Lots of people did follow the guidance despite it being really difficult for them to do so, and it's yet another story where it seems to be a case of 'rules for thee, but not for me'.
The right way to handle this would have been to confess and apologise and say it was a lapse of judgement - I think lots of people, understanding the difficult situation he was in would have accepted that. To brazen it out and claim it was good judgement and responsible behaviour is to admit that the government guidance and response as a whole was flawed.
Of course when making the rules you should bloody well get them right in order to be fair to people with the first kind of attitude.
*if I remember correctly from my previous work on the british social attitudes survey
Have you got a source for that? Sarah Gilbert, last month thought it was possible to be infected more than once: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-52344676/coronavirus-poss...
And the questions about how long the immunity lasts are about how many months not how many days.
At the time, tests were strictly rationed to hospital patients and healthworkers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist)...
There's is no fathomable justification for that and exposed his contempt for the rules.
The lockdown rules the country was under set these rules as a condition - you may leave the house only to exercise, and you may not travel to get to a place to exercise. This was to stop people going to tourist spots, petrol stations and other places they may interact with others.
You're right in a way - a single family doing it probably causes no actual harm because they're the only people present. Now - who gave this unelected government advisor special permission to go there and be that single family, while nobody else could, and was locked down hard?
He's so blatantly lying about the "eye sight test", it shows a total lack of respect for the public and his role as part of the UK government. They should be, if anything, following the rules more than anyone else in order to set an example.
Stated reasons were (1) reducing load on health services from road accidents (which has worked - my friend in A&E says he's "never sat around on his arse so much at work before"); (2) reduce transmission of virus at fuel stations, risk to breakdown services, etc
If I remember rightly, there was actually a bit of a controversy over this because the police in some areas got it into their heads that no-one should be driving to places to walk full stop and started pushing that message and complaining about people not following it, even though that wasn't actually a rule. Though it's entirely possible a lot of the media coverage of that has also been memory-holed and only exists in the Wayback machine; the BBC in particular have been completely rewriting articles a lot lately.
(The restriction to one session of exercise per day was also only legally enforceable in Wales and not England, for some reason, even though it was part of the advice in both.)
There was a law mismatch here. The government were saying you can't do that, however the legal powers they had (and the powers they delegated to the police) were not sufficient to actually stop people for some of the things they were stopping them for.
I think Derbyshire police were the worst for that.
So it's possible here that Dominic Cummings didn't break the lockdown laws, but he certainly broke the lockdown rules his own government were telling the public.
I feel for people stuck in apartments!
He drove from an area with high rates of Covid-19, with his covid-19 positive wife, to an area with low rates of Covid-19.
This is entirely the point of lockdown -- to reduce the spread of the disease.
Saying "he was just being a good father" is insulting to all the other dads who didn't break lockdown.
Also, the rewriting of history, implying all along that you were just meant to use good judgement.
What made that tactic especially fragrant was the fact that Cummings also had a dying family member in hospital who he and his other family members couldn't visit, comfort, etc during the same time period and rather than consider that maybe this might be a reason to step away from that argument, everyone seems to have doubled down and used his family's grief as proof that they were right.
Quite frankly, I think a lot of people don't like him and they're putting the boot in to get him to resign.
But his account of his actions is so untruthful. It is obvious to most that being on a remote farm would be a nicer environment to isolate than a house in central London. This simply _must_ have been a factor in his decision. He did not even contemplate seeking childcare support at home, he stated this himself in his press conference, it hadn't even crossed his mind.
His trip was not safe, and should have been used as a last resort. Is that the impression you got? That he had exhausted all other options?
If you had, then I would say you are even more political motivated than those you are saying are looking to give him the "boot".
He claimed he put his child and covid-19 positive wife in a car and drove 250 miles to get child care. But he had childcare available to him locally, and he didn't make use of the childcare when he got to Durham.
He then claimed that he didn't know if it was safe for him to drive or not (his wife can drive, why didn't she?) so he put them all in the car and drove to Barnard Castle.
He's trying to make use of the safeguarding exemption in the law to say he fled London because his family was at risk. But that would only cover the travel from London to Durham. It doesn't cover the travel from Durham back to this risky dangerous home in London.
I am outraged that he didn't at the time realise that others may need to do similar, and issue clarification on the rules to publicise that this sort of thing was permissible.