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news
coronavirus - cyclists rides past social distance warningExercising more than once a day is reasonable during lockdown, says new CPS guidance for England
New guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on enforcement of emergency legislation in England aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus states that exercising more than once a day is likely to be a reasonable excuse for leaving the house, as is driving to undertake exercise.
News of the guidance comes after foreign secretary Dominic Raab confirmed yesterday that the current lockdown across the UK would continue in force for a further three weeks, with no changes to existing rules.
> Cycling dos and don'ts in a time of pandemic – how to be a responsible cyclist
Under The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, reasons people may leave their home include to undertake exercise, provided it is done alone or with household members.
But the absence of any stipulation in the legislation of duration or distance of any exercise, not to mention whether multiple sessions are allowed during the day has led to confusion since Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the rules on 23 March.
Now, the CPS has produced guidance to police forces in England – legislation is devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and may vary slightly – over what is likely to constitute a reasonable excuse for leaving the house, and what is not.
The CPS guidance has been republished here by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs Council, who say: “Some public statements made soon after the adoption of the Regulations suggested that members of the public could only leave their homes if ‘essential’ to do so.
“However, this is not the test set out in the Regulations and there is no legal basis for a requirement in those terms to be imposed. The applicable threshold is that of ‘reasonable excuse’.”
They point out, however, that “each case still needs to be considered based on the individual facts as they present themselves,” and that the list “is not exhaustive and officers are required to use their discretion and judgement in deciding what is and what isn’t ‘reasonable’ in the circumstances.”
Under the heading of “Exercise,” the CPS says that activities that are “likely to be reasonable” include “going for a run or cycle or practising yoga, walking in the countryside or in cities,” and “attending an allotment.”
Also deemed “likely to be reasonable” are the following:
Driving to countryside and walking (where far more time is spent walking than driving).
Stopping to rest or to eat lunch while on a long walk.
Exercising more than once per day - the only relevant consideration is whether repeated exercise on the same day can be considered a ‘reasonable excuse’ for leaving home.
According to the CPS, activities that are “not likely to be reasonable” are:
Driving for a prolonged period with only brief exercise.
A short walk to a park bench, when the person remains seated for a much longer period.
In comments to the guidance, the CPS says: “Exercise can come in many forms, including walks. Exercise must involve some movement, but it is acceptable for a person to stop for a break in exercise.
“However, a very short period of ‘exercise’ to excuse a long period of inactivity may mean that the person is not engaged in ‘exercise’ but in fact something else.
“It is lawful to drive for exercise,” the CPS adds.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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82 comments
My feeling is based on a safety first approach.
Ride less outdoors, don't go out unless necessary and follow the advice.
I get all the arguments about comparing this to a standard flu and that this could be seen as the onset of marshall law, I do.
But I am taking no chances as i feel that sets the best example to my family.
yes, the NHS is coping - as I understand it, the Nightingale hospitals are only seeing small numbers of patients. We are succeeding in "flattening the curve." The NHS is making an all-out effort on this, which cannot be sustained at this rate by the staff indefinitely and don't forget that to achieve this all other non-emergency activity has been put on hold in order that can't last forever either.
Remember too that it is medicine, based on science and observable, reproduceable fact that will fix this. Politicising it, starting international blame games, me having every psychosomatic symptom my imagination could come up with, and the cyclists who close-passed me today and aren't going to help very much.
No-one wanted or intended this to happen, no one wants to control the citizenry more, it wasn't made in a lab - however maybe there are some who could have done things differently so it didn't.
I had a chest infection in 2002 - it came from nowhere. If you breathed in deep, you got the distinct feeling your lungs were full, about half-way; my chest wheezed and gurgled and I was coughing-up rubbery phlegm for weeks afterwards. Although I don't remember feeling ill, this plus memories of staying underwater just that little bit too long, and someone compressing my windpipe for a few seconds in a playground scrap mean I really don't want to catch it. It sounds terrifying.
