5 Things Everyone Knows About Removing Economic Lockdowns That You Do Not

Throughout its handling of the crisis, my government has been keen to stress that it is "following the science". Political spokespersons are invariably accompanied during briefings by medical advisers and scientists aplenty of order and esteem. And yet what passes as the very best of scientific advice one day seems so often to fall by the wayside the next. Thus our initial reluctance to suspend large sports was according to "scientific advice" which stated there was no evidence that large crowds of individuals packed closely together presented an ideal environment through which a virus might spread, only for contrary advice to be issued barely a day or two later. Likewise pubs and restaurants. "Following the science" has even been offered as an explanation for deficiencies in the provision of protective equipment to frontline workers as well as in testing capacity. One could be forgiven for wondering whether political policy was being informed through the science, or vice versa.

So far so good, if indeed anything may be said to do well about a global pandemic which during the time of writing has already claimed the lives of over a hundred thousand people. Although the challenge now is how exactly to lift restrictions and also to begin to resume something even approaching normality without the rate of infections once again increasing rapidly. Neither the needs of the economy nor human nature shall permit life to placed on hold indefinitely.

One imagines, or at least hopes, that any significant relaxation of the restrictions will inevitably follow a reduction in new infections to a far more manageable number than will be the case at the moment. When it does happen, the goal must nonetheless be to maintain new infections at a level below R1. Without achieving this, a second wave is inevitable.

The lesson taught to us through the initial spread of the virus is a sobering one. Then contagion was taking place in one city in one country a very long way from home, and yet within little more than a month it had broken out to engulf the whole planet. Generally, with 240 separate nations all fighting the virus in varying stages of development, any measures taken by anyone country to keep it from returning to within its borders would need to be extraordinary.

On the other side of the coin we have at least within this very short space of time gained valuable experience and knowledge. Where western countries, with the partial exception of Germany, failed to test, trace and track down the pathogen with sufficient rigour when it first descended upon us, we shall hopefully be better equipped to do so the second time around. Phone apps happen to be being developed which can assist us in this process, although it would be a negation of duty to allow our policy to rely solely upon their use to the exclusion of other, complimentary strategies.

One imagines that what limited travel is permitted to resume between nations will, for the time being at least, be subject either to testing passengers - including returning British nationals - for the virus at the point of departure or of entry, or else to implementing an obligatory period of quarantine for all travellers. Without such drastic action it really is tough to see how a programme of tracking and contact tracing can possibly hope to succeed.

More than anything else there will have to be global co-operation, and co-ordination, at every level. A global pandemic can only effectively be tackled through joined-up, global strategic action. Even one rogue nation refusing to play by the rules will risk throwing every nation's efforts into jeopardy.

Ultimately, we can only hold off the threat as best we can pending the arrival of a vaccine. Before this happens even though it well could be that antiviral drugs, whether new or re-purposed, will change the game by allowing the illness arising from infection to be treated before it becomes serious and even fatal. Removing the grim unpredictability of coronavirus lockdowns shall allow the world the luxury of enjoying something like a normal existence without too much fear.

Lifting lockdown needs to be thought of as the very first stage of the end game, not as being an ill-planned panic measure driven through the needs of the economy. Handled correctly, it provides a second chance to rectify the errors which allowed the virus to break out within the first place. To be caught napping the very first time around was clumsy, to do so again would be absolutely unforgivable.