Lockdown Mania

So much has been written about the current Covid crises by people far more knowledgeable than me. I guess we are all just tired of hearing the same old dreaded news every day.

It has been a dreadful time for a lot of people and many people have sadly lost their loved ones to the disease.

However, we are almost a year into the Covid crises and there has been some sort of lockdown or restrictions in place since March last year. With the barrage of the same old news, we are all now beginning to wonder whether life will ever get back to normal.

I heard on the radio recently that a representative from Public Health England said that restrictions in the summer could be tighter than last summer. This is not something people want to hear especially as cases dropped a lot last summer. Added to the fact that the UK is now rolling out a massive vaccine program at an unprecedented rate. Something that we didn’t have at all last year, so I am not sure how this recent comment works to restore a nation’s confidence that the country and especially the economy will get better.

I am now beginning to wonder whether there are some people at governing and adviser level who actually ever want restrictions to be lifted.

Firstly, we have to acknowledge and congratulate the scientists and all the medical people who have and are continuing to do an excellent job at both gaining an understanding of this virus and keeping us informed about the dangers and the need to protect ourselves. To develop numerous vaccines at such a rapid rate is phenomenal.

However, the country is mentally on its knees with the majority of the population quite rightly obeying the rules of lockdown and behaving correctly in protecting themselves and others to help prevent the spread of the virus. There have been a small proportion of idiots who have flouted the rules including some celebrities and sportsman who may have thought they were above everyone else and immune to the restrictions. However, in every part of society and life there will always be the few that just don’t care. The majority of us do care but we need some hope for an open society especially now we have a vaccination process.

We are not going to get this from the mainstream media who have been rubbing their hands with glee ever since this crisis started. They seem to have revelled in spreading doom and gloom and scaring the public as much as they can. One famous media channel dedicates nearly every day to replacing their normal daily routine with Covid news. Of course, we all know that no news is good news and that’s how they make a living but let’s face it they have loved it. Because of some of the irresponsible coverage we personally know of one couple who don’t ever want to go out again due to being so scared. So there must be lots of other scared people with the same feelings.

I may still naively believe that most minsters and people in power are trying their best to tackle the crises and help the public, but I am beginning to wander whether some either in power or in advisory role are beginning to enjoy the power of the restrictions rather too much and don’t ever want to let go. Not just in England but other powers in the UK.

We have to accept that there will always be mutations of a virus, but the public needs a way out and back to normality. We need to listen more to other sectors that have been so badly affected by the restrictions. The patients of other illnesses waiting for treatments that have been put back because of this. The doctors who have been hampered in treating these other diseases. Wouldn’t it actually be good if Covid was the only illness in the world? We need to listen to the charities that have been affected trying to raise money for all these other illness as well as other world-wide causes that affect our planet. We need to listen to the hospitality trade that has been devasted by the lockdown. A trade that did so much work last summer, no doubt at a considerable cost, to create the necessary changes to make the public safe and confident to go out and enjoy a drink and a meal. Despite of all the safety measures they put in they were once again knocked for six when that had to close again. I imagine a lot will now not be able to survive. We need to listen to the stage actors, comedians and other performers who rely on an audience and have not been able to do their job. We need to listen to a rising pandemic of people with mental illnesses who have been starved of activities which help them get through their lives. The children and youngsters missing out on months of proper education despite all the great work done by teachers and parents as best they can.

We also need to be able to hear the views of all people in the medical and scientific world and not just the ones the mainstream media allow us listen to. We need to understand the full facts of all the statistics to ensure they are not being manipulated to serve a particular cause.

When we take all this into account, and all the devastation it has caused we need to work out whether continual lockdown is the best solution in the long run. What happens when the next virus comes along? Do we follow the same patten of behaviour or look for different solutions?

I wonder what would have happened if in World War 2 if we had locked ourselves away in fear of enemy domination or given up every time they developed a new weapon.