There is no point in a massive insolvency merry-go-round. we can't stay "on hold" forever either. Maybe the onset of the northern hemisphere summer will buy us some time to get some new medicines worked out.
Do not treat this monster lightly, it will kill you! we do not know who and why, yes those that are older or have co mobility are at higher risk, so are those in
ethnic minority (this may be social domestic not genitic!). Health care workers are at higher risk becuse the sicker you are the more you off load virus. Many who have died have not just have had years taken from them but decades! Do not be like the selfish right wing who think that this is just a problem for the poor the sick those who are not like us, It can kill you, yes you!!! Or it will kill some one who you infected but you are fine so that not a problem is it? Watch America it going to get realy realy bad trust me. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52301633
Erm, no it won't. Figures for those who have no existing comorbities are in the region of 0.025% - 0.6%.
It's like claiming that taking a flight 'will kill you!'
(give me some poetic licence, I know the figures are not identical!)
Or it will kill some one who you infected but you are fine so that not a problem is it?
You may be asytomatic but you can still pass it on to someone who will not be so lucky, they - you may also get proper sick and give it to a health care - Key worker, you know those faces that sine out from our screens working for jack all and die from this. Be less Trump Please!!!
Well, yes. As I mentioned, my wife is asthmatic. She could die of it. I am technically 'obese' and in my mid-fifties (but am very tall so people just think I'm 'a big bloke'), so I'm probably at risk, too.
Just as we are both at risk from the flu.
Here is another link which may be of interest..
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/11/coronavirus-fact-check-3-covid19-is-...
I don't care for that article.
Firstly, it uses a straw-man. I had discussions with friends, back when the WHO came out with the 3.4% figure, where I expressed irritation that they were simply dividing the deaths by the confirmed infections, which of course is not going to give a reliable case-fatality-rate. That was obvious _at the time_ even to a complete layperson like me. We'd already realised that problem ourselves before the WHO even came out with that number.
Of course that wasn't a good way to work out the CFR because you miss all the uncounted mild or asymptomatic cases from the denominator. So that the article goes on about that figure at such length is a little patronising.
(As I understand it, with flu they only work CFR out later, statistically, by looking at how many excess deaths occurred during the flu season - if you only go by confirmed cases the numbers are totally different, as both infections and deaths get miscounted)
So focussing on that 3.4% figure is a straw man argument. Nobody with any sense believed that to be the 'true' CFR. I personally put that down as a strike against the WHO that they would cite such numbers that would confuse anyone who didn't think about it. (I don't personally think the WHO has done a particularly great job on this, even if Trump is attacking them for his own self-serving reasons)
It was clear then that it was very hard to work out a 'true' fatality rate because the data was so poor. Iran, for example, had such an insanely high nominal fatality rate that it was clear they were massively undercounting infections.
Secondly, the article on that page seems to be cherry picking its own numbers and skewing how it describes them.
My first guess back then, based on the Korean numbers and the Princess Diamond passengers, that the true CFR might be about 1% or a bit lower. It's obviously very, very hard to say because the data is so 'dirty'. But even half of that is still much higher than flu. You only get the minimised numbers that article emphasises at the end by picking the outlier of the outlier, i.e. the lowest CFR anyone has suggested. Saying it's at worst 'slightly worse' when it could in fact be 6 times as bad, is misleading. That's not potentially 'slightly worse' it's potentially a lot worse.
Next, those numbers totally ignore the question of how contagious this is. How many people it might kill is a function of both the case fatality rate and how contagious it is. Why does that article ignore the second factor? Because it doesn't fit its minimisation agenda? I've read several 'anti-hysteria' articles that do that - they not unreasonably cite lower death rates but then ignore the question of how large the number of infected people could be.
It also ignores the question of what proportion of people only live because they get intense medical treatment. That is, after all, the whole point of the 'curve flattening' business.
For the Diamond Princess passengers the death rate is already over 1% (one anti-hysteria article I saw took it as 1% but ignored that at that time almost none of them had yet recovered - more have since died, so the death rate has gone up). On the one hand, those passengers were unusually old, on the other they all got first rate medical care.
