It's all about buying ourselves time
Keeping the Covid rules, however, requires public trust which is being squandered
There has been an understandable outcry over the British government’s announcement of jail terms of up to ten years for anyone who breaks the latest Covid-19 restrictions on foreign travel by lying about their destination.
As has been widely pointed out, ten years in jail is longer than the sentence for some serious crimes such as firearms offences or sexual assaults. This would be a wildly disproportionate penalty for what is, in effect, a breach of regulations.
Mark Harper, a Conservative MP and the leader of the lockdown-sceptic Coronavirus Recovery Group, has warned that the ten-year penalty couldn’t be introduced without a vote in parliament. Another unnamed senior Tory backbencher told the Telegraph:
To introduce a ten-year prison sentence by delegated legislation is remarkable.
However, there have been suggestions that the government merely means that lying about a flight destination would be covered by the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in jail. Since, though, it is highly unlikely that anyone would receive such a sentence under this act for lying on a flight document, this threat would be as empty as it is ferocious.
Whether empty or real, worse still it is being promoted alongside a package of restrictions marked by ineffectuality, incoherence and indecisiveness.
Breaching Covid regulations is, of course, a serious matter. Even with increasing numbers being vaccinated, there are still millions who remain vulnerable to the often grave immediate or long-term health effects of Covid-19. Disregarding the restrictions puts the lives and health of the community at risk from a virus some of whose variants have made it even more infectious.
But threatening a disproportionate penalty alongside manifest policy inadequacies is likely to provoke public anger and distrust, and a corresponding increasing reluctance to comply with the restrictions.
It is astounding, for example, that it is only now, one whole year after the eruption of the pandemic crisis, that Britain is taking measures to impose general restrictions on those arriving by air from around the world. Covid-19’s South Africa variant, which is causing the most concern over the doubtful effectiveness against it of the vaccines in current use, first became known as a potential global threat nearly two months ago. Yet it will still be another five days before Britain’s new restrictions on air travel come into effect.
Moreover, requiring only travellers from 33 “red-list” countries to spend ten days quarantined in a hotel creates obvious loopholes involving travel itineraries through different countries where the South Africa, Brazil or other dangerous variants may be rampant too.
Even more important, restrictions are almost useless if they are not effectively enforced. Although everyone flying into Britain will now be required to self-isolate for ten days, the scope for not complying with this is enormous unless their whereabouts are monitored through measures such as text and phone technology enabling calls and checks by officials.
On my own two visits to London from Israel during the pandemic, I wasn’t questioned at arrival at Heathrow about my arrangements for quarantine nor, indeed, subjected to any Covid-related checks at all. This appears to be the case even today. The Times (£) reports:
One passenger arriving from South Africa said that she had passed through Heathrow with no extra checks. Sharon Feinstein, who had been visiting her mother, told the Daily Express: “I had everything ready, my certificate showing I had tested negative, my passenger locator form. No one asked for my Covid certificate. I even looked for someone.”
Some people, however, are arguing that shutting the borders is not only ruinous to the economy but unsustainable. The Times (£) reports:
Mark Harper, a Conservative MP and the leader of the lockdown-sceptic Coronavirus Recovery Group, said there was a risk that the restrictions could be in place “for ever” because the virus would continue to mutate.
Some Covid sceptics have argued from the start of this crisis that none of these restrictions — lockdowns, mask wearing, social distancing rules and now restrictions on air travel — is sustainable, justifiable or effective. This is proved, they maintain, by the fact that Covid infections remain very high in countries where these restrictions have been applied.
This argument is, to put it mildly, a series of absurd leaps of logic and non-sequiturs. There are many different reasons why Covid infections remain so high. These vary from country to country, including demographic make-up, the knock-out blow of the new Covid variants, and applying restrictions that are too little or too late to prevent levels of infection so high they are then immensely difficult to bring down.
Lockdowns or airport closures only become necessary and unavoidable when other restrictions have failed to keep outbreaks of serious disease from Covid-19 at a level with which the country can cope. All they can ever do is bring down the number of infections to provide a temporary respite that allows health services to keep up. And that temporary respite is indeed what lockdowns have demonstrably produced.
Of course measures such as lockdowns or closing the airports can’t be a long-term solution. But that was never what they were intended to be. They are instead a last-ditch measure to buy time. And buying time is essential.
It may be that the virus will continue to mutate. It may be that, in one form or another, it will be with us forever. There is every reason to suppose, however, that eventually a vaccination regime will protect the population even from new variants, to the extent that the ill-effects of Covid-19 become mild enough for us all to live with.
Until we reach that point, however, we must continue to prevent the transmission of infection as much as we can. It’s all about buying ourselves time.
That means continuing with at least some restrictions until enough people have been vaccinated. That means in turn that we must all continue to pull together and keep the rules. But that means those rules have to command public trust and acceptance. And that’s what just isn’t happening.
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