8 Super Useful Tips Regarding Covid 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 most effective of scientific advice one day seems so often to fall by the wayside the next. Thus our initial reluctance to suspend large sports events was determined by "scientific advice" which stated there was no evidence that large crowds of individuals packed closely together presented an ideal environment in 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 being an explanation for deficiencies in the provision of protective equipment to frontline workers as well as in testing capacity. One may be forgiven for wondering whether political policy was being informed by the science, or vice versa.
So far so great, supplemental resources if indeed anything can be said to be great about a worldwide pandemic which during the time of writing has already claimed the lives of over a hundred thousand people. However 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 decrease in new infections to a far more manageable number than is the case at the present time. 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 really long way from home, and yet within little more than a month it had broken out to engulf the entire 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 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 will hopefully be better equipped to do so the other time around. Mobile phone applications happen to be being developed that may assist us in the process, though 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 is tough to see how a programme of tracking and contact tracing can possibly hope to have success.
More than anything else there will need 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 through 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 though it well might 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 will permit the world the luxury of enjoying something like a normal existence without too much fear.
Lifting lockdown must be thought to be the first stage of the end game, not being an ill-planned panic measure driven through the needs of the economy. Handled correctly, it offers a second chance to rectify the errors which allowed the virus to break out within the first place. To be caught napping the first time around was clumsy, to do so again will be absolutely unforgivable.
