Social isolation is the downside of lockdown

ONE of the more minor side-consequences of the present (now slightly revised) lockdown is the continued closure of hairdressing establishments.

For some of us, even after seven weeks or so, this need be only a small problem. But, in another two months or more, a larger problem.

A point which may be overlooked by some commentators is that both for men (and even more particularly for women, perhaps) haircuts, and hair styling too, can be a social occasion.

For an older man, a haircut needs take no more than about 10 minutes, excluding the possible waiting-time, but it could be a useful form of social contact for those – perhaps older folk – who may live alone and who might in more normal times like to discuss sporting events, or more likely at this time political developments, during hair-cuts and shampoos.

And it is not just hairdressing. My routine dental appointments have been postponed, as has a hospital outpatient appointment for an eye clinic.

Those who may normally have chiropody or podiatry, as it is now sometimes called, can suffer too.

One can live without these services, temporarily anyway.

One can not of course dismiss the high significance of the pandemic for those infected, but there is a wider and more numerous public whose lives have been materially disrupted, not just by relative trivia like haircuts, but those who may not get early diagnostic tests for diseases like cancer, which kills very large numbers each year without so much of the present pandemic publicity.

People with heart conditions too may die while Boris and his ministers are airily pontificating. Social isolation in particular where prolonged can be detrimental, not only to a person’s happiness, but to their general state of physical and psychological health.

There will be a possible heavy future price to pay here.

Michael O’Neill Penarth

There is a wider and more numerous public whose lives have been materially disrupted