London is in lock down. It is not total, but public places have been closed down progressively. Each day there seems to be a new category that is to be closed for the duration of the emergency. The only places open now are food shops, pharmacies and some banks. Restaurants and cafes have swithched to a takeaway service and the grocery delivery companies are doing well, but people complain they cannot get a delivery slot.
London is quiet, traffic is low and most shops closed. It is like a Sunday everyday and there has been glorious spring sunshine these past few days. So people head for the parks and open spaces, much to the exasperation of our political leaders. The British press is febrile at the best of times and now they go looking for examples of people not keeping a social distance. Politicians at all levels rail against this thoughtless behaviour that may spread the infection and each day seems to bring a new set of shops or services that are to be closed. The country was shamed by a tearful health worker who, after a long shift on the front line of the health services, could not find what she needed in the shops because of panic buying. There are empty shelves, but the supermarkets seem to get restocked regularly. Some supermarkets specifying times when the over 60s are allowed exclusive access for a couple of hours. They now allow health workers to join them but now they have soon realised that health workers may well be vector for infection, so it now does not seem a smart thing to do. Some are restricting the numbers of people allowed into the shop and rationing items in short supply like toilet rolls to one or two per customer. I think we are coming to the end of the panic buying, there is only so much you can buy. For the supermarkets, they are quite used to spikes in demand, like at Christmas and the many false alarms over a sudden Brexit mean that the food supply chain is well prepared.
While the politicians implore the public to behave responsibly and set out a decreasing list of types of shops that may remain open. We are now down to food. pharmacies and banks. In the past day or so they have decided that only two people can gather together outside unless they share a household and there is a £30 fine for offenders. There have been reports of police clearing parks and breaking up private BBQs. At the same time, the police are complaining that they also have staff problems. Many required to self isolate and being required to stay at home for a couple of weeks. They and the government rely on encouraging civic responsibility and peer pressure.
The London public transport system is still running, but at a reduced service. People post pictures of crowding on tube trains and there are calls for more closures though they have to come up with an answer as to how ‘key workers’ are supposed to get to the jobs.
The latest scandal is the lack of personal protection equipment available to frontline staff in the health service. In Italy and Spain it has become apparent that hospitals and care homes become infected and may have spread the infection. Corovirus tests are still restricted only to hospital cases showing the symptoms. Many health workers have not been tested themselves and some doctors have died as a result. Many health workers are very worried for themselves and their families. The politicians tend to be defensive about this and say that a gazillion test kits, gloves and masks are on their way. The quickly move on to admonishing the public to keep their distance and wash their hands thoroughly.
I saw some local shops still open in the poorer areas. I have seen some street markets with stalls selling fruit and veg. Sometimes the customers seem a bit too close.
The advice is to only go out once a day for some exercise or go to the supermarket or pharmacy. There is none of the form filling and oppressive policing that there is in Paris which has led to an exodus to the countryside in France. The schools are all closed here and I imagine it is getting very difficult for parents of energetic children in small London apartments. The play areas in the parks are all closed but people still sit on the grass a discrete distance away from each other or walk cheerfully around, keeping a 2m distance. There is no total curfew yet.
There is another growing concern about the 300,000 or so UK nationals trapped in other countries unable to get home. This, I guess, is a problem every country faces since airlines have stopped running services and London is full of stranded travelers and all the EU nationals who worked in the hospitality sector, they are out of work and trying to get home. However, the homeless in central London are happy, one of big tourist hotels has offered them rooms for free.
There are community help networks spring up everywhere and everyone is worried about the elderly. Last Sunday was Mothers day and this become a Skype event or waving at family from behind a window. There is a general feeling that we all have to do our bit to get through this and help each other. Our politicians are very keen to appear like heroic wartime leaders steadfastly defiant in the face of an enemy and Boris Johnson thinks this is his Winston Churchill moment. Hopefully he won’t oversee quite as many national catastrophes.
People in the UK have stopped talking about Brexit, at last. Just when we thought we had created our own economic collapse, it gets eclipsed by a force of nature, rendering the whole world economy teetering on the edge.
:eek:
