Life in lockdown and social distancing
Will life ever return to normal after lockdown from Asia to Europe more countries are cautiously relaxing coronavirus restrictions but are it too soon what are the risks of the second wave of infections? It’s now more than four months since the coronavirus started spreading from Wuhan in China and it's not stopped but some countries are beginning to see a decline in new infections. Governments are slowly easing lockdown restrictions small shops and restaurants are reopening in a dozen countries across Asia Europe and Africa, some schoolchildren are returning to class a few more domestic flights are taking off and train services are increasing frequency but with all that come instructions to wear masks and keep social distancing. How it'll work where they are it's a slow and steady process according to the governments. How things are going and then they'll decide if they'll move forward in lifting some of these restrictions right now some more shops are allowed to open up, restaurants are allowed to have people dying in but there'll be the social distancing very strict social distancing measurements within those restaurants though we've always had a and encourage work from a home directive from the governments here never really fully enforced that remains in place also when you look at the public transportation very critical for this very crowded cities in the world. All people riding public transportation still have to wear a mask. most businesses are now allowed to reopen including retailers like this one and shopping malls but they're going to have to implement certain safety measures including temperature screening and making sure there's enough space within their premises for people to maintain or practice Physical distancing now employers, however, have been advised to allow people to work from home as far as possible schools and colleges remain closed. The world countries haven't reopened its borders and interstate travel is still not allowed. Countries will have to manage to flatten the curve and there's very much a sense that what the governments are trying to do is strike a balance between protecting lives and preserving jobs.
Lifting of lockdown
Some other countries are gradually lifting their lockdowns too. In Italy during construction and some wholesale companies are back in business Europe's longest nationwide lockdown was imposed on March the 9th that's eight weeks ago Spaniards can enjoy outdoor exercise after seven weeks of only being allowed out for food and medicines Belgium has the world's highest per-capita mortality rate. Shops there a reopening after 32 days of lockdown in Greece small stores and hair salons are reopening after six weeks and Africa's largest economy is taking its first steps in a six-week plan to reopen for business, Nigerians are allowed to travel to work and exercise outdoors for the first time in five weeks but some people are wary of the relaxed rules. It’s still a bit unsafe the virus is invisible. Whatever people scared of contracting the virus but if the fear makes you lose your job then it's not good people have to differentiate fear from making a living which is what keeps you alive we hope that the situation will end soon but don't think it would be that easy. Many people, especially in Europe, are tired of this lockdown but is it too early to ease off well and no it's too early to do a complete removal of a lockdown but it can to be relaxed slowly and in stages with care providing that there is testing, monitoring, and tracing. And above all, a great deal of care about how the process goes forward and in the world big cities.
Physical distancing on public transport
Commuting has begun again today and we wait with interest to see whether this will bring people to close to each other because there aren't problems with distancing. Physical distancing on public transport and they will have to be dealt with and they may well go with problems of too much traffic if people resort to cars instead of getting the Train of the bus and we didn't have quite the ruthless lockdown that they had in some other parts of Europe has it worked. There are the Europeans and the Americans and the Africans going to have to do the same strategy like china. People of the world were very compliant they realized there's a stop transmission so by use of the master social distancing and the closure the border. Public transport system as it runs very effectively and with just people just wear masks on public transport and we've had no case of transmission through this public transport there's been a lot of pressure to ease lockdown restrictions, particularly in Europe or people, just had enough are they ready for it to be eased. People have had enough, now there are more people out and about there are more cars on the road but at the same time there is still a lot of fear in paranoia amongst people about whether they are ready emotionally and psychologically to get back to normal there's a lot of unfounded fear because once you get out you realize it's not as bad as you thought it might be even in the local grocery store or supermarket but so we've got two things happening at the same time mechanic conflict where you want to defy the ban but on the other hand a lot of people are just afraid to do so to go straight back to normal.
