If there’s one thing I misjudged completely, it’s how creepy and long-lasting the effects of lockdown on all of us would be. I’m not in this case talking about the catastrophic medical cost: the heart attacks and strokes, the missed diagnoses. If we’d let Covid rip, if we hadn’t locked down, I’m not sure there’d have been a functioning hospital to go to anyway.
What’s troubling me is the effect on our national psyche. Some of us are out and about — anti-vaxxers for instance — enjoying sprightly get-togethers, but others of us have retreated, withdrawn from outside life. Successive lockdowns have knocked us into hibernation mode and it’s not clear that we’re ever coming out.
Over the weekend the papers reported on the phenomenon of the Covid-era no-show. A franchise called Gusto with 12 restaurants across the UK reported that in the previous week 1,000 people had booked tables but not turned up.
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