It depends what you define as a holiday but I was one of the c.
5m that flew through Heathrow's airport in Q3.
The transportation can easily be defined as an unnecessary risk, but everything still points to it being relatively low risk. There have been disproportionately few incidents on planes and airports are still at such a low capacity that social distancing just isn't difficult, while mask-wearing is well-enforced. After that point, I took fewer risks than the average person in the UK on an average day, I believe.
Much more time spent outdoors in wide open spaces with a much sparser population and lower levels of community infection. If you go to a supermarket in the UK you will come across many more people, and spend longer there. That's just how the society and environment is structured. Indoors is a safe haven from the cold in these times and lots of people like to linger around these expansive indoor areas. And for most of the time I was away, I was more likely to get infected in a supermarket at home. And I was more likely to spread that to my family at home, rather than containing it to just myself in my apartment abroad. I was really uncomfortable with the idea of living in a multi-generational household and spreading it to someone at much more risk than me.
The question really hinges on what kind of lifestyle you believe the average person in the UK has lived during the pandemic. Have people avoided taking all unnecessary risks, all the time? Some in this thread have, but many of those who have chosen to live like hermits also face much more severe personal risks. I would imagine they're the minority in this thread and in the society.
There are very few people I know of all age ranges that have avoided seeing their friends and family all the time. Most of them did it in controlled scenarios, and when they didn't they tried to minimise risks, and overall they cut back massively. But the reality is they did it sometimes, and that infrequent household mixing is riskier than anything about my "holiday". Are some unnecessary risks involved in taking kids to play sports? A lot of people would say yes. How many people went out to indoor restaurants? Even just in that period of eat out to help out, 160m meals suggests a good chunk of society went at least once, and many went multiple times. How many people have went to their local to "support the local economy"? I decided to skip out on those unnecessary risks, to go for months without seeing friends and family, in exchange for some other unnecessary risks. If I was home I would have seen my friends and family. Not all the time, but enough to create additional risks. That's just the reality.
I don't think it is necessary for individuals to choose to live like hermits during a pandemic. I think it's ok that people take their kids to play sports, take their wife to a restaurant, or meet a friend at a distance on the golf course. You can clearly argue they are not necessary, and they come with some degree of risk that's difficult to determine. They do provide something valuable though, it is important to take care of the mental health of yourself and your immediate family. For some people, the fear of covid is so great that doing any of these things is so anxiety-inducing that they are taking care of their mental health by not exposing themselves to that risk. For others, the cabin fever is so great that they need some outlet to prevent some severe consequences.
It doesn't bother me at all that people judge my actions harshly. Personally I think if people applied those same set of standards - with objective data, not subjective judgments - to all of their actions, they would have some difficulty squaring up their beliefs and their actions. Judgment has its role in society but there is a good reason why we suspend judgment in many scenarios.
I would say the ski resort case was a special case. They were going into a situation that was IMO unnecessarily high risk, and they were obliged to follow the rules to manage the risks as they grew. They chose not to. To me that's reckless and dangerous and it should come with some kind of punishment. The rules I was obliged to follow was a period of extended self-isolation that was personally quite challenging. But that's the trade-off I agreed to from the outset. Choosing to take your cake and eat it is both selfish and stupid.
