5 Extraordinary Thoughts About Coronavirus Lockdowns
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 top of scientific advice one day seems so often to fall by the wayside the next. Thus our initial reluctance to suspend large sports was based upon "scientific advice" which stated there was no evidence that large crowds of people 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 within the provision of protective equipment to frontline workers and in testing capacity. One may very well be forgiven for wondering whether political policy was being informed through the science, or vice versa.
So far so great, if indeed anything may be said to be good about a global pandemic which during the time of writing has already claimed the lives of over a hundred thousand people. But the challenge now is the way 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 much more manageable number than is the case at the moment. When it does happen, the objective must nevertheless 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 really 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 additional side of the coin we have at least in this very short space of time gained valuable knowledge and experience. 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 will hopefully be better equipped to do so the second time around. Smart phone applications seem to be being developed that can assist us within this process, although it could 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 hard to find out how a programme of tracking and contact tracing can possibly hope to have success.
More than anything else there will have to be global co-operation, and co-ordination, at every level. A global pandemic can just 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 may 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 or perhaps fatal. Removing the grim unpredictability of Coronavirus will permit the world the luxury of enjoying something like a normal existence without too much fear.
Lifting lockdown needs to be viewed as the first stage of the end game, not as 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 check out this one from Isdecat Edu within the first place. To be caught napping the first time around was clumsy, to do so again will be absolutely unforgivable.
