Why are key coronavirus decisions being made for us based on what's happening in London?

I’m increasingly getting the feeling that coronavirus decisions are being made for the whole of England that are based on what’s happening in London, and I don’t think that’s good for the rest of us.

It’s a fact London was hit hard by the virus and was probably two or three weeks earlier along the curve.

The evidence also seems to suggest that a greater percentage of people in the London area was infected with Covid-19 than the rest of the general population.

So it seems fair enough that London could start coming out of lockdown a little sooner than the rest of us given it appears it has an ‘R’ rate below 1.

But that doesn’t apply to us here in the north west.

The figures provided by the Office of National Statistics reveal that our ‘R’ rate is 1.01 which indicates the disease is still circulating widely in the community and if left unchecked, will start to increase again.

But nevertheless, the government is still cracking on with all its plans to lift the lockdown restrictions we have been subjected to.

On reflection, I think the answer to my initial question is that the government is incompetent.

It started to lose control of the central message when it changed ‘Stay Home’ to the ridiculous ‘Stay Alert’ and any hopes of regaining control vanished when Dominic Cummings was allowed to drive to the other end of the country, take a 60-mile round trip to ‘test his eyesight’ and basically stuck two fingers up to the restrictions he had helped to put in place.

So now we have nothing but confusion.

Let’s just take a look shall we?

You can meet with five other people outside but they can’t come into your home. Unless they’re estate agents in which case they can have the run of the place.

You’re not allowed to be inside with people from outside of immediate household. Unless you are a teacher in which case you can be inside with 15 people from 15 different households.

You can go inside at Ikea or a car showroom but you can’t go outside at Chester Zoo (although if Chester Zoo opened its giftshop, you could go inside there).

A couple of weeks ago, facemasks were a bad idea. Now they’re compulsory on public transport.

Oh and let’s not forget quarantine for people returning to the UK from abroad. A couple of weeks ago there was no point in quarantining people.

Now, apparently, there is a point despite the fact that every European country has a lower infection rate than we have so people are more likely to become infected after they arrive here.

So while lifting lockdown may work for London, I’m pretty sure they won’t work for us here in the north west where the infection rate is above 1.

And don’t make the mistake of thinking 1 is the magic number. It isn’t.

While the rate of infection stays at or around 1, the virus will continue to circulate at exactly the same rate. It won’t die out or go away. People will continue to become infected and some will die.

Maybe that’s what the government wants. Maybe the ‘herd immunity’ plan was the aim all along.

Anyway, after seeing the scenes of crowded beaches a couple of weeks ago and the streets of London packed with protesters at the weekend, I think it’s fairly safe to say that any semblance of control or social distancing is a thing of the past.

So in the absence of anything like sensible advice from a government that seems more keen on getting the economy going again based on what’s happening in London than any national public health message, I’m afraid it’s now down to you to make up your own mind what’s safe to do and what’s not.

I for one will not be in any hurry to get on a train. Nor will I be joining a queue for a new bookcase at Ikea.

No one is coming into my house and I will still be taking all and every bio-security steps I deem necessary to protect me and my family from a potentially fatal disease.

And if you needed any evidence why you can’t trust the government to protect you, I will point you in the direction of Health Secretary Matt Hancock who went on television on Sunday and when asked if he was sure that locking down when the government did had not cost lives, he said: “I am sure, as I keep looking back on that period, I’m sure that taking into account everything we knew at that moment – my view is that we made the right decisions at the right time.”

Well, Mr Hancock, I think that even by your own government’s statistics, there are more than 40,000 grieving families who would disagree with you.

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