There are signs of hope in Covid chaos
IT’S easy to put together a list of the things which are going wrong right now. People have to battle online to book a Covid test and when you get into the system it seems to have gone haywire. Infections are on the rise. Unemployment is shooting up, too — today the Office for National Statistics warned that almost 700,000 people seem to have left employment since March. Many businesses and families, struggling to pay bills, fear eviction and it is not clear if the temporary bar on these will be extended. The new rule of six for social gatherings is a mess: today it was the turn of the Home Secretary to say she would call the police on her neighbours. She added later that stopping for a chat in the street with someone you know would count as
“mingling” and so break the law.
This is bonkers.
When the reckoning comes, all this and more will be held against the Government. But it is fair to recognise two other things. The first is that however bad things are now, we are in a much better place than we were in April. The second is that getting through Covid is hard, everywhere. Britain has made big mistakes. So have other well-equipped countries such as France. We are not alone in our anxieties.
What do we mean by saying things have got better since Covid hit? Well, doctors know a lot more about how to treat it and save lives. An explosion in infections is not being matched by an equally sharp rise in fatalities — at least, not yet. We don’t have a vaccine but there is hope one is on the way — and when it comes, scientists in Britain may have led its development and doctors in Britain may be among the first to be equipped with it. Even testing — a horror show right now if you have a sick child off school, but can’t get a result to let you return to work — is partly a victim of its own success. More than 200,000 tests a day are being carried out. We need more but that is still a lot more than most countries are managing.
There are hints — no more — that the economic impact of Covid, while terrible, can be contained, too. Today’s unemployment figures are bad but not catastrophic. That will change fast if furlough ends without some sort of replacement — but the Chancellor knows that too and is working on it. There may be an extension of protection against evictions, too — although that will have consequences for landlords and the long-term answer is lower rents. Public confidence is returning: a survey today shows more people are now willing to travel by public transport. The reopening of schools has gone well.
Listing things like this isn’t a defence of the Government. A lot of it is down to the hard work of others. It’s right to be angry when ministers promise things which turn out not to be true — and deny the difficulties. But as a country we are pulling through this. Things will get better.
However bad things are now, we are in a much better place than we were in April