The government’s Covid policy is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions

The government’s Covid response plan is to re-open society and the economy in England as far and as fast as possible, while trying to control the timing of an inevitable wave of new cases to avoid overrunning the NHS. It wants to time the peak now, for the summer and early autumn, rather than during the winter when schools have returned, cold weather means more Covid spread, and the NHS is under greater pressure.

It is an approach which depends on guesswork. As Jonathan Van Tam, the government’s deputy chief medical officer, said, there is “huge uncertainty about how high the peak will be”, and the continuing rise of Covid cases is exposing contradictions in the prime ministers’ Covid policy. The disease control measures on which the government has long relied have been abandoned, and this attempt to surf the wave is already under major pressure.

High case numbers create untenable contradictions in the government’s Covid policy

Policies designed to keep Covid cases low throw up contradictions when numbers are high. The benefits the government is seeking from opening up look like being fatally undermined because of its decision to proceed to the final stage of the exit plan.

Ministers are desperate to revive the economy, but a “pingdemic” has forced millions of people into self-isolation. That is itself causing economic problems as supply chains break down and businesses temporarily close. The government is already creating some limited exemptions from self-isolation, but it is resisting pressure to reduce the sensitivity of the contract tracing app, considered vital to managing the disease, while trying to persuade people not to delete it or turn off its functions.

Likewise “freedom day”, and the final scrapping of all restrictions, most notably ends restrictions on indoor activity. This benefits the hospitality and entertainment sectors, yet these are the very businesses that are staffed by those young people who are now most exposed to the virus and therefore to being asked to self-isolate.

The government’s apparent desire for an earlier wave of Covid creates an even odder contradiction. Ministers and scientists are urging people to behave cautiously and responsibly but that behaviour, if taken to its logical conclusion, would delay the wave to the winter, the outcome they say they are trying to avoid. The government is putting a lot of faith in the predictions of its modellers, and the now minimal tools ministers have available to influence Covid case numbers and the rate of spread. 

The prime minister’s limited room for manoeuvre is causing confusion

The prime minister’s reliance on a core group of backbenchers who have pushed hard against any ongoing restrictions means he has little political space to take decisions. Preventing the NHS being overrun was always going to require adjustments and course corrections, with chief medical officer Chris Whitty warning recently that Covid hospitalisations could get to “scary numbers” in the coming weeks. As with earlier decisions to lockdown, Johnson finds himself needing to wait until the need for restrictions is politically unarguable, and therefore too late.

This leaves Johnson confusing people by trying to claim the benefits of freedom, while urging caution. He is a prime minister comfortable in holding irreconcilable positions, and sometimes a government needs to show political artistry to massage contradictions. The Independent Labour MP James Maxton once noted that “if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus”, but this advice does not apply during a pandemic. Early intervention with clear and easily communicated policies works best; the virus shows no respect for the calculations of Conservative Party whips.

Drifting by default into a strategy of herd immunity will not work

It is time for the government to choose its horse. One option is to follow a strategy of herd immunity through vaccination and natural infection, and accept the consequences. That would mean abandoning any pretence of minimising infections through test and trace or cautious behaviour.

But that choice is impossible to justify, ethically or practically, and is why the prime minister cannot make the argument. Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a government adviser, describes “herd immunity by natural infection [as] a coronavirus strategy that lacks credibility” saying that he “cannot even call it science”. Young people in particular are also rightly worried about long Covid. There are real health risks about which ministers and the chief medical officer are unable to reassure, given the understandable lack of medical knowledge on the disease. And high Covid case loads in a partially vaccinated population (with the vaccine distribution now slowing) are, the experts say, ideal conditions for the nightmare scenario of yet another dangerous new variant emerging.

The only alternative is for the government to be upfront that its plans will – at some point, and likely soon – require the re-imposition of some social restrictions. The only question is how intrusive those restrictions will be. The government may find that the political, social and economic gains of “freedom day” will be lost if tougher measures need to be imposed because of the decisions it has taken in recent weeks.