Two big gaps in Boris Johnson’s lockdown statement

There were three messages in Boris Johnson’s address to the nation, and quite a lot of important gaps.

The messages were:

1. Because the Covid-19 epidemic has been tempered but not eliminated, lockdown continues – though will be modified very gradually;
2. It would be a jolly good thing if a few more of us could return to work, especially on construction sites and in factories, so long as that can be done in a way that does not imperil health;
3. The pace at which lockdown is modified, and whether it is modified at all, is in the collective hands of the British people, and will be wholly determined by whether we continue to obey social-distancing rules.

So what were the gaps? Here are a couple:

1. We don’t know how the financial incentive to stop work, stay home and save lives – the £40bn job retention scheme that pays people to cease engaging in economic activity – will be changed so that it becomes rational for employers and employees to turn on the commercial ignition switch;
2. We don’t yet have a finely calibrated system to tell us precisely what the rate of viral transition is for the UK as a whole, let alone for individual nations, or regions, or localities, and until we do we will be stumbling slightly precariously in the dark as economic and social activity very slowly resumes (the PM today says the R is in the range of 0.5