England is now the freest and most open place in Europe. It imposes no vaccine passports, no curfews, and no mandatory tests.
Nightclubs are closed in Munich and Marseilles, in Mullingar and Malmo, but they continue to thump out their hypnotic beats in Manchester. Face masks are being binned — though some people will doubtless cling to them as a kind of anti-Tory tribal badge.
The only remaining restriction is self-isolation for those who test positive, but even that now looks set to be lifted. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reminded members of Parliament that there was no obligation to self-isolate if you had the flu. “As COVID becomes endemic, we will need to replace legal requirements with advice and guidance urging people with the virus to be careful and considerate of others,” he said.
How did the country pull it off? The short answer is “vaccines.” Thanks to Brexit, the United Kingdom was able to ignore the European Union’s cumbersome and bureaucratic procurement systems and buy its own vaccines. The first COVID-19 vaccine in the world was administered to Maggie Keenan of Coventry. (The second, deliciously, went to William Shakespeare of Warwickshire. “By medicine life may be prolong’d,” as his namesake put it.)
The EU was furious and responded by blocking exports, sending the police to factories, and, albeit briefly, closing the Irish border — the thing it keeps falsely suggesting that the U.K. wants to do.
But Britain carried on, winning the vaccine race not once but twice: first at the end of 2020 and then in late 2021, squeezing more boosters into more arms than any other country. When omicron hit, 93% of people over 60 had had their third dose. According to the Office of National Statistics, which tests a random number of people every two weeks, more than 95% of Brits now carry antibodies. The World Health Organization said the U.K. is the first country to put the pandemic behind it.
But when I said “England” in my opening sentence, I wasn’t using that word the way some Americans do as a loose synonym for the U.K. Although English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish people all have blood cells bursting with antibodies, the three devolved assemblies nonetheless reimposed restrictions in December. England, for pandemic purposes, is the only bit of the country that Johnson runs.
Fortunately, the prime minister was twice prepared to defy his gloomier advisers. When he reopened in July, public health agencies predicted disaster. Modelers at the University of Warwick forecast at least 1,000 deaths a day (in the event, the highest daily toll was 188). The government agency SAGE said that daily hospital admissions would be between 2,000 and 7,000 (the highest daily total was 1,086). Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson predicted 100,000 infections a day (they peaked at 56,688).
When, five months later, the same people issued the same warnings of catastrophe, Johnson simply ignored them. Scotland and Wales locked down, as Europe did, but Johnson trusted his instincts and was again spectacularly vindicated.
Indeed, the four nations of the U.K. provide us with a real-time laboratory-quality experiment. What they show, in effect, is that lockdowns and other nonclinical interventions are of very limited value. Vaccines and treatments are the only shows in town.
All of which raises an unsettling question. Given that the British prime minister twice disregarded calls for a lockdown, and both times was proved completely right, should he have done the same in March of 2020? Obviously, the two situations are not exactly comparable. There were no vaccines then, making the infection more dangerous. And the politics of the time were very different. Any politician who ignored his or her medical and scientific advisers would have been personally blamed for every death even if, once everything was taken into consideration, the judgment was shown to be rational.
Nonetheless, Johnson’s success might paradoxically explain his unpopularity. Britain’s prime minister has never been so disliked, nor so far behind in the polls. Voters are furious that he was present at what looks like a party for Downing Street staffers at a time when social gatherings were prohibited. But what I suspect is driving their rage is a sneaking sense that many of the privations and sacrifices of the past 22 months were needless.
This is a difficult thing to accept. So, naturally, one casts about for someone to blame. Blame is, in any event, a common reaction to a plague. Where our ancestors accused witches or religious minorities, we accuse politicians. There are, in truth, no good outcomes for political leaders during a pandemic — as they are learning the world over.
