Opinion

Brian Feeney: Public needs to be told the truth, that rolling lockdowns are here to stay until a vaccine is found

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Lockdown, contact-breaker, circuit-breaker, call it what you like, isn’t a solution to the pandemic. Picture by Mark Marlow
Lockdown, contact-breaker, circuit-breaker, call it what you like, isn’t a solution to the pandemic. Picture by Mark Marlow Lockdown, contact-breaker, circuit-breaker, call it what you like, isn’t a solution to the pandemic. Picture by Mark Marlow

Let’s cut to the chase. Lockdown, contact-breaker, circuit-breaker, call it what you like, isn’t a solution to the pandemic.

It’s a short-term fix, a temporary necessity for two main reasons. First, to stop the health and care systems being overwhelmed by surging Covid-19 cases and secondly, if it works, to give people a gap to celebrate Christmas. Then it’s back to another rise in cases and another lockdown, and so it will continue until a vaccine is found.

READ MORE: Claire Simpson: As lockdown drags on what now for our Christmas celebrations?Opens in new window ]

Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister has more or less admitted that his administration’s policy will be rolling lockdowns. Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t come out and said as much, but that’s the way she’s heading. The only leader of a major country who has openly admitted that repeated lockdowns will continue until a vaccine comes on stream is Emmanuel Macron. His advice is that lockdown then release, will continue until next July at the earliest. As for England, no one seems to know what the policy is, least of all the government. Johnson’s whack-a-mole approach clearly isn’t working but he won’t move to a full lockdown partly because of opposition from his far-right MPs and partly because Keir Starmer predicted he would have no alternative.

Here the picture is blurry. No party leader will own up and tell the public that there is no alternative to rolling lockdowns without a vaccine, and that even when one is found it will be months into next year before it becomes widely available.

The picture is complicated by the division in the DUP between the wingnuts, led by their blowhard MPs who oppose any restrictions, others who would only support half measures, and their powerless, humiliated leader who does support lockdowns but is speaking out of both sides of her mouth to party opponents about future lockdowns.

The Stormont executive has to come out clearly and state what the policy is. Rolling lockdowns, which they don’t seem to have the nerve to admit to, but have no alternative but to adopt, have profound consequences for commerce and society.

The timing of this current one was disgraceful. Restaurants, hotels and bars were given, in reality less than thirty-six hours notice. Many, maybe most, had stock purchased for the weekend, order books full, tables and rooms booked. Beer had to be poured down the drain, customers contacted and told premises were closed at 6.00pm on Friday night, wholesalers left high and dry. That can’t happen again.

Brian Feeney
Brian Feeney Brian Feeney

Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill have to come out and say what the exit strategy from this lockdown is – is it the R number less than 1.0, or case numbers or hospital admissions, or what? – and what is going to happen next? Do they anticipate another lockdown in January (yes) or if not, when, because we all know there will not be a Covid-free Shangri-La in the new year. Businesses and the general public have to know what is ahead of them so that, unlike this occasion, the timing and duration of the next lockdown is not a sudden surprise.

Political leaders must be open and honest with the public. It’s no good crying over split milk. Everyone knows now a first-class system of test, trace and isolate is essential but the executive made a mess of it following the on-off British shambles. Everyone knows there should be an all-Ireland response to the pandemic, but there isn’t going to be one: April’s Memorandum of Understanding about north-south health cooperation turned out to be a paper tiger because it wasn’t signed by the relevant ministers, only by the medical officers who don’t take the decisions.

Everyone knows that there’s no alternative to a policy of repeated lockdowns. So come out and say that and face down the DUP’s parade of climate deniers, flat earthers, anti-mask, anti-science, antediluvians. Keeping the truth about the next six months concealed guarantees widespread non-compliance and increasing infections.