In the face of steeply rising rates of positive Covid-19 tests, along with large numbers of coronavirus-associated deaths, England entered a third, open-ended, phase of “national lockdown” from 5 January 2021 onwards. Prime Minister Boris Johnson finally opted for a lockdown, rather than imposing new and untried Tier 5 restrictions as originally anticipated, although there seems little to actually differentiate between the two.
The process of lockdown has become increasingly complicated, as well as ambiguous and even inconsistent in places. This has led to wide variations in the way individual members of the public choose to interpret the guidance when it comes to managing their own daily lives and activities. There is consequently growing evidence of failure to adhere to lockdown restrictions, leading to multiple so-called “Covid breaches” and threatening stricter enforcement of the regulations through the imposition of heavy fines or other forms of judicial penalties.
The government has many issues to contend with when it comes to ensuring the lockdown, some of which are of its very own making. At the very outset of the pandemic, Prime Minister Johnson laid great emphasis on “common sense” and the “British spirit”, while displaying a reluctance to restrict personal freedom in order to prevent spread of the virus at that time. Subsequently, a succession of delayed and sometimes mixed messages have further clouded the picture. There have indeed been many abrupt changes, or U-turns, in policy, exemplified most recently by abandonment of the promised “Christmas bubble” from 23 to 27 December, at the very last possible moment. Covid denial or minimisation, the emergence of so-called “Covidiots”, and a growing army of anti-lockdown warriors have further added to the challenges of containing the spread of Covid-19, especially in its more infectious new variant form.
But when you think of it, lockdown itself is by no means new, nor even untested. As far back as the “Great Plague”, the Peak District “plague village” of Eyam, in Derbyshire, went into a 14-month period of self-isolation from September 1665, which helped limit the spread of virus therefrom, while nearly wiping out the local residents. More recently, the draconian and yet apparently effective Wuhan lockdown of early 2020 has set the standards for various forms of lockdown that have followed during the current pandemic.
In between the national lockdowns, the UK government has adopted a tiered system for pandemic control, initially with three tiers from 12 October 2020, with the idea of simplifying and standardising the rules within local authorities. Allocation of areas to these tiers is decided by a combination of local factors, including rates of positive Covid tests, rises or falls in these rates, and observed pressures on the NHS (current and projected bed occupancy rates).
A four-tier system of coronavirus restrictions was introduced from 2 December 2020, when England exited the second lockdown. This consisted of medium alert (Tier 1), high alert (Tier 2), very high alert (Tier 3), and stay at home (Tier 4) categories, as well as a proposed fifth tier of “red level” alert. The recommendations within each tier are reasonably wide-ranging and prescriptive, at times almost impracticably so. Implementation has further been complicated by the fact that in a small country such as England, tiers can change abruptly between areas, often only short distances apart, as well as between the other nations that form part of the United Kingdom.
The features common to all tiers are the recommendations for social distancing, the wearing of face masks, working from home wherever possible, avoiding all non-essential travel or use of public transport, and the Rule of Six-a magical number limiting the number of people allowed to meet up at any given time. Climbing up the ladder of tiers, there is a progressive restriction of various activities, including visits to hospitality venues (pubs, cafés, restaurants), personal care services (hair, nail, beauty salons), and leisure facilities (playgrounds, gyms, swimming pools, golf courses). There are accompanying restrictions on meeting up with other people, including attendance at social occasions (wedding and civil partnership ceremonies; funerals, wakes, ash spreading), sporting events, places of communal worship, and care homes. The level of detail is such that there is no substitute to actually looking over the recommendations as they appear in print. When you do, the reasons behind some of the decisions seem a bit unclear, unless you can think up some special reason in explanation. For example, allowing places of communal worship to stay open may imply that some form of “divine immunity” to Covid-19 exists in these places.
Unfortunately for many of us, the government’s messages have been diluted and become muddied as a result of less than satisfactory communication at times- in terms of frequency, timing, and content. In addition, socially- responsive behaviour and self-discipline both appear to be flagging in England, even among our lawmakers and those supposed to be leading by example. It is thus proving hard to both enforce and monitor compliance with the regulations, and to then impose punishments where appropriate. In the nation’s best interests, it seems a suitable time to invoke wartime exhortations of solidarity and conformity to enable the best possible outcomes from the pandemic.
Ashis Banerjee