The sun came up as usual this morning, but for the first time since this crisis began, that almost felt like a surprise.
For life as we know it is over now, the blurry outlines of something new emerging before disbelieving eyes. Barely a fortnight ago, all we had to do was wash our hands. Now Britain is in the economic equivalent of a medically induced coma, almost all usual life suspended to save the patient; nobody must now leave the house unless it’s essential (to buy food, exercise, seek treatment or provide care, or to work where that cannot be done from home). A public health strategy designed to unfurl over months, allowing Britons the luxury of gradually shrinking our horizons, has collapsed into a few dizzying days. It still feels unreal to many, which goes some way to explaining why tube trains were reportedly once again packed this morning even though a daily YouGov poll showed a staggering 93% support for the lockdown.
Who would stand, at a time like this, nose jammed into a stranger’s armpit? The obvious answer is people who feel they have no choice. Almost unbelievably, some corporate chiefs are still holding out, insisting their people come in even when their work is nobody else’s idea of essential. True to boss Mike Ashley’s notorious form, Sports Direct initially insisted its stores would stay open no matter what. Although it backtracked within hours, it nonetheless exposed what’s becoming a familiar flaw in an understandably overwhelmed government’s plans: too reliant on confused individual judgments.
The government was specific about which shops and public services should still open – food retailers, banks and newsagents can; libraries, hairdressers and car showrooms must not – but Sports Direct still managed to call it wrong, and grey areas hover over everything from office work to building sites. Should people only be doing work essential to national survival, or is the defining rule whether they can do it two metres apart from colleagues? Meanwhile one man’s essential is another’s “who cares?” at a time like this.
And then there are the 5 million self-employed, many staring disaster in the face if they don’t squeeze in paid hours while they can. The chancellor is said to be working frantically on a support package soon to be announced, but the prime minister offered no specific reassurance in Monday night’s sober address to the nation.
Ministers rightly refrained from shutting down pubs, restaurants, cinemas and gyms until they’d worked out how to replace employees’ wages. But at the time of writing, there is no confirmed lifeline for drowning freelancers, from plumbers and childminders to personal trainers and corporate one-man bands – all left clutching at rumours as work drains away. Many have no savings. People must be told in words of one syllable that help is on its way, even if the details take a while longer. But will even that be enough to keep everyone at home?
Boris Johnson had no choice but to shut Britain down once he realised that warnings to put physical distance between us weren’t getting though. But shocking as those images of clogged parks on Sunday and busy Monday morning commuter trains were, they shouldn’t have been surprising: it takes time for a society to come to terms with the idea that everything we knew is gone, and until late last week there were still too many reassuring signs of things carrying on as normal. By the weekend, with schools and pubs closed, most people had duly grasped that they weren’t supposed to be mixing indoors; but instead they did the one thing they’d heard it was still fine to do and went for a walk, only to discover everyone else had the same idea.
People trying to relearn lifelong habits overnight won’t always get it right first time. But while they might have had time to make mistakes under the government’s original and now abandoned scenario, a slow courtly dance with the virus in which Britain would have inched gradually towards restrictions, now that’s for the birds. Much as it irks libertarians, the state will have to prescribe in much more heavy handed detail what we can and can’t do – yet the government itself still seems to be coming to terms with that new reality.
Johnson’s natural instinct even now is to talk up the light at the end of the tunnel, promising to review and perhaps even lift restrictions within three weeks. But the lesson from Italy is that, if anything, we should expect to go deeper into the tunnel before we can eventually emerge. These are our lives now, for the foreseeable future. What remains is to help each other live them, with all the grace and kindness we can.
• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
