We wanted the toughest possible lockdown, and now we will pay the price
Iused to joke about ending up under house arrest – arraigned by Europol on charges of xenophobia for criticising the Maastricht treaty or some such. Sure enough, here I am after an ill-timed trip to France. And house arrest is the apt term: we returnees not allowed out even for solitary walks.
The rules are unenforceable, of course, and plenty of people are ignoring them, but newspaper columnists and politicians don’t have that option. If there is a double standard at work, it is the opposite of what is commonly supposed.
Not that I am complaining.
We knew when we set sail from Portsmouth that quarantine was a possibility, and we arranged our diaries accordingly. It may be illogical to impose these restrictions as we come out of lockdown, it may be focus-group driven, but that’s democracy. Dura lex, sed lex.
The past 13 days at home have given me plenty of time to ponder the difference between the atmosphere here and that across the Channel. And the more I reflect, the gloomier I become. Put simply, we Brits are unique in our reluctance to return to work. Other than the face masks, France felt normal. Cafés, offices and shops were full, albeit with the usual sprinkling of handwritten signs in shop windows announcing that the owners were on their summer holidays. There was standing room only on trains. The radio adverts were normal – no sombre warnings, no assurances from retailers about safety measures, no mention of Covid at all.
France has more new infections than the UK, but no one is suggesting a new lockdown. The prime minister, Jean Castex, says further closures would mean “falling into an economic and social crisis that would be much more dangerous than the health crisis”.
Infections were bound to rise following the “deconfinement”; but, although France lifted most of its restrictions on May 11, there has been no surge in fatalities. Perhaps the virus has become less lethal: viruses often evolve that way. Perhaps the most vulnerable were carried off by the first wave. Perhaps there is a higher degree of immunity than was first thought. We can’t say for sure.
What we can say is that Covid-19 has not taken off anywhere in the way that was feared back in March. Whether we look at countries that declared lockdowns, countries that didn’t, or countries that were in no position to impose distancing measures on teeming slum populations, we find no exponential spread.
Infection and fatality rates might vary for lots of reasons: climate, population density, average age, openness to international travel, levels of genetic immunity, incidence of obesity, exposure to previous coronaviruses and, not least, different counting methods. But the correlation with lockdowns is strikingly weak.
Spain and Italy imposed eyewateringly harsh closures. Germany and the Netherlands were more moderate. Sweden banned only large meetings (and, this week, lifted that ban). Dictatorial Belarus refused to shut anything. Yet you would be hard pressed, looking at graphs of the infections and deaths, to guess which graph went with which country.
It’s the same everywhere. My native Peru won plaudits for the speed and severity of its crackdown, yet it has a higher fatality rate than neighbouring Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, was condemned around the world for his insouciance. Those US states that imposed the mildest restrictions tend to have better than average death rates.
This is not to say that lockdowns are wholly ineffective. Immobilising an entire population is bound to have
some impact on slowing the spread of a disease. It is just that the correlation is marginal. We slammed down our sledgehammer and splintered the table, but only slightly dented the nut.
Why have the Brits, of all nations, suddenly become what the French call casaniers – reluctant to leave home? What made us so different? Was it the impact of the PM’s illness, the generosity of our furlough scheme, or simply the taut and terse power of the “stay home, save lives” slogan? Whatever the explanation, we seem not to want our old lives back. When the lockdown was imposed, there was much talk about the “new normal” that would follow when it was lifted; but the horrible truth is that we have normalised the lockdown itself.
If the mortality charts look similar enough around the world, the same cannot be said of the economic charts. A survey by Morgan Stanley suggests that 74 per cent of German office workers are back at their desks, 76 per cent of Spanish and Italian workers and 84 per cent of French workers. The figure for Britain? Thirty-seven per cent. No wonder our downturn is the steepest in Europe.
When that downturn manifests itself as lower incomes and fewer jobs, we will cast around for someone to blame. Why, we will ask, did Sage suddenly switch course, ordering a lockdown when the infection rate had already peaked? Why did ministers go along with it? Why did broadcasters stoke the panic? In truth, though, the blame should fall closer to home. We demanded the harshest of crackdowns. We got what we asked for.