That page does the same thing I see a lot with a certain type of anti-hysteria article. First it is patronising in over-stressing the bleeding obvious (that you can't get a meaingful CFR by just dividing the confirmed deaths by the confirmed infections, and that the 3.4% is probably much too high) and at the same time it neglects an equally important issue (how widely this is likely to spread because we have no resistance and no vaccine).
It killed my wife's best friend this week. It didn't kill my father - he recovered from his covid19 infection - but he died in circumstances where he would probably have recovered but for the necessary coronavirus restrictions. It did however kill several people on the ward he was in at the time.
Perhaps we could agree that it probably won't kill you, but it will kill some people, and will kill quite a lot of them.
My deepest sympathies to you and your wife.
I could be alright, if I'm lucky, it might take my mother, my partner would get very ill and maybe not make it and her mothers chances don't look great.
It's not like seasonal 'flu. It's worse, far worse. Seems to be similar, same order of magnitude at least to so called "Spanish" 'flu. I'm hearing a bit about cytokine storm, which is how "Spanish" 'flu took so many young people, maybe.
There are 'flu vaccines, we treat the vulnerable and old, I buy mine from Tescos, only £10, and antivirals that have been shown to work against 'flu. Strangely, take up of 'flu vaccine in front line NHS staff only runs at about 20%.
And one of those underlying medical conditions that makes Covid worse is obesity, we are quite an obese nation, that and it causing heart disease and diabetes.
No it isn't. Some figures suggest it's slightly worse. Many suggest it is less serious.
But the comments like 'it might not kill you, but might kill someone you infect...' could be said for the flu, as well. I don't recall de facto (to appease the pedants) martial law being declared in 2017, or 2018, or 2019....
Look, I get it. It's scary. But most of that fear is irrational. This is not the plague.
Umm, nope - that would mean the goverment had deployed the troops without bothering to officially announce it.
Try again.
You need to look up what de facto means, because I don't think it means what you think it means.
The attached screenshot may help. Now go away.
Um, I think you need to read and understand the screenshot you posted - I don't think it says what you think it says.
Martial Law - the law administered by military forces that is invoked by a government in an emergency when the civilian law enforcement agencies are unable to maintain public order and safety
So 'de facto Martial Law' would mean that the law is in fact being administered by military forces.
As opposed to 'de jure Martial Law', which would be the legal transfer of the administration of law to the military.
Neither is currently the case.
Oh, and
No.
Well, not quite.
"De facto" martial law would be a situation with the trappings of martial law but without it being officially declared.
In this case the term has been used hyperbolically. So whilst we have not had tanks on the streets we have suffered restrictions to our liberties, enforced in some cases by aerial police surveillance, road blocks and state propaganda.
As for "de jure" martial law - legally recognised martial law - that is pretty much an oxymoron, since martial law generally entails the usurping the civilian rule from which the law gains its legitimacy.
Well, there are jurisdictions where there is legal provision for martial law in extremis. But in the UK, yes, 'de jure martial law' is oxymoronic, and equally 'de facto martial law' is tautologous. And, as you say (and my original point), hyperbolic - there's a big distance between the current restrictions and martial law.
Genuinely sorry for your loss. Two people I know (albeit distantly) have died of late, but I don't know if they died of coronavirus, or with coronavirus. If you look at the way death rates and 'causes of death' are handled in the UK, it's diffiicult to know. Both of the people to whom I refer had pre-existing conditions - one cancer, the other cancer and diabetes.
It is very sad, and they may have lived for a good while. But they may not have, and influenza and/or pneumonia kills many, many people every year.
Again, the same could be said of influenza.
I am not a cold-hearted bastard, and I'm not ordinarily prone to buying into conspiracy theories. 9/11 was not an 'inside job', Princess Diana wasn't killed by the Royal Family, and the Moon Landings did not happen inside a warehouse in the Nevada desert. But the actual impact of this Covid-19 shit is being wildly over-hyped for political reasons - of that, I am sure.
