Community members unsure of ‘Freedom Day’

ON Monday July 19, Boris Johnson lifted the vast majority of the remaining Covid-19 restrictions in England, as the country moved to step four of its coronavirus lockdown roadmap.

However, the prime minister warned cases are set to rise even if restrictions including social distancing and the legal requirement to wear face masks are removed.

This week at Londra Gazete we asked community members their view on ‘freedom day’ and if it was the right decision to make by the government.

Dervişe Kızıl : “I don’t agree with the freedom day on the 19th July. Cases have increased over the last 4 weeks and are still rising so why open everything? Don’t make sense. Another month would not have hurt but lots more people would be vaccinated. There are still many vulnerable people like my husband who is now very worried, even with him being fully vaccinated he can still catch Covid. People are still being admitted into hospitals, which is very worrying.”

Ozzie Gezici: “The Coronavirus is not going anywhere. Right now, we would likely see an increase when we lift restrictions in the fall or next spring. The main benefit of the vaccination program is that it provides lower hospitalizations and a reduction in severe illness rates, rather than reducing cases. There is also the possibility that immunity will weaken six months after vaccination, so now is the best time to lift quarantines. A brand new approach has been introduced, where the citizens, not the government, will decide on the restrictions related to the epidemic… This is a gamble taken by the government, and unless infection rates slow down, we may go into another national lockdown and the government will have to reintroduce restrictions. The government is making the right decision, but we all have to give up personal precautions again.”

Faruk Tinaz: “The government is failing to pursue a rational decision and they need to drop the plans to abolishing all of the restrictions. They have got almost every big decision wrong within this pandemic and people have died, economic damage was done and sadly more will follow. Just as we were about to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the government threw the entire county into another chaos by abolishing all of the Covid restrictions. Rather than going forward with this pandemic we seem to be heading backwards.”

Tolga Hassan:  “The increase of the cases for Covid is the government’s fault, they introduce restrictions but was not strict about them at all when they decided to ease the restrictions knowing that the cases will increase but then punish us for the cases going up… If the government or so-called experts know that lifting the restrictions will increase the rate why would they lift them in the first place? Is this cause its summer for people to spend money to improve the economy? Another lockdown in September will cause riots and people will lose the last remaining faith they have with the so-called leaders of the country.”