Party Lines So much still to learn on Covid-19
IT seems we are all going to be allowed to spend more time outside.
Boris Johnson’s plan to ease the lockdown draws on advice from scientists that coronavirus spreads more easily indoors.
While some people will welcome any relaxing of the restrictions, the changes he announces tonight are likely to be limited - at least for the time being.
It’s the same story in other countries. Italy, for example, is easing the lockdown but Italians are still barred from travelling to a different region of their country.
Spain has allowed many businesses to re-open but most shops remain closed for now.
There are unpleasant facts about the Covid-19 coronavirus which the government will not be keen to talk about.
Johnson and his colleagues, understandably, want to tell us the huge sacrifices we have all made have not been in vain.
Of course the lockdown, and our willingness to obey the rules, meant the spread of the virus fell significantly and far fewer people died.
However, it did nothing to stamp out the virus or to make it less infectious.
If the lockdown ended in full today then the country would be in the same position as it was in March - on the brink of an epidemic likely to kill tens of thousands of people.
Our best hope of rendering the virus more or less harmless is a vaccine but while research is taking place all over the world to try to develop one there is no guarantee of success. Some infectious diseases just don’t have vaccines.
Another possibility is that enough of us catch the virus - and develop immunity - to dramatically slow its spread. This may sound terrifying but it is worth remembering scientists think more than one in ten of us (so at least six million people) have had covid-19 already.
Despite what some of the Government’s critics say, the Tories are not deliberately trying to infect us all with covid-19.
If anything, the politicians have been keener on making us all stay at home than some of their scientific advisers, who argued there were benefits to letting the virus spread in a controlled way.
It may be, however, the scientists are eventually proved right.
It depends on whether Covid-19 sufferers do become immune and for how long, something which is still being studied.
We are still learning about Covid19. What we do know is that it has not gone away.