At a Westminster cinema club in 2015, Sajid Javid picked a film to be shown to fellow politicos that now seems instructive to the government's newfound approach to handling the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The then culture secretary chose The Fountainhead; a 1949 adaptation of the novel by Ayn Rand - a doyenne of liberty-loving conservatives.<\/p>\n
In a scene that Javid has said he reads multiple times a year, the novel's protagonist Howard Roark proclaims to a courtroom that \"the 'common good' of a collective - a race, a class, a state - was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men\".<\/p>\n
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After 18 months of state-sanctioned restrictions designed to safeguard the common good, it now appears the individualistic sentiment contained in the pages of The Fountainhead is in the ascendency in government.<\/p>\n
This week the prime minister will flesh out a broad policy shift in how the pandemic is dealt with in England.<\/p>\n
Laws will be replaced by guidance. Telling replaced by asking. Fines replaced by an appeal to personal responsibility.<\/p>\n
\"We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of COVID and find ways to cope with it - just as we already do with flu,\" writes the new health secretary.<\/p>\n
While the approach is already winning plaudits with Conservative MPs, it has set alarm bells ringing among scientists.<\/p>\n
Many have criticised the comparison with flu and questioned whether individual common sense is a solid enough safety belt to prevent substantial further suffering.<\/p>\n
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\"It's like having a government that thinks road safety should be completely up to 'individual responsibility': no traffic lights, no highway code, no law about driving on the left, no crash barriers,\" tweeted health psychologist Robert West.<\/p>\n
In reality, this is not a \"one or the other\" choice.<\/p>\n
The meat and drink of most policy making is deciding what level of intrusion into all our lives is acceptable because of the benefits it brings to society more widely.<\/p>\n
Most of us accept speed limits and traffic lights because the individual impact is massively outweighed by the damage a reckless driver can do to other motorists.<\/p>\n
But we also exercise a degree of personal responsibility.<\/p>\n
Whilst we are generally allowed to drive at 70mph on a motorway in heavy rain, many of us would choose not to.<\/p>\n
We decide to behave differently off our own back to protect ourselves and those around us.<\/p>\n
Transplant this balancing act into the pandemic and the question becomes: what level of death and serious disease are we prepared to subject a minority of people to before we force the majority to start making compromises again?<\/p>\n
On one level this is a moral question for ministers to wrestle with and - on this front - the answer may well be clear cut.<\/p>\n
But there's also a practical aspect to this.<\/p>\n
The point of lockdown restrictions was primarily to safeguard the NHS. On that basis, the government should be asking itself a number of questions.<\/p>\n
What level of COVID hospitalisations is acceptable? At what point does the damage to the NHS caused by COVID pressures- such as delayed and missed appointments and operations and staff exhaustion - begin to outweigh the damage and inconvenience of asking people and businesses to live with restrictions again?<\/p>\n
Given the effectiveness of the vaccines, many will argue this balance should never tip in the direction of restrictions ever again.<\/p>\n
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After all, the severe NHS pressures caused by winter flu come and go without calls for mask wearing and social distancing.<\/p>\n
COVID may change this equation. But as yet, we have no idea how much change it will have to usher in before ministers reach for restrictions.<\/p>\n
In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark rails against the cause of the collective saying: \"I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built.\"<\/p>\n
The government has sketched out the principle on which it wants to build post-pandemic England.<\/p>\n
The coming months will tell us whether practicality will bend to the will of this principle.<\/p>\n
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COVID-19: Sajid Javid's approach has party support - but scientists are getting worried - Sky News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At a Westminster cinema club in 2015, Sajid Javid picked a film to be shown to fellow politicos that now seems instructive to the government's newfound approach to handling the pandemic. The then culture secretary chose The Fountainhead; a 1949 adaptation of the novel by Ayn Rand - a doyenne of liberty-loving conservatives. In a scene that Javid has said he reads multiple times a year, the novel's protagonist Howard Roark proclaims to a courtroom that \"the 'common good' of a collective - a race, a class, a state - was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men\". Continue reading