Coronavirus: Why premature talk of ‘exit strategy’ could kill – Bill Jamieson

It is dangerously early for so much speculation about lifting the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, writes Bill Jamieson.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has resisted calls to lay out a lockdown exit strategy (Picture: Pippa Fowles/Crown Copyright/10 Downing Street/PA Wire
)Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has resisted calls to lay out a lockdown exit strategy (Picture: Pippa Fowles/Crown Copyright/10 Downing Street/PA Wire
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Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has resisted calls to lay out a lockdown exit strategy (Picture: Pippa Fowles/Crown Copyright/10 Downing Street/PA Wire )

In this epochal pandemic, it is the most natural thing to look beyond and turn our attention to “exit strategies”. Barely a day now passes without armchair pundits and BBC interviewers urging the government to reveal its plans. How soon could social isolation measures be lifted? Why not lift restrictions for schools and key workers? Might younger people be released from lockdown while the over-70s are kept indoors?

A curse on this talk. Few activities will more encourage a premature breach in social isolation rules and a second wave of coronavirus infection than this constant goading of experts and ministers to come clean on post-peak pandemic planning – as if some credible plan exists – and even to name the date for the relaxation of lockdown restrictions.

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We are nowhere near ready for even a modest return to “status quo ante”.

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Dominic Raab rejects call for lockdown exit plan

And while the spread of infection increases and the peak of pandemic fatalities has still to be reached, such speculation is not only premature but also positively dangerous.

But no matter the daily admonitions to stick with social isolation and distancing, there is relentless pressure to reveal the escape plan. Why can’t we follow South Korea? Or learn from Germany? Or copy Italy?

There are multiple reasons why we should treat talk of an exit strategy with extreme caution. First, we do not have anything like the volume of testing required before we can follow those countries like Germany that are much more advanced on the availability and the practice of testing.

NHS would be overwhelmed

Second, prediction on the course of the pandemic is highly uncertain with wildly different forecasts from experts as to the ultimate number of fatalities.

And third, even a phased outcome as suggested by some, with certain sections of the population allowed to go back to work while others remain in isolation is bound to be riddled with anomalies and open to abuse.

For example, there are calls for those aged under 64 to be unshielded as the incidence of infection here is markedly lower than for those aged 65 and over. This relaxation would affect some 82 per cent of the population. With an estimated infection reproduction number of 2.5 and a sub-population of 54 million unshielded persons, some 90 per cent of these would be at risk of infection within 100 days, leading to a potential death toll of 140,000.

At the same time, how could we effectively shield the remaining vulnerable 18 per cent of the population? The NHS would be overwhelmed and shops and business premises that felt it safe to re-open would need to be shut down again, negating any economic benefit that might have been gained. There is an evident lack of awareness about the dangers posed by a secondary wave of infection, as if confusion around coronavirus was not widespread enough.

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That shouldn’t prevent ministers and officials working confidentially, not just on the sheer complexity of post-peak coronavirus, but also on how a restricted relaxation could be administered. This would also involve greater surveillance and day-to-day control by the police in the event of disputes. There is a real risk that many who are not in the designated categories for relaxation would seek to take advantage, posing potentially serious risks of social control.

Too many known unknowns

An article in the Financial Times earlier this week quoting Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College highlighted the confusion within government as to whether there was a coherent exit strategy it could share with us. While governments can theoretically check out of their current policies any time they like (and indeed will be inclined to do so quickly), “they might not, in reality, be able to leave” the current lockdown.

In the backtracking from the herd-immunity approach, estimates of the numbers at risk from infection still range from 10 per cent of the population to as high as 68 per cent.

Is it that the government is “deliberately not giving us the full picture, or that it does not actually know what the strategy is beyond this initial curve-flattening stage?” So, how many infections have there really been so far – and how close are we really at the peak?

We seem trapped in the Donald Rumsfeld miasma of too many known unknowns – and unknown unknowns. And until this cloud lifts, a credible exit strategy looks some way off.