I was struck by what appeared to be a harmless, throwaway soundbite in chancellor Rishi Sunak’s speech last week when he announced that the replacement for the successful furlough scheme would be so pitiful that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people would be thrown on the dole. “Our lives can no longer be put on hold,” said Sunak. “We must learn to live without fear.” It was only later when I thought to myself, “What did he actually mean by that?”
There is a significant body of opinion in this country, fomented by a generally right wing, so called libertarian, press, encouraged by a right wing, so called libertarian government, that we should now allow the virus to run its course without interference by medics, scientists and politicians, by way of a perverse interpretation of Darwinism where the strongest would survive and the weakest, who could not adapt, would die. Was that what Sunak meant?
I understand people’s frustrations at the restrictions that have been imposed on our lives. Indeed, I share them. I want to go to the pub, on holiday, to gigs and all the rest of it, but I know that if we all do that, COVID-19 will run free. It is true that the virus mainly affects older people, often with underlying health conditions (which as an asthma sufferer means me) and bringing everything back to ‘normal’ for most people would mean locking up, imprisoning even, those deemed to be vulnerable. Although our initial lockdown wasn’t exactly the hardest in the world, many people have already been effectively locked up, shielded, from the virus. Life for many of these people has been awful, especially for those who live alone. Imagine saying to everyone who had an underlying health condition, from asthma, cystic fibrosis, cancer, diabetes and a million other conditions, as well as virtually every pensioner in the land, you must now stay at home until science comes riding to the rescue with a vaccine and/or effective treatment?
We could have the Glastonbury festival, Premier League football, pubs could be opened to full capacity and generally just end all restrictions in order to allow the majority of the population to achieve herd immunity. You can see a particular kind of logic to it. The vulnerable could stay at home whilst life for everyone else got back to normal. That, I know, is what many, many people want. Rishi Sunak’s comments that “Our lives can no longer be put on hold” and “We must learn to live without fear” appear to reflect, or even pander, to that point of view.
If the suggestion of locking up old codgers, like me, was likely to be time-limited, say a few more months, perhaps we could live with it. I have a library sized selection of books to read, 25,000 or so songs to listen to, movies and boxed sets to watch and we order our shopping on line. But as things stand, it wouldn’t be time-limited because we have little to no idea when science will ride to the rescue. If science comes up with a vaccine, there are suggestions it might not be until 2023 when it has been fully rolled out across the country. In the meantime, we don’t have effective treatments, beyond a 60 year old drug that can stop some people dying. I would not relish the idea of being locked up for three years. Many people have lost their partners or never had them. How would they feel?
When I worked for the British Red Cross, my job was to visit lonely and isolated people in rural locations and help them reintegrate with society or simply give them a few hours of company. To my surprise, I found there were enormous numbers of people whose lives were utterly miserable due to medical conditions and isolation. I remember one woman telling me after I visited her for the last time that she would rather die than spend the rest of her life on her own. Unsurprisingly, I never forgot that. And when I’ve heard people saying that vulnerable people should be shielded, locked up, basically, I still remember that woman.
I doubt that those who want to lock up the vulnerable indefinitely include their own relatives in that number. It will always be someone they don’t know. When Sunak says “We should learn to live without fear”, then surely he means “We should learn to die without fear”? Is a life lived alone, indefinitely, away from human engagement and contact, really a life at all?
I do understand that this would be a difficult situation for a fully functioning competent government, but sadly we don’t have one of those. Instead, we have a ruling party that still acts as if it is permanently in campaign mode instead of governing, its every action apparently determined by focus groups and data mining, making decisions on the basis of populism and not the best interests of the country.
This is a massive balancing act. Yes, we do need to protect the vulnerable but we cannot demand that they surrender their freedoms so say for the greater good. Better that the government brings in a proper test, track and trace system to replace the privately run shambles run by Tory party cronies like Dido Harding. Better than the government comes up with an all-encompassing strategy instead of bumbling along from day to day, making policy decisions on the hoof and being buffeted by the slightest breeze than comes along.
As things stand, we are facing a Tsunami of mental health problems right across society in general but in the vulnerable sections of it in particular. And there either is such a thing as society, where everyone matters and everyone is equally valued, or, as Margaret Thatcher said, we don’t.
I cannot live without some degree of fear because I don’t want family, friends or indeed anyone else to die because of this evil virus. But, by the same token, I don’t want to confine millions of people to solitary confinement, potentially for years on end. Parts of our lives are on hold because of COVID-19. And just saying that we mustn’t put them on hold is nothing more than empty rhetoric from a politician for whom many people thought was better than that. His comments indicate he isn’t better than that and all that slick presentation can’t hide it.
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