Preemptive measure for second wave
The lockdown is eased apart from that the psychological effects mentioned well we have to watch out obviously for the resurgence of the disease-bearing in mind for example that the pandemic of 1918 to 1920 influenza the second wave was more lethal than the first wave so it could be that at a certain point we have to go back into lockdown however, at present, it's reasonable in many countries to start the process gradually of easing restrictions for example whereas before you could go into shops to buy essential food and medicine perhaps we can now go into shops to buy things that are not so essential because the risks can be managed and they're not so great social distancing is possible it is also in offices, it is theoretically possible and public transport as well so that necessarily relaxing the restrictions means that we're putting ourselves extreme risk that is the great fear isn't it's a second wave countries had a bit of an increase as more people came back to their homeland is what they're doing they're enough to stop the second wave. Countries have the ability and one major route of entry which is through the airport and so basically what happens there all arrivals were screened at the airport and that if they are found positive they went straight to the hospital otherwise they had the home quarantine with a monitoring by the bracelets for 14 days. People realize is that we have there'll be a new normal is that we can't go back to expecting what life was like at least there for the rest of this year to what it was like in 2019 and scientists and governments are worried about a second wave. The ordinary people just want to get out there and get up back on to normal lives don't know whether people fully appreciate a second wave. People that haven't been affected by it and have been self-isolating or don't know anybody who's had it the reality of it hasn't hit home.
The economy during lockdown
The economic worries have now kind of surfaced uppermost. People are more worried about their incomes their livelihoods their bills their mortgages than they are about their the risk to themselves which could show a kind of dangerous turning point really in the way people are thinking were more bothered about earning than we are about catching the virus then or is there just an eagerness to get out there and get back to normal. People still have the fear and still have the anxiety and that's bordering on paranoia and the logging town here will be gradual it will be in stages which help us mentally because mentally people need to adjust in stages, to the changes that are going to happen, it is like a broken relationship building up trust again in the world that people thought and now have to readjust too. It’s going to take time and people are going to have to develop that trust gradually. The number of people that bring the whole thing down. So it is a very delicate balancing act between the economy and our health as everyone knows how long we are going to have to wait before. If we can getaway with easing these restrictions when we're talking days and weeks and months what's the process in finding out we can get away with it that is very difficult to answer we're in the beasts of a gigantic social and economic laboratory we had some really good scenarios for the earlier stages and they've existed for about 15 years so, in fact, we knew what was going to happen we knew how it was going to happen but when we get to the recovery we know that the recovery from the 1918 1920 pandemic which incidentally lasted about 24 months in total and in Europe it lasted for 14 months the recovery process there took about five years. On the other hand, conditions were very different from the world was from the First World War the recovery actually led into the Great Depression. Human ingenuity will get the better of this virus and there will be a proper recovery but exactly how long it will take is very hard to tell.
Factors effecting mutation of virus
Some of the factors that include the medical site the performance of the virus itself which is dependent on a variety of factors will it mutate. It possibly could perhaps more important may be the condition of the weather will it disappear in the summer and come back in colder weather. In the northern hemisphere as the autumn rains on words and also people's behavior will there be social associations that lead to particular forms of transmission of the virus. we don't think that we can shut down international travel for very long because quite a bit of the economy does depend on that and will have to be rather careful about how we treat people at ports and airports and how we ensure that we're not passing the virus again from country to country we've already seen that with migrant workers particular about is trying to protect those groups of people where the virus could transmit more easily migrant workers being a case in point we need them to harvest crops and in the construction industry and so on but very often they live in straitened circumstances which are very conducive to the transmission of the virus. Indicators would be looking at to see if we are getting away with easing these lockdown restrictions it's basically been dividing up the imported cases versus the local cases and so we know the imported cases are easy to manage with the isolation of the airport. Most people say that to a half the - sort of cycles of the barter 28 days should be sufficient but even right now to make the sort of people a little bit happier we've eased up we know we didn't close down the restaurants had to have 1.5 meters apart but probably next week we're going to be using some restrictions some people talk about lying more visits the cinemas and things like that but it's a bit as everybody's mentioned it's just a gradual process realizing that we may see a few cases in cases but it won't be as bad as the first wave.
