England no longer listens to Johnson’s Lockdown Orders

Photographer: Leon Neal / Getty Images

People across England will soon be hit by an avalanche of new government ads on television, radio and social media that contain one blunt claim: Stay at home.

This is a well-known message – and this may be why the public is shrugging it off.

The data show that Britons are much more active during the current third national exclusion than when the first ‘stay at home’ order was issued last spring. There is more traffic on the roads, more people on trains and more shoppers.

Government officials worry too much which disputes the rules because Prime Minister Boris Johnson urges the public to try harder to avoid the spread of coronavirus. While the National Health Service has suffered from the weight of Covid-19 patients, the UK already has the highest death toll in Europe at more than 87,000.

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Although there are early signs that infection rates in places like London are starting to drop, and one person in 20 has now been vaccinated, officials warn that life by spring may not be normal again.

Images of the collapse of a state health care system could damage Johnson’s reputation, with public confidence in the government’s handling of the crisis, which has plunged sharply since its inception.

Hospital crisis

“We are now seeing cancer treatments being postponed unfortunate, ambulances queuing up and flooding intensive care units to adjacent wards,” Johnson said Friday. “This is not the time for the slightest relaxation of our national intention and our individual efforts.”

Last week, schools and businesses were closed and people were told to stay home if they possibly could, and to avoid all travel unless it was necessary.

Despite the crisis, traffic on British roads on January 11 was still at 63% of pre-pandemic levels, government figures showed. This is almost double the rate at the beginning of the first exclusion in early April, when traffic dropped to 35% of normal levels.

The use of public transport is also higher, with four times as many rail passengers as at the beginning of the spring closure. Despite the closure of the non-essential stores, more people will be shopping this time as well, according to research firm Springboard.

Schools are only open to children of key workers, but report much higher attendance levels than in spring. The latest government figures show that 14% of pupils were in state-funded schools on 11 January, compared to a total level of just 2% in April.

Breaking the rules

Given the serious threat facing the country, why are people going out more than when the pandemic first hit? Is there more rule breaking, is the public just bored or are the rules themselves not tough enough?

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The picture is not unique to the United Kingdom. Elsewhere in Europe, people have grown tired of wave after wave of restrictions. What makes England different is that the messages were mixed even from the beginning from a government that was reluctant to restrict people’s freedoms.

In Spain and Italy, which have imposed severe restrictions since the beginning, whole families have become accustomed to life-limiting restrictions. In Madrid and Milan, everyone wears a mask outside, and children have to wear it to school. In London, face coverings outside are still optional.

At the start of the pandemic, English chief executive Chris Whitty warned that citizens would “understandably get tired” of the restrictions.

But in recent surveys, people maintain that they are still following the rules. Stephen Reicher, a British government adviser and professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, dismissed the concept of ‘lock up’ fatigue ‘as a way for authorities to shift the blame onto the public.

“Some of the rules and the messages about them may be the problem,” he wrote in the British Medical Journal. First, during the summer, ministers encouraged people to go back to work and gave them discounts to eat in restaurants.

Some restrictions now appear to be more relaxed compared to the beginning of the first closure: nurseries are open to all children, there are childcare and support bubbles, and people can meet someone else for exercise. Restaurants are also open – even if only for takeaways.

Mixed messages

Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London and a government adviser, said that “having more things open sends a mixed message” and leaves people doubting that the country is “at a crisis point”.

“On the one hand, they say ‘stay at home’, and on the other hand, they allow universities, nurseries, places of worship and non-essential businesses to stay open,” she said.

But increased activity can also amount to a change in attitude towards the virus about 11 months into the pandemic. Robert Dingwall, professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University, said people were understandably scared in the spring, but it was now ‘normalized, a routine danger’.

He said that for many people who have not become ill with the virus, there is an increasing difference between their everyday experiences and the government press conferences that report countless deaths.

Sacrifice

The cabinet said the government had “given clear instructions to the public on what to do” to suppress the disease and that the “public had made enormous sacrifices to prevent our NHS from being overwhelmed and helping save lives.”

But senior ministers confused the picture by offering different versions of the rules. Interior Minister Priti Patel said on Thursday that people should exercise alone, although the rules allow activities with a friend.

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Johnson was himself criticized for cycling in the Olympic Park in east London, 11km from his Westminster home, despite guidelines saying people should stay in their local areas.

Eventually it all comes back to the prime minister. As a bold man, he struggled from the beginning with the idea of ​​curbing freedoms. In December, he declared that it would be “honestly inhumane” to ban people from gathering over Christmas before they were forced to do just that, as the virus rose days later.

Even now, Johnson may not be completely definitive in his messages. In a Twitter video Friday, he addressed people planning to leave their homes to go out this weekend. “Please,” he said. “Really, think twice.”

– With help by Philip Brian Tabuas