THERE WAS a lot going on in Britain in early March. London staged an England-Wales rugby match on March 7th, which the prime minister attended along with a crowd of 81,000; on March 11th Liverpool played Atletico Madrid, in front of a crowd of 52,000 fans, including 3,000 from Spain; 252,000 punters went to the Cheltenham Festival, one of the country’s poshest steeplechase meetings, which ended on March 13th.
As Britons were getting together to amuse themselves and infect each other, Europe was shutting down. Borders were closing, public gatherings being banned. Italy went into full lockdown on March 9th, Denmark on March 11th, Spain on March 14th and France on March 17th. Britain followed only on March 23rd.
Putting in place sweeping restrictions on everyday life was a difficult decision, fraught with uncertainty. Yet the delay is just one example of the government’s tardiness. Britain has been slow to increase testing, identify a contact-tracing app, stop visits to care homes, ban big public events, provide its health workers with personal protective equipment (PPE), and require people to wear face coverings on public transport. As this wave of the disease ebbs, Britons are wondering how they came to have the highest overall death rate of any country in the rich world, and why leaving lockdown is proving so difficult...
