Will Indian variant ruin lockdown easing?

UNCERTAINTY over the Indian Covid variant’s impact on plans to ease lockdown dominated yesterday’s opinion columns.

Daily Telegraph

Sherelle Jacobs argued that concern over the mutation risked becoming an excuse never to return to normality.

“We have reached the point in the pandemic where we face a choice: either we engage with reality – and all its painful trade-offs; or we stay stuck in the unreal lockdown world we are living through,” she wrote.

“All the while, the problems we face – which include, but are not limited to, Covid – are mounting. Some are now as cliched as they are overwhelming: from the debts we must repay, to the children’s futures we must fix.

“Others continue to escalate under the radar.

“Even as the emergency recedes, the Government is ramping up rather than winding down the surveillance of its citizens.”

She concluded: “Perhaps the theory that authoritarianism happens because humans are cowardly and submissive is something of a red herring.

“Just suppose it simply happens because people can all too easily abandon reality for an alternative world, constructed by those in power – as both lockdown and the Zimbardo experiments demonstrate.

“One can only live in hope that the fresh whiff of limited liberty as lockdown eases will bring us all to our senses.”

The Guardian

Marina Hyde fretted about the UK Government’s travel and border policies, as well as implications for the spread of the Indian variant and lockdown.

“That more than 20,000 passengers were allowed to enter from India when Johnson was dithering/angling for a photo op with Narendra Modi was the farthest possible point from common sense,” she wrote.

“The absurdity yesterday even drew an interjection from Dominic Cummings – the only person to break his silence more frequently than

Prince Harry – who judges our border policy to be a ‘joke’. High praise indeed. You’ll note we have spent rather a lot of the past 14 months being told to ‘take responsibility’ and ‘use common sense’ by a government serially incapable of either. If it does all go t*** up, they’d better hope the terrible weather continues well past ‘freedom day’ on 21 June. At least hailstorms aren’t rioting weather.”

The Scotsman

Striking a more positive note, the paper said in its leader comment: “A pint enjoyed inside the shelter of a pub, choirs singing together for the first time in more than a year, and loved ones able to give and receive a hug – yesterday saw another huge step along the long road back to normality.

“We are still some distance away from the happy day when we can truly say the Covid crisis is behind us, but the return of simple pleasures for most was most eagerly welcomed.”