Incompetence and political misjudgements still jeopardise Boris Johnson’s strategy

According to the prime minister, the Covid-19 warning lights were going off as if in a passenger jet, and Flight Captain Boris Johnson took immediate evasive action. 

As is so often the case, Mr Johnson was only half right, as things transpired. The government’s scientific advisers were indeed warning some weeks ago about the coming second wave, and advising strong action to avert a disaster. The evasive action the prime minister in fact took was to dither, ignore their main recommendation of a “circuit breaker” two-week national lockdown and then to publish their advice an hour after his press conference had finished. The new three-tier system and the “rule of six” will no doubt be of some help in slowing the spread of the coronavirus; but not enough in all likelihood to avoid an exponential rise in infections, hospitalisations and deaths, subject to the now familiar time lags. 

Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, is a man of the world who well understands the economic and social damage that lockdowns inflict, not least to health outcomes unrelated to Covid-19. He is sympathetic to the challenges politicians face in naming choices. However, he could not disguise his conviction that the country is not yet doing enough to avoid another wave of infections, and one that could conceivably overwhelm the NHS in areas such as Merseyside.  

The government line is that it must take a “narrow middle way” between protecting public health at all costs and preserving the economy. There is certainly a short-term trade off. The rapid rise in unemployment revealed in the latest official statistics could easily be reversed if all the lockdowns were abolished, all sporting and leisure activities restored and the commuters got back on the buses and trains. Conversely a return to full lockdown should see a sharp downturn in infections for as long as it lasts and the public comply. The current regime is supposed to represent a compromise between these extremes.  

So it is; but this middle way is not an effective one for the long term. First, as the Sage scientists indicate, it is too modest. Sooner or later in the coming weeks the crisis in the NHS, even with Nightingale hospitals, will force a harder lockdown than if the country acted now – the exact same error that was made during the delays in March, and with loss of life as a result. More than that, having so many people made ill and many more frightened to venture out, the economic damage will be as great as any formal lockdown. On a worst case scenario, supply chains would be disrupted through absenteeism, followed by panic buying and shortages – again just as happened in the spring. Indeed, with full Brexit timed for the year end, this chain of events looks perfectly likely. It is not one that any responsible government can accept.  

Any lockdown, severe or modest, long or short, local or national, is only of use if the time it buys is well spent. That means: providing an opportunity to develop new therapeutic treatments; pushing down the R rate; building up stocks of protective equipment, testing kits, ventilators and medicines; and edging closer to a vaccine. Those objectives were achieved during the last lockdown and the summer lull, but the missing factor was the implementation of a fully functioning test and trace system. Without that frontline defence, lockdowns only ever postpone the inevitable carnage of the virus, as the country is about to experience once again.  

One of the many tragedies in the coronavirus saga is that the public support, the funding (£12bn), the technology and the political consensus has all been in place to deliver test and trace. The polling also shows strung support for an even tighter lockdown than the present plan, to buy the necessary time for the preparations to be made. Even after months in which opportunities to do so have been squandered, that backing is still there. 

Yet incompetence and political misjudgements have placed it in jeopardy. Mr Johnson is frightened of the dissent on the right. A growing number in Tory ranks, in the right-wing commentariat and some sections of business and the public now take the view that the cure is worse than the disease. They are inclined to the euphemistically named strategy of “focused protection” – shielding and cocooning the vulnerable while allowing the young to resume their lives and build herd immunity across the community. The latest infection data reveal that to be a cruel fallacy. Coronavirus cannot be cordoned off. It has to be pushed down, including in tier-three areas; controlled and contained through efficient real-time testing and tracing. Without that, the stop/go lockdowns will continue indefinitely.