New polling by the MailOnline suggests that more than half of Brits have not yet cuddled a friend or relative since the easing of restrictions last Monday which “allowed” them to do so. Only a fifth are planning on holidaying abroad this summer.
Some 51% of those polled for [the MailOnline] claimed they had yet to take advantage of the easing of restrictions introduced on May 17th that allow them to wrap their arms around a loved one.

And in a blow to holiday firms and airlines, the same poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies found that just a fifth of Brits are planning to take a foreign holiday this year.
More than half of those polled said they didn’t plan to take any form of holiday away from home this year, either abroad or in the U.K..
The findings show that the country is being extremely cautious in emerging from more than a year of lockdowns and travel restrictions despite the widespread roll-out of Covid vaccines.
Lucy Johnston recently drew attention to the long-term impacts of the Government’s (and the media’s) campaign of fear regarding the virus in her Sunday Express article on “Covid Anxiety Syndrome” (CAS).
Up to one in five is believed to have developed a “compulsive and disproportionate” fear of Covid, which would likely stay in place even if the virus disappeared completely. Warnings about the dangers of Covid have heightened the problem, and mixed messages about the level of danger have made it worse, said Marcantonio Spada, a Professor of Addictive Behaviours and Mental Health at London’s South Bank University, who co-authored the report [on CAS]…
The recently identified condition – Covid Anxiety Syndrome – is characterised by fear of public places, compulsive hygiene habits, worrying about the virus and frequent symptom checking.
Polling from Ipsos MORI suggests that even more than a fifth of the population could be suffering from CAS. It found that 28% of British adults aren’t looking forward to “greeting people with handshake/hug/kiss”.
The MailOnline report is worth reading in full.
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If you’ve been jabbed (and we’re talking here about people who believe in the jabs) and you’re still not hugging people/don’t feel safe to travel then your biggest problem is not covid, it’s mental illness that requires therapy.
Those who have knowingly caused this are truly evil.
It doesn’t require therapy, that assertion medicalises a socio-political phenomenon. What it requires is a form of cultural revolution that encompasses psychology, morality, politics etc. This revolution may be a de facto form of therapy, but it is a social event first and foremost.
Quite possibly
Sadly neither is likely to happen any time soon
cultural revolution? heard that somewhere before…
Agreed. ~went to park with elderly parent couple of days ago. We encountered a trio in our path – elderly double jabbed parent almost had panic attack and insisted that we retreated as opposed to walk past the trio. Try though I might i cannot convince elderly double jabbed parent that there is no outdoor risk – or many other “risks” if we want to get to it. The brainwashing is one of the worst aspects of this whole fiasco.
Agreed, yet they’re hardly got started.
I have hugged. I have shaken hands. I’m not going on a summer holiday abroad, not through fear, but because I cannot do with all the hassle now associated with travelling ( vax pass, testing, quarantine on return etc). I also don’t want to go abroad and have to cope with restrictions there either.
Until all that nonsense goes away, then sorry, tourist industry, I’m not travelling.
Yes – the Lakes for me this summer (assuming we get one!).
Airports have also become dreadful places to be over the last decade or two: something which was giving me pause even before our government went rogue on us 15 months ago (not that any No 10 occupant has been tolerable since Maggie).
I agree. I was Flight Crew for 45 years and for the last 20 or so we were treated as part of the terrorist threat! Some airports screened the pilots more times than the passengers! I had to stop myself saying ‘I don’t need a box cutter, I’m already on the Flight Deck!
Or as I once said as I held the plastic Ziploc bag with the minimal amount of toiletries: “I have toothpaste, and I’m not afraid to use it!”
Beware, they’re coming for your Gaviscon.
oh, those lakes!
Spot on. Travel abroad would be a trip to muzzle hell via airport purgatory, returning through quarantine gehenna.
It’s never going away. The fact you appear to think that it’s natural & so could go away is revealing.
It tells me you’re still in denial about the conceit that almost the entire world has been hi-jacked.
Absolutely couldn’t have put it better myself.
As always I suspect it depends on who was polled, ask a different group and they would probably find 51% never stopped hugging in the first place.
let the crazy people be crazy so long as they dont expect us to be crazy too
“More than half of those polled said they didn’t plan to take any form of holiday away from home this year, either abroad or in the U.K..
The findings show that the country is being extremely cautious in emerging from more than a year of lockdowns and travel restrictions despite the widespread roll-out of Covid vaccines. ”
So the caution around traveling is nothing to do with the government chopping and changing rules around travel, the potential for being stuck in quarantine, the cost of CV19 testing before, during, and after your holiday which effectively doubles the price of your holiday, then??
Another interpretation to support the official narrative.
We are not going on holiday (local or abroad) because we do not want to wear masks (never did), or being told to follow nonsensical restriction edicts, or seeing masked beings even in their own cars, etc
Hugs are not a crime nor is shaking hands and I won’t avoid people after this shit show, although some may not reciprocate. I feel sorry for those who continue to swallow the fear narrative. I had a random old couple physically turn their backs to me in woodland because I didn’t swerve out of their path. I’m pretty sure they heard me swear at them for being so f’ing rude.
There was a nauseating graphic on ITV news last night showing how breathing openly in a bar completely filled the air with swarming green coronaparticles. Disgusting attempt to make the case for masks.
Well – some of us gave all that bullshit (and the rest) the finger a year ago.
But -yes – a lot of people are suffering major induced hypochondriac psychosis.
What the hell is wrong with people? Life is never going to be completely safe, we all die of something eventually. The chance of dying of COVID for anyone healthy must be tiny, it always was.
I say build quarantine hotels for all the scared sheep, they can hide away, make things in return for their cells and food. Look after the real vulnerable and the rest of us live life again.
Meanwhile in Florida …
“Polling from Ipsos mori…” Enough said.
well I don’t care what anyone says, I’ll guarantee there are lots of people hideously traumatised by 14 months of a despicable fear campaign.
Bring back Cameron – at least he(she/they) wanted to “hug a hoodie”!
I’m not a natural hugger, but even I have hugged family and friends since lockdown eased and also during lockdown.
What idiot would do a survey like that?
Had to endure a double jabbed neighbour yesterday worrying at me about how she had been teaching a child who had tested positive for covid and her app had pinged (copious quantities of dettol also got a mention as did some kind of ventilation system and perspex screen). I did my best to sound sympathetic and reassure her. I am standing there completely non-jabbed [with no intention of allowing myself to be so jabbed once never mind twice or more] and have likely been in contact with goodness only knows how many people who went on to test positive in supermarkets and the like and I am not in the least bit concerned. Neighbour is literally an anxious mess of covid obsession.
None of this surprises me, they have done a thorough job of terrorising and brainwashing most of the population! The people behind this really are evil scumbags!
Because half of them are gullible, spineless drones. Blame our crappy education system and constant diet of reality t.v. and soaps. So few are even capable of free thought and challenging the mainstream narrative. (sigh…)
I suspect one of the factors for not wanting to holiday abroad is a serious bout of “can’t be ar*ed” rather than fear. I have no intention of paying £120 to gag on a cotton bud and spend at least an hour breathing warm, low oxygen-content air through a pointless mask