Nearly a month ago, I called for an urgent 24-day full national lockdown, arguing that the restrictions were unlikely to make a significant difference in reducing transmission. If we had acted strongly and decisively then, and implemented a circuit-breaker lockdown — as we now know that the government’s scientific advisory group Sage also wanted — we would be in a much stronger position today.
Many readers considered it a controversial and unwise strategy. The government agreed, declining Sage’s advice and instead announcing the eventual rollout of a three-tier system covering areas of ‘medium’, ‘high’ and ‘very high’ risk, each with their own restrictions. Yet case rates, hospitalisations and deaths continue to increase across the country.
This prompted Sir Keir Starmer to — finally — call for a national two to three week circuit break. The Labour leader has correctly recognised that the current mixture of restrictions and pseudo-mini-lockdowns — which have no clear end or exit-strategy — are likely to yield an even greater negative economic impact than a national, brief and finite circuit break after which we could fully reopen the economy.
People aren’t pawns that can be moved about without objecting to the strategy
So why isn’t the government’s strategy working? After all, the central premise of the restrictions makes sense: if we reduce people’s contact with others in areas of particularly high prevalence, then the virus will struggle to infect new hosts.
It has failed because this isn’t a chess game.
