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It’s clear that some members of #SAGE (as well as many others) advised the government to #lockdown earlier. They didn’t because other experts, advisors and politicians didn’t believe that the public would accept it and follow the rules.
I’m sure that Dominic Cummings was one of the voices against a lockdown and questioning the public’s willingness to accept all of the hardships and difficulties it would entail.
But the public followed the rules, they accepted the difficulties and, in many cases, made tremendous sacrifices. Parents isolated from children so that they could continue working in the NHS, people died without any family members present, funerals were attended virtually.
I have sympathy with Cummings in worrying about who will look after his children if both parents are sick. When I was sick it was scary, wondering how you were going to feel in the morning and not knowing if (or when) your partner will get ill (2 weeks later in my case)
But we, like almost everyone, followed the government’s advice. We left our parents isolated, we didn’t ask my sister to bend the rules, we used the food we had in the house.
Cummings didn’t believe the public would swallow it because he knew he wouldn’t. He applied his own standards to us all and assumed we would break the lockdown if we judged it was the right thing to do. Just like Jacob Rees Mogg would have ignored the rules in #GrenfellTower
How much more difficult will it be to enforce a second lockdown (if required)? The government is destroying any remaining credibility it had to ask us to follow the rules. Now it will be a free for all, we all decide for ourselves what’s right and what the acceptable risks are.
Unfortunately we have seen that we’re, collectively, not very good at that. That ‘common sense’ isn’t really enough when the threat your facing isn’t within the experience of any of us. That enduring the necessary hardships, as many have, is difficult and takes determination
It’s clear that Dominic Cummings won’t resign (as he doesn’t believe the rules applied to him in his circumstances) and that @BorisJohnson won’t sack him (as he’s the only thing holding the show together) so the government simply loses any remaining credibility and authority
