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2020-

2020-09-10 d
THE COVID-CON III

Lockdown forever

We cannot allow our freedoms to wither away.

So here we are, almost six months since lockdown began and how many people you have round your house is still a police matter.

The announcement from prime minister Boris Johnson yesterday, that the legal limit on social gatherings would be reduced from 30 people to six, was at once depressing and mundane.

Such an infringement on our most basic freedoms would have been unthinkable this time last year, but it almost seems generous by recent standards. At least the pubs are still open – for now.

But for the first time in weeks we are going in the opposite direction, and the bleakness of it all is hard to overstate. A short-term sacrifice to blunt the pandemic has become an indefinite, draining burden.

Students are starting freshers confined to small social bubbles. Christmas could well be cancelled. Planning any sort of gathering more than a few days in advance has become fraught with legal uncertainty.

Meanwhile, the justification for all this remains highly contested.

Debate still rages about whether the original hard lockdown was necessary. According to experts, infections were falling before lockdown came in, seemingly due to voluntary public action. (read more)

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