Really Useful Knowledge about a ‘national lockdown’. A history of the present
National refers to ‘England’ here but like the Tories many journalists struggle to grasp where Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are or that they have different Governments.
Northern Ireland and Scotland (central belt)already have stricter restrictions than the English Tier 3 (in some respects). Wales (which has a Labour Government) started a 17 day firebreak lockdown on 23rd October much to the derision of some of the ‘national media’.
Lockdown means working from home for those that can (or already do). It does not apply to health workers, education workers, those who work in supermarkets, transport, delivery and distribution workers, banks, chemists etc, frontline workers in power, telecoms, water, the police (obviously). These are often (not always) at the poorly paid end of the labour market and quite often from ethnic minorities. They got a significantly higher rate of infection in the first lockdown but ‘whoops, we did it again’.
There is a third group. Those who wont be able to work such as pubs, restaurants etc which will be shut. Ignore the increasingly strident group of temperance campaigners who say this is because they are a major source of infection. They aren’t. The point of shutting them, and indeed the whole point of a lockdown, is to reduce social interaction. The Welsh firebreak was timed to coincide with school half terms but as the NEU notes locking down to reduce social interaction and keeping schools open suggests a strategy that may not work. Johnson and Starmer support it of course, which should be a caution enough in itself.
This third group and the businesses who support them may or may not get financial support. This issue isn’t central to Ministers or public health experts thinking since they are not in that position (and are mainly only dimly aware of it at best). It will depend on pressure from the TUC and from campaigns and (we can but hope) the Labour Party. A furlough extension of a month (now applied across the 4 nations) helps but isn’t enough anymore than it was in the earlier lockdown.
How long will it last? History related to nineteenth century epidemics suggests that unless there was clear evidence that second lockdowns were related to strict measures to control disease in the medium term or the arrival of a vaccine, tolerance of them was often limited. In a rare moment of perception Johnson is apparently aware of what might be called Hotel California syndrome where the thing just drifts on.
Finally none of it makes any sense unless test, track and trace is removed from SERCO and done properly by local authorities.
Leave a Reply