Yesterday the prime minister announced revised rules for when we would move out of the level four lockdown. There’s no commitment as to when we will get there, of course, but hopes are it will be next week. Even so, the new regime won’t allow for a great deal more economic activity than is currently allowed.
It will be a very marginal relaxation. More like level three and three quarters. Or level four with drive thru, perhaps.
The prospect of being able to enjoy greasy food again was an exciting development for some. For others, it was an empty consolation. A lot of people aren’t going to be able to afford McDonalds.
I’m on the record supporting the lockdown as long as it is necessary. I am pro-life and cannot in good conscience countenance otherwise even at the risk of penury. But I’m also terrified of the tidal wave of hardship that’s going to hit us.
in the Star Trek film The Wrath of Khan, much is made of the Kobayashi Maru, a training simulation for officer cadets. The goal is to rescue a ship of that name which has become disabled in a demilitarised border zone. Entering the zone triggers war and a swift and decisive enemy attack. The cadet must choose whether to attempt a rescue despite the fact there is zero possibility of a positive outcome.
The sole purpose of the exercise is to test how people respond to a no-win scenario. Of course, it turns out that Captain Kirk did best the simulation. By cheating – which is not an option available to Jacinda Ardern.
Sometimes there are no good outcomes. That’s the broken world we live in. We are about to get a lesson in the fact that the lesser evil is still an evil.
For example, there will be thousands of businesses that will have been holding on for the first month and which will now be giving up. For restaurants and pubs, four weeks of no revenue is gruelling. Longer than that will often be impossible.
Then there’s cashflow. At the moment businesses still have money coming in for work completed in March, before the lockdown. That will come to an end soon because less work was completed since and many customers now just can’t pay.
This doesn’t apply to those who work for central government, of course, where revenue is not linked to productivity or willingness to pay. But most of us don’t have that security. Whether we know it or not.
So month two is going to be tougher than month one, but I don’t think a lot of people have quite wrapped their heads around that yet.
For salary earners without the benefit of a bird’s eye view, for instance, this whole thing may have felt like a surreal pseudo-holiday.
As someone noted on Twitter, that’s the real bubble. It’s about to be pricked.