Lockdown is on the verge of being phased down so inevitably discussions will move on to ‘what now?’. Firmly on the government agenda is the threat of further possible lockdowns if the infection rate climbs significantly again, but would reintroducing another lockdown be politically feasible?

One extremely important aspect that should be obvious, but has not been clearly stated, is that lockdowns are never going to be a cure, they are no more than delaying tactics to better prepare our medical defences. Unless a powerful vaccine can be created, a very uncomfortable truth is that everybody who would have caught the virus, barring the most determined hermits, will inevitably still catch it at some future point. There is no escaping the disturbing fact that this new disease is never going away.

The assumption that an effective vaccine will be found to provide some degree of protection has entered the public conscience, yet most virologists will tell you that such a belief is currently much more a faith than a certainty. Even though there is real hope that the massive global scientific effort will yield a significant breakthrough, we may yet be forced to accept that the best we can do is to find new treatments that, although they will not prevent the disease, would at least make the infection more survivable.

It may become vital for us all to understand these points clearly, because it is hard to conceive of the Government being able to reintroduce further lockdowns to buy time, no matter how necessary they might appear.

In a free democracy, keeping people in their homes is not really under a government’s control. Draconian rules can only be maintained if broadly supported by the will of the majority of the people, yet there are already signs from some quarters that tolerance may be starting to wane. There is a risk that if expected and needed freedoms are not restored at a rate the public feels is reasonable then mass civil disobedience would soon result in a total loss of government authority. Nothing makes a government appear more powerless than being sheepishly forced into declaring changes long after they have happened anyway.

With that in mind, a further lockdown could be virtually impossible to make stick. Too many who are already facing harsh economic reality would start to ask why they should submit to a second drive towards penury when the period of this first lockdown had not been fully used to resolve all the medical resource limitation issues. There would be a strong argument that unless a slam-dunk, proven vaccine was on the immediate horizon, all another lockdown would ultimately achieve would be to further delay the inevitable. Put simply, the Government will find it virtually impossible to orchestrate a new lockdown when most of working age are at low personal risk of death from the virus but staring poverty in the face.

That leaves the only viable option we are about to embark on as having to be courageous, carrying on regardless and hoping that the medical profession finds answers quickly.

David Penn

Rickmansworth Road, Watford