Why are we more reluctant to reopen than countries with higher infection rates?
The epidemic, in Britain, is over. Yes, the virus continues to circulate, as do many adenoviruses, rhinoviruses and, indeed, coronaviruses. But Covid-19 is no longer, by any normal definition, a major cause of death.
The BBC has worked out that
44 per cent of local authority areas in England, and more than half in Scotland, did not record a single Covid fatality in April. Hardly surprising given the low incidence of the virus. According to the ONS, around one person in a thousand was infected in the week up to 24 April – down from one in 50 in January.
Why, then, are we being so slow to open up? Wasn’t the original deal that, once the vulnerable had been vaccinated, life would return to normal? Well, “normal” should mean precisely that: no masks, no travel restrictions, no immunity passports. It is indefensible to ban previously legal activity because a tiny proportion of vaccines might not work, let alone because people choose not to get them.
All the evidence, though, is that the inoculation programme is working better than expected, reducing transmissibility as well as illness. Take-up has also been far higher than forecast. Around two thirds of us now have antibodies, which must put us very close to, if not already past, the threshold for collective immunity. So why are we more reluctant to reopen than countries with vastly higher infection and hospitalisation rates?
Now is the moment when we should be, if not exactly stealing a march on our competitors, at least making up the ground we lost with our unusually harsh lockdowns last year. Britain bet heavily and shrewdly on vaccines, investing in their development and building up an early lead. That lead has translated into a much earlier decline in the incidence of the disease. Yet we seem determined not to exploit our advantage. It is true that shops and schools are at last open again. But universities are still not teaching faceto-face, offices remain empty and it is illegal to invite your friends to dinner. Frankly, at the rate we are going, I wonder how much impact the formal lifting of the remaining prohibitions will have. I have a nasty suspicion that, as when the first lockdown ended last July, many people will remain anxious, even mildly agoraphobic.
I hope to God that I’m wrong, but I can’t help noticing that many of my inoculated neighbours are being more cautious now than they were a year ago when they had had no vaccine.
Perhaps it is the unrelenting pessimism of the news cycle. We are constantly hearing about the tragedy in India, but when did you last see a report about, say, Florida, which lifted its restrictions last year and have suffered no ill effect? Or perhaps people have simply settled into new, timid routines. Few laws are as powerful as force of habit. If you spend 14 months telling people that it is dangerous to leave their homes, there is bound to be some lasting psychological effect.
The worst of it is that we seem to have accepted the reversal of the burden of proof. Our criminal justice system requires a high degree of evidence before incarceration. But we have switched things around so that we now demand proof before accepting normality. Our right to buy and sell, to congregate, to travel – these things are our birthright, not a set of privileges to be earned through good behaviour as though we were prisoners applying for parole. When did we stop caring?