What price freedom and liberty?

IMAGINERY metal bars clanged shut outside homes in Spain on Sunday March 14 and large parts of the country began a sentence of imprisonment as the government enforced a state of emergency.

Leaders of other countries across the world have also, at different times, ordered their citizens to subject themselves to ‘house arrest’ in the battle against Covid-19, the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe.

Confinement and social distancing are to date the common strategy to fight this deadly and dreaded ‘lurgi’ and the global response was adopted as an almost inevitable reaction to slow down the pandemic.

And so far, public opinion is largely in support of the measures. However, opinion can be fickle. Backing for governments and their leaders - in democratic countries at least - is dependent on the people. Citizens are behind the lockdown as long as they believe it and other emergency measures will rapidly slash the number of new infections.

Things could swiftly change and dissent start to show if these measures fail to reduce numbers of new cases and, sadly, the death toll. The same could happen if the catastrophe of Covid-19 is not as bad as first canvassed by leaders; the worstcase figures touted at press conferences on predictions of doom fall far short. At present, no one knows.

During our confinement there is a huge level of support for health workers and other front line efforts, the reason we are given for being locked away is to stop health systems being swamped. They are the heroes and society at large appreciates their Herculean efforts.

Yet there is still the ticking of time. Spain extended its lockdown seemingly without complaint but how long is too long? When is isolation too high a price, not only for the economy, but for communities - what is the cost of keeping a social animal apart from its herd?

It is the biggest loss of civil liberty since the Second World

War. Except during the 1939 to 1945 conflict and the earlier Great War production was stepped up as people pulled together, pubs and restaurants were open - licensing hours controlled by one Lloyd George to help prevent too many drowning their sorrows. Covid-19 is a very different Blitz.

Health

Restrictions in the UK and Eire are different to those imposed here in Spain. Boris - who appeared reluctant to impose some conditions on the way to lockdown - allows a daily period of exercise in the fresh air to keep healthy, it is even possible to do it with members of the same household. Spain frowns on such frivolity - if people have accused the British bobby of being a bit overzealous in enforcing restrictions, at least they attempt to engage on friendly terms. As the Monty Python team told us: no one expects the Spanish inquisition.

Many people have admired China and its handling of the crisis; sealing off whole cities and confining people to their homes. It has resulted in restrictions being eased; people are back on the streets of Wuhan, the apparent birthplace of the current virus.

However, China can also be a ruthless power and people tend to do what they are told on power of imprisonment of a very different kind and can tell any ‘truth’ it wishes.

The regime also went into early denial; the world as denied an early kickoff in the battle to prepare for what has turned into a pandemic because the country’s leaders decided it didn’t exist. They even assured World Health Organisation back in January there was no humanto-human transmission.

Better to embrace the South Korea and Singapore models. They have employed a ‘smart lockdown’ and it’s hailed a success, answering the crisis without a general lockdown of the population. It succeeded because of rigorous testing and isolation of those carrying the virus - protecting key workers rather than taking them from the front line to join those in self-isolation.

Once this crisis is over, and there could certainly be more novel virus epidemics in future it might be sensible to plan ahead - perhaps SARS should have been a wake-up call.

History will judge the actions taken by governments; it may be lockdown has been justified but existing plans did not envisage such grand-scale confinement. The rules need rewriting; making the best of available technology and giving people a long enough lead to lead their lives. Certainly, restoration of basic freedom cannot come soon enough.