Day: 27 April 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAax92GYr9o Boris made an unscheduled speech outside Downing Street this morning in which he announced... bugger all. For the time being, he said, there will be no easing of the lockdown. The message was the same as the one being peddled by Dominic Raab and other Cabinet ministers at the daily Downing Street press briefings: the lockdown will remain in place until the Government's five tests have been met and in the meantime it would be irresponsible to set out an exit timetable. According to Boris, the most important of those tests is eliminating the risk of a "second spike". If the easing of social distancing measures led to a second wave of infections that would not only be a humanitarian disaster, rendering all our sacrifices for nothing, it would also necessitate reimposing restrictions and that, in turn, would be "an economic disaster". So in order to protect the NHS, save lives and rebuild the economy, we have to remain under virtual house arrest for the foreseeable future. (You can read the full text here.) This was deeply unimpressive from the Prime Minister. Where's the evidence that phasing out the lockdown, but keeping more modest social distancing measures in place, would lead to a second wave? As Lyman Stone points out in an excellent essay in Public Discourse, the burden ...