IT’S PARTY TIME IN UK AS CURBS EASE
After months of restrictions on almost every aspect of daily life, the English celebrated a hopeful new chapter in a most fitting way
In China it was fengcheng. In Spain it was el confinamiento. In France it was le confinement. In Britain it was known as lockdown, plain and simple — but it had the distinction of being one of the longest and most stringent in the world.
On Monday, that finally began drawing to an end. After months of coronavirus restrictions that encroached on almost every aspect of daily life, the English celebrated a hopeful new chapter, many of them in what seemed the most fitting way possible: with a pint at a pub. “It’s like being out of prison,” said Kate Asani, who was sitting at a small table with two friends in the back garden of the Carlton Tavern in the Kilburn area of London, where they basked in one another’s company as much as in the sunshine.
Hardly a time to rejoice
For people across Europe, struggling with yet another wave of the pandemic and demoralised by a vaccine rollout that, outside Britain, has been deeply troubled, this is hardly a time to rejoice. And Britons — who have lost more than 150,000 people to the pandemic - know better than anyone that they are facing a wily adversary, a shape-shifter of a virus that spins off variants that can threaten medical advances with a few mutations.
But just past the stroke of midnight Monday, a few select establishments in England served their first beverages since being forced to close in December and January, and more than a year after the first of three national lockdowns was imposed to limit the spread of the virus.
Later in the morning, thousands of gyms, salons and retail
While no country has been able to match China’s measures to contain the coronavirus, liberal democracies have been engaged in a yearlong effort to balance economic, political and public health concerns.
stores opened their doors for the first time in months, bringing a frisson of life to streets long frozen in a state of suspended animation. Friends reunited, and families shared a meal at outdoor cafes for the first time in months.
The weather may have been chilly, but the moment was embraced with an enthusiasm born of more than a year of onand-off deprivation and uncertainty, one in which a once-unimaginable level of government decree became a way of life.
Roadmap to freedom
Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it “a major step forward in our road map to freedom.”
Monday marked the start of a phased reopening that is scheduled to culminate on June 21, when the government says it hopes to lift almost all restrictions in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are following separate but similar timetables. Lockdowns of one form or another have become so commonplace around the world that it can be hard to recall a time when they did not exist. The word began entering the popular lexicon in the weeks and months after the virus first emerged in China and authorities there moved aggressively to restrict the movement of its citizens.
Effort to save livelihoods
While no country matched China’s draconian measures, liberal democracies have been engaged in a yearlong effort to balance economic, political and public health concerns. Last spring, that meant about 4 billion people - half of humanity - living under some form of stay-at-home order.
Britain, which held out longer than many of its European neighbours, entered its first national lockdown on March 26, 2020. Although it is difficult to compare lockdowns, researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a system ranking their stringency. They found that Britain had spent 175 days at its “maximum stringency level.”