This lockdown across the generations cannot last, surely

In his first appearance back at the Downing Street daily press conference, Boris Johnson gave some initial indications that the government is interested in refining this unprecedented state of affairs and getting beyond lockdown – eventually.

The strategy should be designed to “suppress the disease and restart the economy,” he said.

The government is, he added, beginning to formulate a “roadmap” for Britain “to begin to come out of lockdown.”

He stressed that the most important single test for the success of any easing of restrictions would be if the infection rate remains under 1. A scenario where one person is infecting more than one other person with coronavirus would be a bad outcome, we were told.

“By our collective discipline and by working together,” he said, “this country came together in a way few of us have seen in our lifetimes.”

We should expect more clarity in the coming week over what exactly might change at the next review but it appears that the government is erring on the side of extreme caution – several newspapers have been briefed that the lockdown will not be significantly modified until June.

In that scenario, we may be in for the longest lockdown in the Western world. District quarantines, city-wide social distancing and other preventative measures in the face of epidemics is a common feature of human history; a nationwide “lockdown” is quite new.

Caution has put us into an unprecedented series of crisis measures – it is time to inform us precisely how we get out of this.

There is some cause for optimism. We are facing a rather different beast from before the first phase of the outbreak – the epidemic ripped through London in March, an enormous global hub with the youngest average age of any major city in the UK.

London has accounted for a quarter of deaths from coronavirus recorded in hospital settings by the 28th of April. Of the total number of deaths in England in hospital, just 155 people below the age of 40 have died of the disease.

That is not to underplay the seriousness of the situation and the scale of fatalities from an uncontrolled outbreak without the treatments that are now in development would have been intolerable in the civilised society.

I am merely pointing out that in the most densely populated city of the UK and one of the youngest, which saw the very worst outbreak in the country, indeed in which, on a relatively conservative projection, up to a million people may have been infected, the disease has far less wriggle room than it had before the first wave – a lower proportion of the population is susceptible that makes up a disproportionately significant number of social interactions.

It may even be the case that the magic R number varies to such a significant extent between different populations and demographics that it becomes a useless measure.

The government is clearly aware of this and is making assurances that population surveys and enhanced testing will make room for some degree of flexibility. But Boris should make sure that he and his acolytes using the language of “national effort”  and “sacrifice” do not make it harder to justify a “smart” lockdown in which 10 or 20 per cent of the population is put in crisis measures rather than 100 per cent.

To return to the vast unevenness of the severity of the disease by age, it is obvious that lockdown in this form is unsustainable in the medium term. Indeed, the public health risks for children, teenagers and young adults are overwhelmingly a function of the lockdown itself. Lost attainment, especially in poorer families, domestic abuse and aggression with nowhere to go (especially in young men) are all immediate and long-term hazards.

There is a more fundamental dynamic at work too. Johnson’s premiership has been built on the notion that the instincts of the British people are worth respecting. He must now trust us to follow social distancing rules ourselves and to allow us to become accustomed to a world of elevated risk.

Whether you support a long lockdown or despair at it, at some point we are going to have to make our own modifications to behaviour guided by the medical advice, common sense and, yes, our own priorities. That work has to start now.