Based on this list, here is what I think about the current restrictions. tl;dr they won't work https://twitter.com/rtrnicholl/status/1321391376890822656

1. "Covid-secure" is pure cope. An office or a pub is treated as 'covid-secure' if you have 2m between people even if they will be staying there for hours in still, stagnant air, breathing all over each other.

2. All pubs and restaurants should be closed until case numbers in a given region or city are negligible to zero.

3. Schools should remain open -- controversially, I think they should remain open for in-person teaching -- but this must be understood as being mostly about giving parents the flexibility to let them make adjustments to their own lives

3a. As a corollary, schools should not be permitted to open without mandatory mask-wearing for all children who are old enough to do so. The government should throw money at school heating bills to allow them to open their windows all day, every day, rain or shine.

4. Gyms should (probably) be closed nationally. I suppose they should be able to stay open if they can show they're compelling everyone to wear masks *during* their workout, but that seems pretty unlikely.

5. All university teaching should be remote, right away. If something cannot be done online, e.g. lab practicals, everyone should be masked up if at all possible. I have seen image after image of unmasked lecturers teaching unmasked students. It is disastrous and inexcusable.

5a. Students should be given the right to break their rental contracts if they wish and stay at home after the Christmas break. If they do, landlords should be compensated.

6. As soon as a single coronavirus case is detected in a workplace, school, university, hall of residence, etc, the whole place should be shut down, everyone should be tested twice, and everyone who's positive compelled to self-isolate.

7. The government has, at the moment, effectively no limit on the amount of financial support it can provide, and that financial support is a crucial lever to allow it to force people into compliance. It should act accordingly: spray all of the other suggestions above with cash.

8. The goal should not be 'a low number of cases'. The goal should be 'so few cases we could identify them by name on two sides of A4, and could fit their close contacts into a short pamphlet'. Then and only then can we consider opening up.

9. The self-isolation rules at the border are all well and good but we don't know whether they're being enforced, so it's basically pointless. Either enforce them properly, Taiwan-style, or shut the borders.

10. Regional and local restrictions are a good and effective model, but Tier 3 is nowhere near tight enough. The idea that you can keep a pub open in Tier 3 if it serves meals is insane and laughable and is rightly mocked. It will end up discrediting the local model.

11. Related to 9: if you don't have the manpower to put everyone with a positive test result into forcible quarantine or under tight, live surveillance, you have too many cases and need to tighten up dramatically.

7a (see above for 7): Cases rising exponentially means the cost of dealing with it is also rising exponentially; the earlier you deal with it, the cheaper it is. Someone should explain this to the Treasury before they get another 60,000 people killed.