The big Lockdown Easing: Take Two

It was nine months ago when I first wrote about lockdown easing in this blog. NINE MONTHS. We all thought COVID-19 was virtually over at that stage and easing would mark our first baby steps back towards a permanent return to normality.

 

How little we knew. One year on and we all feel thoroughly bitten and cripplingly shy. And we’re also hugely fearful that we’ll end up back at square one if we get it wrong this time. So we're taking things slowly.

 

But there’s slowly, and there’s the pace of a geriatric snail on cannabis.

 

This week came the announcement that from March 8 - two weeks from now -

children will be allowed back to school. That’s great for them, but the only impact it will have on us will be that gaggles of schoolkids will once again be hogging the pavements when we’re out on our afternoon walk. 

 

Then three weeks later on March 29 we’ll be – wait for it – allowed to meet up with other people outside. Well, we do that anyway, but in five weeks from now we’ll be officially allowed to sit down with them rather than walk endlessly around in circles.

 

It’s not exactly something to put in the diary, is it? One can’t help feeling that the Big Easing is in fact hugely underwhelming, particularly when all the news points to lower infections, fewer hospital admissions and a successful vaccine rollout.

 

But I suppose one must curb one’s frustration. While everything is moving in the right direction, there’s always a reverse gear – and the PM is at pains to point out he’s not afraid to use it.

 

In fact, today’s apparent success story is balanced precariously on a knife-edge. The coronavirus “variants” are continuing to cause alarm, and it turns out the virus is more likely to mutate during a vaccine roll-out anyway. I heard one scientist describe this as an arms race between us and the virus - rather apt, I thought. 

 

Then there are the hospital numbers, which remain stubbornly high. And if you compare our situation with that of one of our nearest neighbours – France – it’s easy to see how quickly things can go wrong. France has been slow to vaccinate but has avoided a third lockdown, choosing instead to impose a 6pm curfew. But the figures are going through the roof over there with 700-odd cases per 100,000 recorded in Nice compared with around 100 here. 

 

So we’ll have to be patient – at least until we’ve all become temporary patients, skipping about in the doctor’s surgery eager for our second vaccine dose. We’re counting the days. After all, we’ve nothing else to do.