The ‘fed up’ who breach Covid rules need to see an end to crisis
WHEN it seemed Britain was delaying lockdown, in what now seems like the dim and distant days of early spring 2020, one reason was the fear that, if it were imposed for too long, people would become complacent and inclined to stop following the restrictions.
As we find ourselves, in January 2021, in the first week of lockdown number three, those concerns are coming home to roost. Adherence to the rules on staying home, saving lives and protecting the NHS was pretty good in lockdown one, and even in lockdown two, which seemed a good deal less strict, most people stuck to the rules.
Today, however, there is worrying evidence that some people – still very much a minority – are finding it too hard to do the right thing. As Devon and Cornwall Police’s deputy chief constable Paul Netherton said yesterday, people are beginning to get “fed up.” With that understandable boredom comes a tendency, on the part of a small but significant minority, to flout the regulations or find a way to interpret them in a far looser way than was ever intended by ministers or scientists.
When the rules were occasionally breached by members of the public earlier in the crisis, people blamed Dominic Cummings, the PM’s adviser, and his ill-advised trip to the North East for making some citizens feel it was OK to misbehave. In actual fact, we all knew then, just as we know now, precisely what is expected of us, both in the spirit and the letter of lockdown regulations.
Mr Cummings has now gone from Downing Street. But the population has become even more weary of the lockdown rules and, as a direct result, the impact of lockdown on the spread of disease, the hospitalisation of patients and, sadly, deaths, has been compromised.
Vaccination is all very well and is, thankfully, bringing the vital protection that the most vulnerable so desperately need. In time – hopefully in fairly short order – it will ease the pressure on the health service, and hospitalisations of those in the highest risk groups will start to fall. But vaccination means little to the students who are now under investigation for holding an alleged party in an accommodation block in Exeter; it is not the golden bullet so far as the 30/40-somethings, who have been photographed packed together in parks and public spaces, or taking a sneaky coffee together when they should be staying home. It makes little difference, in the short term, to the lives of those who have decided taking a long drive to their second home in the Westcountry is something they can no longer wait for.
Boris Johnson is right to highlight the vaccination programme, as he did on a visit to Bristol yesterday and to speak with pride on the numbers – 2.5 million and counting – who have already had the jab. But there needs to be a better correlation between the vaccines going into the arms of those aged 80 and over and the relief it will eventually bring to the restless and occasionally feckless who are breaching the rules at the moment. They need to be given hope as well as on-the-spot fines that – in not too many months – normal life will be resuming for them as well.