We’re getting back to normal but Scots must stay the course

MOST of Scotland breathed a sigh of relief when Nicola Sturgeon said there would be no return of Covid restrictions… yet. The First Minister was updating the nation after the highest ever daily figure for infections – 4,323 – was reported.

There would be no return to the lockdowns of the previous 18 months, Miss Sturgeon announced. But she could not rule out reimposing some restrictions ‘if we start to see evidence of a substantial increase in serious illness’.

No doubt there were some who watched the press conference with a degree of disappointment. For there are many Scots whose income has not been affected in the slightest by being forced either to work from home or to endure furlough – in other words, being paid to stay at home and not work. It is easy for such people to claim that imposing another lockdown is the only way to ensure our fellow citizens’ safety.

Survive

But many of those lucky people who found themselves with extra time on their hands and still enough cash in their bank accounts were public sector employees. They had the privilege of having their salaries met by the taxpayer irrespective of whether they had managed to get into the office since March 2020.

Their privileged status stands in stark contrast to the majority of the population who rely on the private sector to survive. And for many of them, three lockdowns in a year and a half have played havoc with their income and their job security.

In some cases, the prospect of reimposing restrictions on travel, on businesses, shops and on the hospitality sector would have been the final nail in the coffin for a sector that has already been dealt some staggering blows.

So when the First Minister announced that there would be no return to lockdown, they would have been quietly satisfied. But still there are those who are just a little bit too keen to use any bad news to justify cancelling daily life and returning to our bunkers.

Why is it that some people delight in instructions on how to live our lives being handed down to us from those who govern us?

I yearn for the day when I no longer have to wear a mask in a shop or on a train. As soon as that day comes (and in Scotland, who knows if it will ever arrive?) I will gleefully deposit all those disposable masks that are folded up in various jacket and trouser pockets in the nearest bin.

I make no apology for the fact that I continue to wear a mask, not because I am convinced it is having a massive positive impact on the spread of the virus, but because it’s the law. And when the law changes, I will change my behaviour.

Yet many of my fellow Scots will regret any further liberalising of such rules and will no doubt continue to wear masks when they use a supermarket, perhaps even tutting at the likes of me when I pass them. But if they’re wearing a mask, I probably won’t hear them.

Is the daily infection rate a reliable indicator of whether restrictions are needed anyway? Some of our European neighbours don’t think so and are taking a different approach. In Germany, for example, the daily rate of hospitalisations is now being used instead, with decisions about further lockdowns dependent on an assessment of whether the health service is at threat of being overrun.

In other words, they’re relying on the rollout of the Covid vaccine to protect citizens from serious illness, rather than risking any further damage to the economy and to jobs and tax revenues that would be put at risk otherwise.

As Miss Sturgeon herself said yesterday, at least part of the higher rate of reported infections is down to the availability of testing kits: at the start of the pandemic, many more cases went undiagnosed and unreported because tests were less accessible.

But while the daily rate looks serious – it is slightly higher than the previous highest daily figure of July 1 – a rise was only to be expected in the weeks following the lifting of restrictions.

And thanks to the rollout of the vaccine, that infection rate hasn’t been accompanied by a commensurate rise in hospital admissions.

The number of Scots in hospital with Covid is 364, of which 43 are in intensive care. For those people and their families, this is a stressful time. But we’re a very long way from seeing the NHS succumbing to unmanageable numbers, as was feared at the very start of the pandemic.

The worst thing that politicians could do now would be to overreact. Scotland is just getting back to normal and we need to stay the course.

Changed

The return to normal means a return to work. Working from home was necessary during the darkest days of the last 18 months. Without it, many companies and organisations would simply have been unable to function.

But workers don’t just need jobs: they need their colleagues too, they need to travel into town and city centres, they need to shop at local stores and buy lunch at local restaurants and cafes.

Too often we hear doomsday predictions about how modern life has changed forever, how working from home is here to stay, how public transport is just so 2019. This needs to be challenged.

For Scotland to function normally and productively, we need to rediscover the joy of socialising – at work as well as at play. Reintroducing legal obligations to work from home, in isolation, would be a disastrous retreat.

Yet in the face of a devastated landscape for our city and town centres, Nicola Sturgeon is still urging us to continue to work from home.

The other eye-catching announcement the First Minister made yesterday was that a full public inquiry into the pandemic in Scotland will begin by the end of the year.

The cynic might suggest that no politician agrees to hold any inquiry unless they know in advance what the conclusions will be. That same cynic might also suspect that the move is at least partly aimed at embarrassing Boris Johnson, who has not yet succumbed to pressure to hold his own inquiry.

Debacle

All of that aside, a public inquiry will be a welcome opportunity to examine what has happened since March 2020 and for the relatives of those who have died to get the answers to which they have a right. Let’s just hope that the inquiry will move a touch more quickly than the inquiry into the Edinburgh Tram debacle, an inquiry which has already taken longer to draw its conclusions than it took to build the tram in the first place.

The timing of the start of the inquiry, however, could pose a challenge for the First Minister. On the principle that inquiries are only held after the events they are examining, we must assume that Miss Sturgeon herself is confident that by the time the inquiry sits, Covid and the pandemic it caused will be firmly in the past. Otherwise, how can all the lessons be learned?

Let’s hope the inquiry, when it meets, can do so physically.

It would be the ultimate irony if a body set up to examine the lessons of the pandemic had to meet virtually over Zoom.