We are not quite back where we started, but almost. Despite having had seven months to develop an effective test and trace system the government wants us to believe that it has no choice but to put us back into a pretty severe form of lockdown. Merseyside, and more specifically the Liverpool city region which includes St Helens, appears to be just about the only place in England which has today been subjected to the very strictest restrictions under the government’s facile three-tiered ‘traffic light’ system. As the only region in tier 3 our pubs, gyms, casinos, sport & leisure facilities and betting shops will be forced to close from this Wednesday (October 14) for a period of at least four weeks.
The government has spent the last few weeks blaming the public for the rise in Covid-19 infections which it says justify stricter measures. This ignores that it fully reopened schools in early September before a few weeks later declaring that students could and should prepare to return to or start university. With the £9,000 per head that this raises in tuition fees now safe it then decided that any students who had moved away from their home towns to study (as most do) would not be able to return home this side of Christmas. Despite many feeling confined to their university digs the government pressed on with its agenda that the public, and in particular students, were causing a spike.
And yet it is not the education sector which is subject to any tightening of restrictions. The blame has shifted again. Universities will stay open which is fabulous news since it means I still have to work. Schools will stay open. To combat the spikes noticeable since the start of the new academic year the government has decided to implement restrictions on the hospitality sector. Pubs, in essence. Backed by its army of useful idiots on social media tweeting their videos of crowds gathering on city centre streets, the government has seemingly convinced local leaders in Merseyside that some actual scientific evidence that the spike is down to pub-goers will not be necessary.
Never mind that many of the videos doing the rounds were the result of the government’s own idiotic decision to introduce a 10.00pm curfew at pubs across the country a couple of weeks ago. This ensured that all pub-goers would be chucked out on to the streets at the same time, potentially causing crowds outside and taking us back to the not so glorious days of unseemly scraps over taxis and places in the kebab queue. The argument that shutting pubs an hour earlier means people get less drunk and are therefore more likely to comply with social distancing measures has been offered. This seems fanciful. In the first place most people inclined to go to pubs with a 10.00pm curfew just go out an hour earlier to compensate. In the second place it’s an argument that accepts that scenes like those seen on social media videos are the norm, and that pubs are either not trying or not succeeding in enforcing social distancing measures.
My own experience of this theory is that it is absolute and utter arse-wash. I have just been to Durham for a few days for my birthday. It was outstanding, than you for asking. Durham is the scene of Dominic Cummings’ now notorious eye-test drive and so perhaps a little synonymous with Covid-related problems. Yet the people running pubs there are doing an outstanding job of making sure that all of the government guidelines are adhered to. You don’t get through the front door without a mask or proof of an exemption, and you have to keep the mask on until you are at your table, making sure to put it back on if you leave your table which you only do in order to use the facilities. It is table service only so no queues at the bar, and you check in to the pub using QR codes either on the pubs’ own app or on the NHS test and trace version. This allows you to be notified should you come into contact with somebody who is infected.
And despite the berserk 10.00 curfew there were no crowds outside either. Numbers inside the pubs are limited to however many can be accommodated at socially distanced tables. Several people were turned away on Saturday. Those people do not - staggering as it may seem to the lockdown ultras who have been wishing this Fresh Hell on us for weeks - hang about outside for a bit of a drunken sing-song or to protest at the injustice of reduced pub capacities. They accept it and move on with their lives leaving the rest of us to continue with a quiet, perfectly safe and social evening.
Part of the reason that government has been able to foist this shit show back upon us is not only compliance from political leaders like Joe Anderson and Steve Rotheram but also from the public. Social media has been awash with posts from those who are just desperate to go back to the good old days of March when going out meant half an hour in the park or a trip to Tesco. There is no appetite it seems within our community for learning to live with the virus. We must always live in fear of it and any alternative ideas are dismissed as dangerous Covid denial. I’m not a Covid denier. I can read a newspaper and digest a TV news bulletin. I understand how many people have died from it and that potentially nobody is really 100% safe while it is in the community. But if our only defence against Covid-19 is a form of lockdown then I would question whether we are truly alive anyway. Those arguing that lockdown reduces infection numbers are right. It does. No shit Sherlock, as they say. But it is no way to live and is just a pause in any case. Where is the exit strategy? This government told us in March that we would ‘turn the tide’ against this virus in 12 weeks. Now look at us, forbidden once again from having a life outside of work for who knows how long and gratefully applauding the decision as we shut ourselves away again. Fucking pathetic.
A lot has been said (then largely ignored) about the non-Covid death toll during these measures. When it does finally end how many people will have died because they didn’t have access to the treatments they need for other serious conditions? I am already a victim of lockdown. When Britain shut up shop in March I was just waiting for theatre space for a kidney transplant. All transplants were suspended in April until July, during which time my kidneys - being about as compliant as a ‘reveller’ on a politically motivated social media video - decided to kick up a gear to a point where my level of function was considered too high for a transplant.
On the face of it an increase in kidney function might be considered a good thing and while I don’t place myself among the absolute most unfortunate of those with treatments delayed by lockdown I can assure you that live kidney donations are not something which can be put off indefinitely. The sooner, the better to give everyone involved the best opportunity to recover as quickly as possible. I am expecting a call from the surgeon tomorrow (October 13) with an update on my situation but let’s not be too open-mouthed with shock when he decides that my currently non-essential surgery can wait. All of which leaves me in an intolerable limbo, something which I have been living with since the summer of 2017 and which I tend to vent to the renal psychologist once a month rather than on these pages.
There seems little doubt that there is a direct link between Boris Johnson’s long-held and rather infamous dislike for Liverpool and the targeting of Merseyside today. Or at least between Boris Johnson and the fact that most areas in the south with their Tory MPs are currently under the lightest restrictions in tier 1. It hardly seems worth having the debate about Johnson and Liverpool ever since his vile comments about the people and their perceived victimhood. That’s a trope which is shamefully trotted out to to score cheap points only by the desperate in online disagreements about something as trivial as football. You would think a man who considers himself worthy of the highest office in the land would be above it. Apparently not. He’s the source of it and this is just another example of that prejudice. What is more surprising and therefore disappointing is that people like Anderson and Rotheram have not done enough to challenge it. By contrast leaders in the Manchester region led by Andy Burnham have threatened legal action if these draconian measures are introduced without proper scientific evidence. The result of that is that those areas remain in tier 2 and pubs stay open. Life is far from normal there, but they have some semblance of normality and more importantly of hope.
Hope. Remember that? It’s been a while. It will apparently be a good while longer.
