- A man in the UK got so fed up with the people he was cooped up with during his coronavirus lockdown that he took an extraordinary step.
- He was wanted by the police anyway, so he turned himself in rather than continue staying with those other people as part of his lockdown.
- The UK is still in the midst of its third coronavirus lockdown in less than a year.
around the world have tested the limits of everyone’s patience, with the limitations that they’ve placed on everything from closed restaurants you can no longer enjoy to all the new measures we have to make sure and follow now, like wearing face masks in public.
Coronavirus lockdowns present their own set of challenges because they generally confine people to their homes for an extended period of time — something that one man in the UK apparently felt strongly enough about that he took an extraordinary step in response to the on-again, off-again, lockdown measures in the UK. According to a Sky News report, this particular man turned himself in to the Burgess Hill police station in West Sussex in recent days because he absolutely could not stand the people he was cooped up with during lockdown.
Granted, the man was wanted by the police anyway. But — yeah, it was being confined at home with certain people in his life that made him think … right, jail is better than this.
The Sky News report came via Sussex Police Inspector Darren Taylor, who shared the news via Twitter:
Peace and quiet! Wanted male handed himself in to the team yesterday afternoon after informing us he would rather go back to prison then have to spend more time with the people he was living with! One in custody and heading back to prison to serve some further time on his own pic.twitter.com/zCwLo0fgDQ
— Inspector Darren Taylor (@InspectorDarren) February 18, 2021
On a more serious note, lockdowns in the UK are definitely taking a toll on a share of the population. A study from October found that 53% of people there acknowledged feeling angry with other people they know because of their lockdown behavior. Moreover, research from King’s College London and Ipsos MORI found that almost 25% of people reported having arguments with family and friends over their actions during the COVID era — and around 1 in 12 people say it’s so bad they’re actually no longer speaking to a family member or friend because of these spats.
Depending on your point of view, things in the UK never got to the point they did in the US — we’re talking about almost 7 times as many COVID-19 cases having been identified in the US, compared to the UK, according to Johns Hopkins University. Nevertheless, the UK took much more draconian and sweeping lockdown and public health measures — putting a much bigger swath of the country under lockdown than we ever did. At the moment, the UK is in the throes of its third lockdown in less than a year, with the shutdown in London now in its ninth week.