You and your partner might want to get a 'flu jab, maybe next year. Only £10 at Tescos, sometimes they give us a pound off voucher as you buy it. If you really think you might be a risk. I can spend more than 20 quid on trying to get over a cold, and 'flu makes you feel really bad. It helps my better half not get it too.
Even when the bet on the wrong strain it still can help.
There is also a jab that can offer protection aginst pnuemococcal pnuemonia too, but that's £70 from boots. Though it may confer longer term resistance than the yearly 'flu jab.
The fact that there are 'flu vaccines available and proven antivirals makes seasonal 'flu less dangerous than Covid 19. When I can buy a Covid 19 jab in Tescos for £10 it will be on a par with seasonal 'flu.
My 1st year medical microbiology lecturer was very old and not a well man, he used to bring his wife in, dressed in a bit of a nurses uniform, to change the OHPs. He talked longingly of pnuemonia, "the old mans friend" he used to call it, we even had to write an essay on it. He wasn't my 2nd year medical micro lecturer. It's what got my partner's dad, he had terminal oesophageal cancer, to old and weak for treatment, but it was the pnumonia that got him in the end, relatively quick, wit a little bit of madness caused by the lack of oxygen. Poor bloke.
Some links for you..
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavir...
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/10-more-experts-criticising-the-coro...
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/17/8-more-experts-questioning-the-coron...
Interesting, thanks for the links. I was confused before, now I'm totally confused, and trying to construct some kind of conspiracy theory; I may have been locked down too long.
I'm struck - depressed, if truth be told - by the ease with which the state was able to lock us down into what in effect is a state of martial law. Especially for what is effectively influenza.
My wife - who I may have mentioned is a bit of a mathematics goddess - has been keeping spreadsheets since this whole thing started. She is asthmatic and works in the NHS, so is pretty paranoid about catching it. But her statistics show that it was only about ten days ago that Covid-19 overtook the previous 'excess deaths' for the year before.
My default position is to believe that whenever a poltician speaks, he or she is lying. I've seen nothing so far to disabuse me of that view.
I take it her comparison of covid-19 deaths vs last year's flu deaths is a month by month comparison? If it's an annual comparison it's not really comparable since covid-19 started feb/mar and we're obviously no where near year end yet.
What I'd really like to know is how many hospital beds are actually being used by covid-19 admittances vs bed capacity. Preferably this would exclude admittances for other reasons. We're being told that we need to protect the NHS but are not being given information on how near to capacity they actually are.
Really? I must be very unobservant, because in all the times I've been out to exercise, or to the shops, I've completely failed to notice the soldiers on the streets.
If it was just politicians telling us to stay home and give up some personal freedoms then I'd be on the barricades waving a flag alongside you comrade.
But given that I do not, as a default position, believe in conspiracy theories, I will listen to and more importantly make what efforts I can to follow the advice of those same scientists, epidemiologists, virologists, statisticians, NHS managers and myriad other specialist experts who have qualified opinions based on actual data and who are currently advising government policy.
I don't believe in conspiracy theories. At least, not the type that claim that this is some sort of 'engineered' virus. But I am absolutely convinced that its appearance is being used to impose greater surveillance and control of the population.
And you are willing to gamble with other people's lives that you are right and all the experts are wrong?
Of course not;
The gamble on the other side is equally dire - how many lives will be lost consequent on the lockdown?
And in not entirely unrelated news, Grant Schapps, Transport Secretary, was interviewed for ten minutes on R4 yesterday, and mentioned planes, buses, trains, cars, even electric planes, but managed not to mention cycling. Mind you, it was the BBC, so they weren't going to ask about cycling were they.
It's here if you can stand it, starts at 2:18:50 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h932
Didn't he also attract the ire of the British travel agent industry by suggesting that people not rush out and book their summer holidays...?
Not that I want to encourage your take on the BBC, here is there take on "Villager views"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52323784
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