revolted at which point it promised to put any major changes before parliament first. It has done this since the three tiers in mid-October.

BUT...

(1) The govt is still only giving parliament about 12 hours to consider laws and the vote is a simple yes or no

(2) Changes to tiered areas are not considered major changes so these don't go to a vote until 28 days later by which time it has usually changed.
POLITICS
Adam Wagner
Adam Wagner
@AdamWagner1
This is a thread on human rights and the Coronavirus.

It will be a mixture of discussion, ideas and links and I will try to keep adding to it as things progress (THREAD)

I have been thinking about how human rights values and laws can help us traverse the next few months of deep crisis - across the planet.

We could 'suspend' or ignore human rights as a 'peace time nicety' as has happened in the past.

But to do so would be a huge error /1

As a preliminary, it is really, really important to understand that looking at the potential response to Coronavirus through a human rights lens does not generate any easy answers. I’m not going to offer any. /2

Another preliminary: as with response to terrorism (there are similarities here) it is natural that when people are frightened, critical voices raising ‘niceties’ like individual rights are seen as annoying and beside the point. They. Are. Not. We know that from history. /3

What can human rights offer? Well, for one thing this is exactly the kind of crisis which the modern human rights system was designed for.

I’m going to start with the general and then move onto the specific /4
ALL
Adam Wagner
Adam Wagner
@AdamWagner1
A short personal reflection on what happened yesterday.

I wanted to wait a bit before saying this as I think yesterday was for those who experienced the sharpest end of the disastrous breakdown between the Labour Party and Jewish people during the past 5 years.

I started talking about Labour antisemitism here in 2017 I think. My key aim was to try and act as a bridge between the left of the Jewish community and the left of the Labour Party. I used my platform on social media to do it and quite quickly I developed some back channels...

... to who I thought were sensible people in Jeremy Corbyn's office and Momentum. I kept those channels going for quite a long time. I found this paragraph from emails I exchanged in Spring 2018 with Laura Murray in Corbyn's office. It now seems quite prescient.


As I delved more into the issues and heard, privately, what was going on in the movement itself, I slowly and regrettably came to the conclusion that the issue was so serious it needed an "independent body" to come in. It was in Autumn 2018 that @antisemitism approached me...

... to assist in making a submission to the @EHRC to try and persuade them to enter the fray. I was skeptical, given the the UK's human rights organisations had stayed almost entirely silent (to this day, to their shame) on the issue, though I knew it was utterly necessary...
UK

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Laughter is the best medicine. It can relax muscles. It also gives exercise to body and helps relax joints.

It is possible to laugh on same joke many times but only very pure heart people can do it

Today's world, laughter is very unnatural. It is only to impress others. But real feeling laughter is missing. Only innocent people r able to laugh really.

#LaughterThread

It is not zaruri to create laughter by insulting others.

In early days people used to create laughter by situation. That is always more comedy than just Paxi type insulting laughter.

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In medicine, reckoning with racism includes reappraising the very syntax we use every day. Proud to add my voice w/ @J_Ikeme and @RWGrantMD in this @JAMAInternMed pub addressing:

Does race/ethnicity belong in the first line of the patient

Some background: I’ve struggled with this question since early in medical school

Medical syntax is designed to communicate information in a predictable sequence with key elements prioritized to facilitate efficient communication and formation of an assessment and plan

2/

From preclinical lectures to Qbank questions to clerkship rotations, race/ethnicity was often prioritized in the same sentence as age + gender.

I grew accustomed to reading/hearing: a 70-year-old Black man w/ history of x, a 50-year-old Hispanic woman presented w/ y.

3/

However, when it came time for me to use race/ethnicity, there was always tension. Race/ethnicity are self/socially-ascribed identities that in clinical practice are almost always assumed by providers based on appearance. I was also concerned about the potential for bias

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I wondered how my own care would be impacted or not impacted by my ethnicity (Hispanic) – I have light skin so I’m not sure if my doctors would even identify me as such – but how would my care be different if I was presented as a 30-year-old Hispanic male?

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I gave masks the benefit of the doubt in the spring/summer of 2020. I have since changed my mind and see no scenario where it makes sense to wear them in public.

Even if they provided 100% protection, I believe masks to be harmful. An explanation below 👇👇👇

Let's say masks provide 100% protection to both the wearer and others (perhaps non-masked individuals) in close proximity. This is perhaps the worst scenario.

The immune system requires a consistent influx of both microbes and viruses to remain trained.

Halting the exposure to microbes and viruses is extremely harmful in the long run and leaves you exposed to enormous risk in the future.

Without training, you will become susceptible to even weaker microbes that your immune system would have normally handled with ease.

This is no different than laying in bed for a prolonged period of time. Walking up stairs, an activity that normally would not be a challenge, would all of a sudden become difficult.

Your immune system would slowly degrade similarly not able to complete previous tasks.

This is particularly harmful to children who's immune systems do not have the training of adults and would leave them more vulnerable. Children have the most life to lose so it harms them the most.
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Celestial Emily
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Our conscious experience exists. In fact, it's the only thing you can directly observe, as everything about reality and how we perceive it is filtered through how our brains process stimuli and information. You are the only one who can define who and what you are.

Don't get me wrong, I am a materialist who believes the universe exists in the absence of beings who can observe it from an intelligence standpoint, but we are all collections of atoms, our function governed by chemical processes, not perfectly replicated by the process of birth.

Our means of DNA replication is imprecise because of billions of years of random evolution. We are on one branch of many, and there is countless variation in how all living beings are formed, and how we classify traits of those creatures, including sex and reproduction methods.

It would be an error to say that people who are intersex and/or transgender are the results of mistakes or errors in reproduction, because it implies DNA is "trying" to create a binary model of people and sometimes gets it wrong. It doesn't "try" to do anything; DNA != conscious.

Rather, our biological blueprints are not precise, and this is true for all living things. We can crossbreed plants and animals because of that imprecise nature, it's responsible for what we perceive as the "races" of people, etc. We can observe variation everywhere.
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Shiven Taneja
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I have created a step-by-step guide to building a #CorsiRosenthalBox. Thank you @JimRosenthal4 & @CorsIAQ for approving it. Displaying it in waiting rooms, offices, schools, and libraries will help more people stay safe this season. Please DM me if you need a PDF or another size.


Also, thank you to @LadyScorcher and @amandalhu!
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