Shields down!

It's the first of June. How did that happen? One minute we're in the depths of winter, hearing news of a nasty bug in China, the next, we've barreled through the sunniest, most relentlessly blue-skied spring in living memory. In that time, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, started a new job, lost over a stone in weight and watched the world go by, mostly through the living room windows. I have diligently stayed at home, protected the NHS, and saved lives. My own, probably.

There was a time when COVID-19 was seen as a mere irritation affecting somewhere else. "The Chinese," we scoffed, "and their wet markets." And then it came to Europe, and we cast a concerning eye on News At Ten as alarming reports emerged from, first, Italy and then Spain. On 24 March, a few days after HMG's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said that keeping the COVID-19 death toll below 20,000 would be "a good outcome", I received a text message from the government itself (whom I didn't remembering ever giving my mobile number), telling me ominously: "New rules in force now: you must stay at home". This was followed by a helpful reminder of Dominic Cummings' latest slogan: "Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives." Well, I was, already, doing just that. A week or so later I received another SMS, this time from my GP surgery, telling me that I'd been "identified as high risk" and to "STAY at HOME & avoid contact with anyone except your carers or healthcare workers for at least 12 weeks". So I have. I've been pretty diligent: my girlfriend, to her infinite credit, braves the supermarket so I don't have to, and on the few times that we have gone out for exercise since rules on how far you can go have relaxed a little, we've done all the right things about avoiding proximity to others. But even then, I've been nervous. Actually, I’ve been scared shitless.

The shielding programme gave the impression that the coronavirus was out there, ligging about in the air, stuck to pavements that would end up on shoes you brought into the house, thriving on door handles and embedded in fabric, just waiting for you to brush past or even walk straight into it. This probably hasn’t been the case, but then again, how do we know? I live in a borough with the least number of coronavirus cases in London. What has made us different from, say, the north-west, where the dreaded ‘R’ rate remains stubbornly high? Even if cases in this locale have been low, I’m not going to assume it’s any safer. Frankly, my diagnosis coming around the same time as COVID-19 announced that it was here in the UK rendered me paranoid, and I’m not easing up on that point of view just because the lockdown is.

Even though diabetes wasn’t specified as an "underlying health condition" when the pandemic arrived it has certainly proven to be one of the highest risks to mortality since. Of the 39,045 deaths recorded up until today, one-in-four have been attributed to diabetes. Britain’s place in the COVID fatality league table is nothing to be proud of at roughly 10% of the worldwide total. True, the rates are coming down, but with the daily average still around 300, we're still seeing the equivalent of a fully loaded Boeing 777 crashing every single day. That's better than the three 777s coming down per day that the coronavirus death rate peaked at here in Britain, but still. 

So, forgive me for being a bit of a Negative Nelly at news that, from today, everything is, apparently, back to normal, but if, like me, you regard the death rate as the key metric of this virus (let's face it, if you know something is capable of killing you, you're going to do your level best to avoid it), I don't share the enthusiasm about lockdown restrictions being lifted. I get it that we need the economy to be restarted, but that shouldn't mean hundreds of people packing themselves onto beaches and into parks (and buying Pringles and gallons of Pepsi from Tesco Express for picnics does not constitute the economy being brought back to life). My other half is a primary teacher, and even if children are less likely to pass on the virus, their clothing could. Exponentially, the risk goes up with every potential encounter my girlfriend has with anyone or anything from outside our house. Now scale that up with all the other activities returning to some semblance of normality.

We can all understand the desire for it but I'm still not convinced that now is the right time. In fact, no amount of colour-coded terrorism alert-style Government charts can convince me that the time is right. I don't think the Government's own scientific advisers are convinced, either. On Saturday, the well-respected Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, warned of the "potential dangers if we go too fast," adding that if people didn't behave sensibly, there was a high risk of the pandemic worsening. He’s not alone: members of the UK’s SAGE committee of scientific advisers have also expressed the concern that easing is going too quickly. Interesting, then, that on Saturday night at around 10pm news leaked from 10 Downing Street to a conveniently primed Sunday newspaper that the Government was about to ease the lockdown on 2.2 million of the most vulnerable who'd been under virtual house arrest "shielding". In principle, that includes me. Firstly, I was surprised that there were 2.2 million people in this category as, since shielding had begun, we'd been told that 1.5 million came under this regime. Secondly, the leak of a feelgood story on a Saturday night to a Sunday tabloid is a classic piece of spin. By the time Robert Jenrick, the communities minister, fronted yesterday's No.10 press conference (and he was already under a cloud over allegations of cronyism related to a property deal he sanctioned), we were already in the midst of the surprise news that those who were medically shielding, having spent weeks cooped up in bedrooms and unable to even mingle with other members of their households, were suddenly going to be allowed out into the fresh air. Clearly, that nasty little virus, with its trumpet-like horns, was no longer lurking right outside the door. I've worked in the media my entire professional life, and I can spot a confected story when I see one. I can smell one, too.

So here we are, first of another hopefully gloriously sunny month and suddenly everything is looking up. Schools have reopened, street markets have set up shop again, and you can now test drive a car you still won't be able to go anywhere in. We can also gather in others' gardens, guilt-free. Millions of people who have been forced to live hermit-like for almost three months can now get outside for the first time, as long as they follow the rules. Ah, yes, the rules. They're all open to interpretation, right? Just tell that to those evil, microscopic droplets still ligging about, even if they're not ligging about as much as they were...