I don’t want to choose between our health and our economy
How long are you prepared to stay in isolation? The Government might hope people won’t ask themselves that question, at least not for a while, but I reckon most of us will already have a rough answer. Mine is nine weeks, which takes us to the spring bank holiday on May 25.
I get so angry with people who seem to be getting some kind of weird pleasure from reliving their grandparents’ wartime experience. Invariably, they are privileged professionals with jobs they can do from home, savings to fall back on, and gardens (often fields) in which to exercise increasingly fretful children.
Guess what? For the majority of Britons what is “truly important” is the ability to earn a living, not some nostalgie de la boue fantasy in which everyone plants their own veg and beaming kids scamper about in Cath Kidston pinafores while their parents learn Ukrainian or the ukulele.
Home schooling is a nightmare. One of the truest and funniest coronavirus posters I’ve seen reads: “If scientists don’t discover a vaccine soon, parents will.”
Oh, and by the way, Cath Kidston is about to file for administration (putting 950 jobs at risk) as the coronavirus slowdown pushes already hard-pressed high street retailers out of business. The success of the retro fashion brand was based on busy working mums buying into a dream of Fifties life when housewives had time to lay the table with a rose-sprigged cloth.
Only privileged professionals can be getting a kick out of lockdown
That dream rapidly becomes a nightmare if, as now, the household income dries up, and money promised by the Government may or may not turn up by June.
I know several families who are afraid of what will become of them if the Covid-19 crisis continues much longer. Credit cards are their only means of survival, but they will have to be paid off. Banks offer an overdraft of £300, but with extortionate rates of interest if you go over that limit. The media is understandably fixated with the daily rise in the number of fatalities, but the next big story is the growth in the number of collapsed businesses.
True, the spread of the virus can be arrested temporarily while its hosts – that’s us – are inaccessible. My fear is that the contagion of unemployment and of companies not trading with each other could become unstoppable.
Rishi Sunak’s generous rescue packages are a shortterm boon to millions, but how many businesses will be able to relaunch in six months when consumers are skint?
Personally, I supported the national lockdown, and I believe that the Government should have gone further, closing airports to flights from hot spots like China, the US and Italy. As a family, we have tried to abide by all the hygiene and distancing rules. I have the red, raw hands of a Victorian washerwoman to prove it.
It made perfect sense to stay home. We see that an NHS lacking critical-care beds, ventilators and protective wear for staff would not be able to cope if thousands of people stricken by the virus suddenly turned up at their door. Thanks to a huge national effort, those deficiencies are well on their way to being fixed.
Countries like Austria, Denmark and Germany, which are a couple of weeks ahead of us, are about to relax their coronavirus rules. In Austria, small shops will open first, followed by hairdressers a week later. The UK must start thinking about following suit. Obviously, not until the epidemic has flattened out, and there are enough hospital beds.
May 25 – the date I hope to leave isolation – gives plenty of time; earlier would be even better. Sorry, but I am not prepared to stay at home for six months to “save the NHS” if the coronavirus is going to destroy the lives and futures of so many people I care about.
That’s not a trade-off our society should be prepared to make. There will never be a vaccine against hopelessness.