Getting back to normal?

The false hope triggered by seeing schools reopening

Apparently ministers are somehow surprised by the large rise in cases over the past week! And that’s despite the recent shortages of tests, which presumably mean these numbers are actually an underestimate.

How could they not see this coming?!

It’s not just that schools have reopened. (Personally I support getting kids back to school as a very high priority — school closures will have widened the disadvantage gap already — though schools should have been supported financially to do things like hiring additional staff and spaces, and been given clear, consistent advice in advance.) The combination of that with encouraging people back into the office, ending furlough schemes, and everything else is giving everybody the impression that we’re getting back to normal.

And that’s consistent with what we hear from people day to day. People are talking about getting back to normal soon (“now that schools are reopening”), and already talking about the Covid era in the past tense. All of the children’s out-of-school activities we are on email lists for have restarted or ramped up in-person sessions alongside schools reopening. And other non-children’s groups are also talking about going back to in-person events soon (“now that schools are reopening”).

This is all despite the fact there’s no actual logical reason to think Covid is going away. I don’t see how anything could significantly change the situation except an effective vaccine, and even that might only be the beginning of a long journey.

So now the government are bringing in stricter measures to control the spread: no more than 6 people can meet as a group socially by law, indoors or outdoors. Perhaps this will be a useful reminder that Covid is still with us, just as it has been for the past six months. Though if something like this had been planned alongside school reopening, maybe the right signals would have been sent earlier, and we wouldn’t be in quite as bad a situation?

And maybe instead of government funds being spent on the “eat out to help out” scheme, money could instead be distributed to hospitality industry workers to remain on furlough?

It shocks me that ministers didn’t see this coming when it’s been bloody obvious to me and lots of others from the outside. A scary thought when they’re meant to be the ones leading us through this crisis.

In any case, it looks like after a brief flash of hope, we are indeed getting back to normal. Not the pre-Covid normal everybody had hoped for, but the pandemic-restricted normality that we simply have to accept will be with us for a while.