Johnson’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said England “probably reached the limits” of how open it can be, given the number of cases of coronavirus in the country.
However, this is not how the government sees it. According to several British government sources who were not allowed to talk about policies yet to be announced, here is where Downing Street is at the moment:
One government minister told CNN: “There is enormous damage caused by lockdown itself and that must be remedied against the obvious enormous damage caused by the virus. If you set one against the other and realize how low transmissions are among school children – how do you come to terms with the economic catastrophe over schools?
Second, contrary to the idea that a fair choice must be made, it is not a “zero-sum game”, one government adviser told CNN. “It’s not the case when pubs and bars are open X will happen and when you open schools Y will happen. If everyone complies with the rules of social distance, clean their hands, you can basically have both at the same time.”
Third, the two things are not related. “Schools are going back anyway, mostly because parents have to go back to work. Everything has a knock-on effect,” a senior official said.
Fourth, this disease is here and despite optimistic signs, there is still no clear idea of when a vaccine will arrive. Government sources say that despite the scale of the tragedy, it is still dangerous for the elderly and vulnerable. So, if most people can return to one type of normality, the focus may be on local lockdowns and protecting the vulnerable.
In short, the government might try to do everything at once. There will likely be a publicity stunt that “places more emphasis on public accountability in both messaging and enforcement”, to have a “third way” in which “human behavior is the first line of defense,” according to the government adviser.
Public health experts fear that the country is not yet able to guarantee any of this safely and that the grand opening is coming, Johnson could still have to make a choice for himself.
There is widespread belief that the UK’s testing and tracing program is still not up to standard. Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London, says: “a strong contact tracking system that can break transmission chains and bring down infections” is essential if schools are to be safe.
“Contact tracing should reach 80% of new symptomatic cases and 80% of their contacts,” she told CNN, adding, “we probably reach about 50-70% of symptomatic cases.” Government sources claim that tests are higher than this, however, it is very difficult to get full numbers because tests are now conducted at local level than by central government.
If testing is not where it should be, then things can get out of hand quickly. “If we return to the same level of contact we had in March, we will return to the same level of epidemic growth,” said Graham Medley, Professor of Infectious Disease Modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He explains that re-schools are dangerous not only because of transmissions, but because of the size of networks they create. “A school of 500 children could connect 300-400 houses. And houses with more than one child going to different schools, and connecting all the households in both schools. So, you can see how, when all the schools are open, it networking can get very enormous. ”
Of course, it is impossible to ignore the fact that schools and economics have a significant impact on each other. Of course, parents cannot return to work if they have to stay home to care for children. But there is also the issue of Brits’ confidence in their government.
“When people see that it is possible to go to work, have schools open and go out to dinner, while targeted measures quickly suppress local spikes, their economic behavior will be more normal,” says Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College in London. “When restaurants and pubs are suddenly forced to close and teachers say they do not feel safe, this obviously undermines the government’s strategy, which ultimately affects the confidence that life will return to normal.”
Whatever happens, it will be difficult. All things remain open with the government by crawling the fingers that people follow the rules, whether Johnson has to choose between educating children or revamping economic activity.
Critics of the government say the prime minister himself is partly responsible for his predicament, pointing out mistakes made in the early days of the pandemic.
“The most obvious mistake was leaving community tests in March, which meant we missed months of being able to effectively identify cases and track contacts,” said Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology at the Royal Society of Medicine, and added that this means months later the country’s test and track system is inadequate.
He pointed to the delays in locking up and stopping people entering the country, leading to the impression that the government “underpinned the severity of the virus.” He says the centralized control of the government “made the outbreak of restrictions very difficult. A pandemic is essentially a lot of local epidemics and it is easier to suppress these at the local level.”
All these criticisms are well known. Members of Johnson’s own party lamented the government’s early response. Even Johnson’s secretary of education said there were “things we would take a different approach to.”
Criticism on both sides of his party now acknowledges several months now that the country needs to start living as close to normal as possible. And that includes sending kids back to school and keeping the pubs – even as the country moves to a winter that could see a second spike in infections.
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