Philip Bowern on Wednesday Cautious Boris is right to dial down hope
LAST spring, as we entered lockdown and the number of coronavirus cases edged steadily upwards, my smart friends cancelled their Easter 2020 skiing trip and booked for February, 2021. Any suggestion they might have to cancel that trip too seemed laughable. They’re not laughing now.
There have been high points and low moments throughout the pandemic as, collectively as well as individually, we have ridden the unpredictable wave of the disease and its impact on both families and society.
The next high point – if that’s what it turns out to be – falls on Monday, when Boris Johnson has pledged to set out in some detail his road map for ending the current and – everyone desperately hopes, the last – lockdown.
After too many slips and mishaps, Boris has learned to manage expectations rather better in the past few months. He was the model of caution at the press conference on Monday night, refusing even to say this lockdown would be the last. Of course, how could he make such a promise? But in the past he would have been more upbeat, more Tiggerish, about the future. After all, he was also announcing 15 million vaccinated and standing next to him was Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of the National Health Service, promising a fuller and faster roll-out of the next stage of the vaccine project which has been, by any measure, an absolute triumph.
An earlier Boris would have been punching the air and making predictions of a summer striding for the sunlit uplands and, quite possibly, planning a VE Day-style celebration in which he could bask, Churchilllike,
in the glory of victory.
This though, is a changed Boris, and he is the better for it. Even a brush with the deadly virus back last spring failed to make him as cautious as he now seems to be about the future. “Hopeful” is his most positive message but always couched with warnings about the science and the data. To re-write a political slogan from an earlier age and a different party, things can only get better... all being well.
We will be hanging on his every word come Monday. Both the statement and the manner of its delivery, along with the detailed information from his supporting cast, surely Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser, respectively, will be pored over.
Lockdown three has been the hardest for most people – we want to see some positive results from the vaccination roll-out that has gone so well, but the caution is well-placed. It is possible, in the gaps between the good news, to see what the PM and his advisers still fear. A single jab of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine gives an average protection against Covid-19 of 63.09%, according to the World Health Organisation.
That, by vaccine standards, is remarkably good. Pfizer/BioNtech’s level of protection is even higher. And after two doses, the protection levels improve still further for all vaccines. Even better, while some people will still get the virus, fewer will become seriously ill and even fewer will die.
But you could almost see the anxiety in the PM’s eyes on Monday as he contemplated a worst-case scenario... we unlock too early; disease levels in the community are still high; confidence as a result of vaccination means we collectively lower our guard and that less than total protection that the vaccine gives us comes back to bite us – hard.
For what it’s worth, I think we should hold the champagne. Those bar towels may need to stay hanging over the beer pumps for a while longer; Easter – early this year – may not be the family fun fest everyone was hoping for. People are booking breaks, but they may want to check the cancellation insurance before they send off their money.
My friends are extremely hopeful for skiing in 2022. As for me, I think a family staycation may be on the cards for late this summer and even – whisper this quietly – a European city break by autumn. But I am taking my lead from a reformed Boris. Hopeful, yes. Cautious – definitely.
‘For what it’s worth, I think we should hold the champagne. I’m hopeful, but cautious’