Disobeying of Covid-19 rules is growing, and for good reason

The history of epidemics is rife with examples of society rebelling against tough public-health edicts, such as the breach of plague quarantine in 18th-century Marseille, or protests against masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The grim consequence is a fresh wave of deadly infections.

Covid-19 ’ s million deaths may pale in comparison to the estimated 50-million lives lost in 1918, but the cycle risks unfolding again. France, the UK and Spain face a triple threat: a jump in cases, a population exhausted by lockdown-induced recession, and rising resistance to tougher measures.

Curfews and closures of restaurants and bars have seen business owners literally throw their keys to the ground in present-day Marseille. In Madrid, protesters have bristled at a targeted local lockdown they view as discriminatory. It is not just conspiracy theorists on the streets in London and Berlin who are angry.

Those protesting should not be dismissed as the selfish exceptions to the rule. Beyond the vocal minority, there are signs that the silent majority is also losing faith in increasingly bureaucratic strictures.

While respect for wearing masks and personal hygiene is broadly high, according to

YouGov surveys of European countries, support for quarantine and self-isolation is wavering. In France, only 48% of people support quarantining those who have had contact with infected patients, down from 78% in March. It has also fallen in the UK and Spain, though to a lesser degree.

There is mounting evidence that people who are asked to stay at home are not doing so. A recent King’s College London survey in the UK of more than 30,000 people, run between March and August, found that only 18.2% reported remaining at home after developing symptoms and a measly 10.9% after being alerted by contact tracers.

That is worrying, given the critical importance of selfisolation in breaking chains of transmission before they reach the vulnerable and the elderly.

Obviously being cooped up is nobody ’ s idea of fun, and it brings the psychological stress of altruistically choosing longterm pain over short-term pleasure. But for those who do not have the luxury of jobs they can do from home, isolation also means being deprived of a wage. About 10%-11% of respondents cited “going out to work” among reasons for non-compliance.

That echoes an earlier finding that half of Britain’s low-income workers could not actually afford to self-isolate because mandatory sick pay is so low, according to the Trades Union Congress. Other reasons given included caring for a vulnerable person (10%-12%) and mental stress (8%-11%).

This is not the case for all countries. In Austria, where quarantined workers are entitled to normal pay, compliance is more than 98%, according to The Washington Post.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is rightly encouraging countries to extend sick leave and other benefits to more workers, especially the selfemployed. Europe should, too.

Rewarding those who selfisolate should ideally be accompanied by punishment for those who do not. But this requires confidence in the rules and their enforcement, which has been lacking. Test-and-trace infrastructure is bursting at the seams in several countries, with delays so long that people do not see the point in following official guidelines.

And in the UK, increasingly complex limits such as “the rule of six” are patently unenforceable, with politicians encouraging people to spy on their neighbours and rat them out. More testing capacity and rules that can actually be enforced with fines would help.

On top of carrots and sticks, transparency and education can help compliance. New rules such as closing restaurants and bars at 10pm rather than 11pm have not been justified with any scientifically backed explanations, the kind of thing that can chip away at public trust. Worse, some doctors reckon they may simply shift parties to private homes indoors.

Clear and understandable rules tend to elicit better obedience, according to Joan CostaFont, associate professor at the London School of Economics health policy department.

This is one area where Sweden, despite criticism of its more individualist approach to stayat-home curbs, is doing well.

Given the public is starting to lose trust in rules, the least policymakers could do is stick to their own guidance. Yet they are proving their own worst enemy, whether it is Dominic Cummings flouting lockdown or French Prime Minister Jean Castex ’“s I no longer take the metro” excuse for not downloading France’s contact-tracing app.

Apparently the UK government does not even understand its own rules, judging by three confusing errors by officials explaining new restrictions in just three hours on Tuesday — one by Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself.

Covid-19 disobedience goes deeper than we think. Those whose fingers are hovering on the lockdown button can, and should, do more to curb it.