Coronavirus: Easing the UK out of lockdown is a confidence game and the PM is losing
It's hard to give the public confidence in a nuanced message when you are trying to manage a disease you don't fully understand.
Friday 22 May 2020 09:54, UK
You can see what the prime minister meant when he stood up in the Commons only 10 days ago and spoke about the "complexities" of moving from the "gloriously simple" Stay At Home message to a more nuanced one.
The 50-page strategy he published on the same day was meant to be our route map towards a new normal. But so far, the public don't seem to have much confidence in the manual or the message.
A YouGov poll over the weekend showed support for the government's handling of the virus dropping sharply. Over half of those polled thought the changes went too far and nearly three out of four wanted clearer guidance from the government about what they can and cannot do as they come out of lockdown.
The mismatch between the road map and the nation's psyche over COVID-19 has been playing out in technicolour when it comes to getting ready for step one of easing out of lockdown: the phased return of children to schools.
The government announced the plans only for teaching unions and parents to raise concerns over safety of staff and children. At least 18 councils - accounting for perhaps 1,500 primary schools - are in open revolt saying they will not be forced to follow the plan. The government still has a lot to do to convince the public this route map is safe.
It also has a bit of a way to go to convince the public that the work to give us a clear route out of lockdown is complete. The track and trace system - which has been hailed as the silver bullet to control cases and protect us as we go about our daily lives - will be ready by 1 June, according to the prime minister. But it will be without the smartphone app we were told just 10 days ago (in that strategy document) was integral to making the system work.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, told us we all had to "do our duty" and download the COVID-19 app when it became available. It was meant to be rolled out in mid-May. Now we're told it will be ready in the "coming weeks" and Downing Street is distancing itself from the app, which was only ever the "cherry on the cake". "The cake is the human test and trace system. That is the most important thing".
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Many other experts agree that an app isn't integral to track and trace. And Greg Clark, chair of the science select committee, very sensibly pointed out in an interview with Sky News that it is better to wait than roll out an app that doesn't work.
But if coaxing people out of lockdown is a confidence game, writing in your road map that the app is an integral part of track and trace only to then say it's not, may confuse or even unnerve people. This is in part a confidence game, and at the moment No. 10 seems to be losing.
"The hardest part is getting the boulder to move. Once it moves, people will feel more confident," one senior government official concedes. But getting over the hump from blanket lockdown to a new way of life is hard.
That perhaps helps explain why senior ministers and officials I've spoken to are now nodding to a lowering of expectations. Yes, schools are almost certain to open from 1 June (subject to no sudden spike in the R number) but take-up will be minimal at first until more parents feel more confident about sending their children back. "It's the carrot not the stick," says one government insider. "We've got to show people we have the measures in place."
But the government also needs to put far more flesh on the bones of its five tests in the coming days to give the public more confidence that it has a handle on the disease. It has predicated its route out of lockdown on two critical measures. The first is making sure the R-rate - the reproduction number - is below one, in order to make sure the number of infections is under control and not accelerating. The second is having a track and trace system in place to drive down new cases and stop hotspots from developing by early detection of outbreaks.
On both measures, information is patchy. We still have very limited detail on the R-rate in regional and local areas and across different sectors - such as local communities, care homes and schools. If the prime minister makes the R-rate central to the strategy, he should follow through with more detailed information about how it is evolving in local areas to help inform and reassure the public.
This is true too of track and trace. The government's own deputy chief scientific adviser Dame Angela McLean said this week all changes to lockdown would need an effective system of tracing and isolating new cases, but we have no information on how this system will work beyond the prime minister's commitment to 25,000 new contact tracers being in post by June.
The prime minister hopes that while lifting lockdown is fiendishly complicated, if he can get this track and trace system up and running quickly, he'll be able to re-open not just primary schools but some non-essential shops and outside spaces - such as outdoor markets or cafe courtyards - too. We might soon be able to meet more members of our family or perhaps our friends in a socially-distanced way too.
Of course it's much harder to give the public confidence in a nuanced message when you are trying to manage a disease you don't yet fully understand. But the government still has a lot to do convince the public its route map out is safe, starting with making sure its track and trace system is fully operational in 10 days time.