United Kingdom: Will Covid ‘Freedom Day’ backfire?
The British government is “embarking on a dangerous experiment,” said The Observer in an editorial, and we are all guinea pigs. Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared “Freedom Day” last week and lifted nearly all remaining Covid restrictions in England. Masks and social distancing are no longer required indoors, and capacity limits have been dropped for pubs and other venues. This is all happening as a recent surge in infections driven by the Delta variant appears to have peaked, with new daily cases dropping 20 percent in a week. Daily hospitalizations and deaths remain low, about 917 and 64, respectively. But those numbers could surge if, as some experts predict, the scrapping of restrictions causes daily cases to rocket in the coming weeks. The government’s argument for opening up is, essentially, If not now, when about 56 percent of Britons are fully vaccinated, then never. Waiting until we hit herd immunity, perhaps when 70 percent of the population is protected against the virus, means a fourth Covid wave could hit in the winter, when the National Health Service will already be overstretched with the flu and other seasonal diseases. Of course, this is the same argument that was made in March, and that earlier easing of restrictions “went horribly wrong.”
The pandemic has given way to the “pingdemic,” said Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Anyone “pinged” by the NHS Covid app— alerted they have been in close contact with a person who tested positive—is told to self-isolate for 10 days, even if they have been fully vaccinated. I was just in London’s theater district, about to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, Cinderella, when the production was canceled minutes before curtain time because one cast member had tested positive and the entire cast had to quarantine. “Little girls were crying” outside the theater. This is freedom? Even Johnson got pinged, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. The prime minister surely envisioned his Freedom Day announcement as a triumphant speech he would give from a balcony festooned with Union Jacks. But then Health Secretary Sajid Javid, with whom Johnson works closely, tested positive. Johnson ended up addressing the nation by video link while quarantining in his country home, looking “like Churchill declaring victory from the bowels of an air raid shelter, while V-E Day street parties were strafed by Messerschmitts.”
Frankly, Johnson should have been allowed out, said The Scotsman. It’s ridiculous that while a positive test for your colleague can plunge you into isolation, your own negative test can’t get you out of it. So many people are being pinged and staying home from work “that food supplies have been disrupted and panic buying has broken out.” What happens next is something of a mystery, said Clive Cookson in the Financial Times. If the lifting of Covid restrictions does cause cases to spike, we won’t see a surge in positive test results for at least another week. But it’s possible that enough people have now been vaccinated and acquired infectioninduced immunity that Britain won’t see another wave. All we can do now is wait and watch this mass experiment play out.