Misguidance from government officials
scientists want in terms of trying to wipe out the coronavirus and what society needs in terms of function and well-being in our economy how difficult is that balance to strike that’s an extremely important point and so the government's had scientists on its advisory panel but also it does take into account what the businesses have to say. It is the population most populations right now looking for mark far more for science rather than then politics and in there are certainly cases within regions of the US where the other science is far more conducive to what should be happening rather than the politics but it's a very tricky situation about how to balance that out there how much are people relying on their politicians versus the success the scientists who are we looking to four reliance reassurance that's a difficult one in the world because we're all beginning to suspect a little bit that the politicians who kept saying they were taking the best scientific advice where maybe trusting scientific advisers that were didn't act fast enough and who didn't get us in the loop quickly enough there is a feeling that we could do this lockdown much more quickly than we should have been ready with testing that we should have had a stockpile of PPE and so it's great for the politicians to blame the scientists and say well we made all our decisions based on what they told us but now people are looking at the scientists they've been twined themselves together over here and they're like a unit that we most people have studied to get a bit suspicious and fed up with and onerous people ease into some loosening of lockdown restrictions what are the risks of complacency are we more are we likely to remain alert or do we slip into old habits. Some degree of fear anxiety trepidation paranoia. how we can push ourselves back into taking those baby steps and bigger steps to make the routine that we normally experience daily much more normal. The world is never going to be as bad as our imagination makes it out there'll always be some who will decide for themselves when the lockdown is eased and that may be well now and continue to go about their business, because we've been isolated for so long are going to have to conquer our fears about getting back out there. we try and avoid a second wave how important contact tracking and tracing is to all of this and whether some countries are introducing apps as well to help speed up that tracking and tracing process well despite the concerns about privacy and individual liberties associated with the apps they are possibly going to be key to this because believe that contact tracing is very important as of course, is testing but there's one thing that's missing from this equation or at least it seems to be we have the politicians making the decisions and them are largely guided by science and scientists. it's obvious like the epidemiologists and the viral ridges there are essential components of this but emergency planning and management has not been good what we actually need among the advisors are emergency planning and conspicuous management experts by their absence of the result of this is we've seen some gargantuan failures of emergency management and my fear is that we'll see more of them one of those was a failure to tackle the problem of care homes in the UK in Italy in Sweden in a variety of other countries as well and that in many respects was not so much an epidemiological or a viral article problem or a political problem it was a simple failure of the process of emergency planning and management and this is what we really need to tackle at present. it's the human resources and so basically what happens is that each day there'll be a notification and we know which buildings the patients have come from and people know just exactly who lives in that building and that's it that's been quite good it hasn't been as dedicated as sort of high tech as mentioned contact tracing.
Contact tracing
Contact tracing is one of the crucial elements for keeping at these cases down apps that may force us to give up where we are and where we've been at particular times to help trace the outbreak of this are we worried about our security or information being lost. Most people realize their liberties at this point have to be sacrificed a little bit for the communal well-being for everybody's health how well we got on it quickly tracking and tracing and we even seen on the news how the app has worked over there no the app will be very much accepted technology is very much a part of our lives now it'll slot in quite easily there'll be a few civil rights activists that will wonder whether this isn't a big intrusion into our privacy and make a a little bit of a fuss but we can do make any progress without the app at some point. In the future it may have to disappear but right now we need this we're not going to be able to make any progress without it. They’re needing to be a link between politicians and scientists some kind of management link that we've certainly been lacking in this world to organize things what happened when we had the SARS epidemic we over-prepared at that point. The Apple would be a welcome addition to our lives. We’re taking baby steps in reducing restrictions but what about the places that bring us together the bars, the restaurants, the cafes, the stadiums. The sensible approach might be for example to play sports matches without an audience and transmit them by television and other means here in Italy we have bars able to provide things like breakfasts and so on coffees and so on to customers outside or by sending them to customers’ homes, we have restaurants that actors take away places and are open for that what we don't yet have our restaurants that are fully open so again this is a gradual process and one reason why it's a gradual process is to be able to monitor how it works does it lead to some kind of resurgence so in this sense epidemiological monitoring is absolutely crucial to see how the changes actually reflect the progress of the disease if they have virtually no effect then we're all right we can continue with this progress of gradually reopening things however if we find that certain measures are not working in controlling the disease then we'll just have to go backward.
