I don't relish Lockdown 2.0 - it has huge public/mental health costs: but we are now at a stage where "shut down all pubs in X street until Y time near Z university, but not anywhere near a rich area " doesn't wash. Social solidarity means we're all in it, and all sacrifice....
What I want to hear from epidemiologists is epidemiology: not economics. If the science says lock down again for a limited time, and the economics say that will screw the recovery, let's have a mature democratic debate about the tradeoffs....
We can calibrate the number of delayed elective operations, or the mental health cost, but the cost to democracy of seeing a total breakdown of social solidarity at this point would be great. Politicians should take decisions and put them to parliament/assemblies.
I remain, for the record, convinced the Tories want consent for the lockdown to evaporate: that's their shared agenda with the far right. But I don't think they understand the social consequences as clearly as the fascists do: a permanent pre-Hobbesian regime, all against all.
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