Or there’s the effect the lockdown has had on the way we work. Air pollution the world over has evaporated leaving cities usually mired in toxic air for once tolerable for children to play outside in. Carbon emissions, the engine of climate change, have gone into free-fall and we’ve just enjoyed a record number of days in which no coal has needed to be burned in order to provide us with enough energy. Take the very world in which we live and breathe. Society as a whole could make the same case in myriad ways. It’s not just individuals who can make a case that Covid-19 has not been without a silver lining. It’s all come at a terrible price, of course, but still…. To some it’s all felt a bit like a holiday. ![]() Jobs have got done books have been read paying more attention to the old lady down the road has at last been made possible. Of course it’s dreadful, they’ll say, what is happening but as for themselves, they’ve found that having so much more time on their hands has been actually rather welcome. Some people, the lucky ones, start rather guiltily to admit that in some respects they’re rather enjoying themselves. ![]() When the disrupter brings as much hardship and suffering as the pandemic has, this feeling is all the stronger.īut as time goes on (and we’ve now been locked down for well over a month) other sentiments begin to emerge. So when a major disruption like the coronavirus turns up out of the blue, most people’s initial response is to want to get it out of the way as quickly as possible and resume the life they have known. ![]() Most of us get used to the way we live, many may even like it, and few want it to be disturbed. The issue then will be: what sort of world do we want to live in once the lockdown is over? Do we simply want to return to business as usual? Or does the experience of living under Covid-19 suggest that that might not be such a good idea? But even those who share his caution and want the pandemic suppressed before he makes any move to relax the restraints are as keen as anyone else to see the back of them. That pressure is what the Prime Minister tried to respond to on his return to the daily Downing Street briefings on Thursday. All the pressure is on the government to ease the lockdown or at the very least to give some indication of how and when it might do so.
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