Ben Lowry: A return to general lockdown is not even remotely feasible

The chief medical officer for Northern Ireland, Dr Michael Maguire, said he would recommend such sweeping restrictions if Covid-19 infections hit 80 people per 100,000 (Northern Ireland is now said to be around the 20 per 100,000 mark).

Robin Swann, the health minister, also gave warning that a return to lockdown could not be ruled out, if cases keep rising.

Dr McBride, as a health official who lacks an elected mandate, was careful to say that it was not ultimately his call. He said that any recommendations would “need to go to the executive at the appropriate time for them to make a decision”.

That is the traditional protocol. Now, however, western world politicians often defer big decisions to committees or experts, rather than make hard choices themselves.

Even the supposedly radical Tory government in London, which wants to shake up how the UK is governed, has hidden its pandemic decision making behind scientists.

The A Level-GCSE fiasco is rooted in the cowardice that led to UK schools being shut earlier than the government wanted, and staying closed for longer.

Even now teaching unions and other voices are trying to stop a full return to school next month, when in fact there should have been a push to get pupils back in the weeks after Easter– or at least exam years.

There are four broad reasons why a return to anything like the general lockdown we experienced after March 23 is not plausible.

• The first is that the nation can’t afford to sustain the furlough scheme.

It has already pushed debt to perilous levels. If furlough was extended into next year, there would need to be massive tax increases and spending cuts, including public sector pay cuts (albeit with likely exemptions for frontline workers).

NI politicians have no stomach for such toughness. Even in a financial crisis, Stormont seems only ever inclined to grant pay rises, including a huge recent teacher rise. Councils abused furlough by topping up Treasury funding of 80% of salaries with ratepayer cash to ensure no staff had any pay reduction.

• The second reason lockdown is not feasible is the public mood.

The UK government has been fairly criticised for the many things it did wrong over Covid, but few people cite things it got right.

Its behavioural experts said if lockdown came in too early people would get fed up after a while, and begin to break it. That began to happen after two months. In June there were growing reports of young people socialising in groups (it is no surprise that teens began to rebel).

As well as fatigue with restrictions, people began to develop an instinctive sense of the risk of Covid, similar to how we assess car travel (we know we might be killed but travel anyway because it is rare that people we know die).

• The third reason lockdown is not feasible is that infection levels do not justify such a massive response.

Even the level cited by Dr McBride – 80 per 100,000 cases – is low according to some experts. Prof Carl Heneghan of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine said epidemic level is five times higher (symptoms in 400 per 100,000 people). He said people were failing to understand, and balance, risks.

Mr Swann and Dr McBride have accepted such balance over schooling (they acknowledge a general risk to kids’ health from being out of class). But such balancing equations should be applied more widely (such as the rise in non Covid excess deaths which became evident back in April, caused by things such as heart attacks going untreated in lockdown).

Few politicians are candid that the Covid risk cannot be cut to zero.

Sweden’s former state epidemiologist Prof Johan Giesecke said from the outset that it was not possible to halt Covid’s spread. Recent upsurges in case even in nations that were seen as models of control, such as Germany and South Korea, have vindicated that prediction.

• The fourth reason another lockdown is not feasible is specific to NI: Bobby Storey’s funeral shattered Stormont’s authority.

There was a cross-party determination to protect Sinn Fein (because otherwise Stormont collapses, and will only ever return on their terms). This meant the first and deputy first ministers cannot preside over press briefings that might reveal suspension of liberty.

Instead, the political parties diverted attention from the calculating nature of SF leaders’ social distancing breach on June 30 in west (then east) Belfast by backing probes into important but secondary matters such as PSNI and Belfast council handling of the funeral.

But in the absence of sanction against hypocritical leaders who set the rules, the damage is irreparable. A population that for months largely obeyed lockdown, including missing funerals of loved ones, watched as republicans were allowed to do as they pleased.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

• Ben Lowry: Autumn in Northern Ireland always seems to arrive in late August

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