Last night, just six months after first introducing ‘lockdown’ guidelines, Mr Johnson made another of his television appearances to confirm that new Covid-19 measures were being introduced (in England) as a result of the recent rapid growth in the number of cases. These restrictions included: limiting the size of indoor social gatherings to six; people should work from home if they can; bars, restaurants and pubs closing by 10pm; renewed ban on indoor team sports; and stricter rules on the wearing of face masks. The need for fresh action to contain the virus was underlined by official figures showing the daily number of new coronavirus cases across the UK had shot up to 4,926. This was the highest daily figure since May.
First Ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had introduced more onerous measures – indoor visits between households having now been banned.
Interesting to hear reaction of a leading scientist, Prof John Edmunds (head of the faculty of epidemiology and population health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine): “Overall, I don’t think the measures have gone anywhere near far enough. In fact, I don’t even think the measures in Scotland have gone far enough”.
Edmunds said he feared that, for the second time, the government would end up clamping down too late. He explained: “I suspect we will see very stringent measures coming in place throughout the UK at some point, but it will be too late again. We will have let the epidemic double and double and double again until we do take those measures. And then we’ll have the worst of both worlds, because then to slow the epidemic and bring it back down again, all the way down to somewhere close to where it is now or where it was in the summer will mean putting the brakes on the epidemic for a very long time, very hard - which is what we had to do in March because we didn’t react quick enough in March, and so I think that we haven’t learned from our mistake back then and we’re unfortunately about to repeat it”.
I went to Bloke’s Prayer at the Society Café this morning and, due to rain, we ended up sitting inside. I have to say, I felt somewhat uncomfortable – everyone sat suitably social-distanced but I sensed that ‘some of us’ were more ’sensitive’ than others in this respect. I registered my unease and, very generously, they’ve agreed that we’ll have zoom ‘meetings’ for the foreseeable future – unless the weather forecast is wonderfully positive (in which case we’ll arrange to meet outside).
I’ve also decided that I’m similarly uneasy about the prospect of being one of the church ‘welcomers’ for a service at Saint Stephen’s on 11 October… AND, in fact, also about attending ‘live’ services full stop. As a result, I’ve emailed Maria, Lee et al and explained my unease and have withdrawn from the rota.
Image: Land adjacent the marina now virtually cleared for redevelopment?
