On 24 March 2020, the United Kingdom woke up to a state of “partial lockdown”, following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proclamation to that effect the previous evening. Widely described as “unprecedented”, the draconian measures imposed far exceeded any previous restrictions on movement and activity, during the Second World War, when night-time ‘blackouts’ and curfews were an inescapable part of life. Overnight, people were asked to stay at home, being allowed out only to travel to and from “absolutely necessary” work, to shop for basic necessities such as food and medicine, or for “one form of exercise” a day, as well as to fulfil any “medical need”- caring for or otherwise helping a vulnerable person.
The rationale for this regime of mass quarantine and extreme social distancing is ostensibly to control transmission of the coronavirus Covid-19. It is expected to “flatten the curve” of numbers of “cases” plotted against time, thereby enabling the over-stretched NHS to cope more effectively with what is expected to be a deluge of patients in the near future. However, the strong medicine of such intensive public health measures will inevitably lead to painful economic side effects. It is widely predicted that the consequent depressed economic activity will lead to global recession, likely to be of a magnitude much greater than that following the 2008 financial crisis.
In some circles, most notably within the ranks of the Trump administration in the US, measures to control the coronavirus pandemic are being seen as a trade-off between over-zealous disease control and overwhelming economic catastrophe. It has thus become a question of whether the predicted models of disease transmission are sufficiently valid to justify the public health measures that are being increasingly adopted throughout the world.
The widely accepted model of coronavirus transmission assumes that each infected person will, in turn, transmit the infection to two other people (based on a replication rate of 2.3). The outbreak is predicted, in the absence of any preventive measures, to initially develop gradually, before a sudden surge in cases rapidly rises to a peak. This exponential transmission of disease is then followed by an equally rapid fall in numbers before everything eventually returns back to “normal”.
The British economy is expected to take a direct and substantial hit, notwithstanding the government’s fiscal stimulus package. Small businesses, such as retail stores selling “non-essential” items, cafes and restaurants, hairdressers and beauty salons, as well as the leisure and entertainment sector (cinemas, theatres, gyms) are all likely casualties of a prolonged period of national hibernation. Self-employed people, such as taxi drivers, plumbers, gardeners, cleaners and other sole operators, are a significant, and particularly vulnerable, sector of the workforce (15 per cent of the total), numbering around 4.8 million in the UK at present. It isn’t just small businesses, but even much larger sectors, such as airlines and car manufacturers, that will suffer the effects of economic inactivity, leading to massive job losses. The financial hardships to the self-employed, those working in the so-called “gig economy”, freelance workers, contractors, and those with zero-hour contracts are unquantifiable, but likely to be overwhelming. These effects are likely to exacerbated by existing high levels of personal debt, alongside substantial outgoings such as rents, mortgage repayments, utility bills and council tax payments.
Draconian measures, readily enforceable in totalitarian regimes, have led to widely acclaimed success in China. Lockdowns are now being enforced in other countries, through intensive policing, the imposition of severe fines and even the threat of jail sentences, aided by the mobilisation of the military. Such measures have even been adopted in liberal Western democracies, such as Italy, Spain and France.
It is not possible to reliably forecast the precise trajectory and timeline of the coronavirus outbreak in the UK. This has led the British government to promise a review of the situation after three weeks. In the meantime, the nation has embarked on an open-ended mass exercise, which most certainly will prove to be a test of national character, discipline and self-restraint. Maybe the UK, and even the wider world, will become a better place to live in once the pandemic comes to an end, wiser with new insights, gained during a period of imposed isolation and self-reflection.
Ashis Banerjee