Boris Johnson’s latest lockdown order plunges UK into state of gloom

A family gathers around the television in Liverpool, north west England, to watch Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson announce the latest lockdown. Picture: AFP

Boris Johnson is astute enough to know the British public is fed up. He said as much in his national address while inflicting upon the English yet another brutal national lockdown — the third and harshest one yet of this pandemic — although this time he didn’t even try to pretend that the measures would be for just a fortnight or two.

True to form, Johnson has said just enough to get him through the next half hour: this time telling the nation the lockup will be in place until mid-February. But everyone knows his ambitious vaccine rollout of two million jabs a week is unfeasible and it’s highly unlikely the over-70s will all be inoculated before Easter, let alone in six weeks.

Just one day after informing radio listeners how vital it was to keep schools open in the face of union opposition as the new term began, Johnson has now slammed them shut and sent everybody home.

Worn down by the first 100-day lockdown in March, April, May and June, where everything bar a local supermarket and chemist was closed, and then since October, a series of tiers and lockup, (some areas have never come out of harsh measures) everyone is resigned to the most dire of winters and even springs. Let’s not even mention the turmoil surrounding Christmas that was to allow some family get-togethers before banning them altogether.

When Johnson casually mentioned on Monday night that the fresh stay-at-home edict — including cancellation of school and exams — might, “if things go well”, be countered towards the end of February, there was resignation and knotted stomachs. Rising infections have eclipsed 50,000 each day throughout the past week.

Some look to the daily death toll which is around a third of the highest peak in the first wave and are thankful that treatments, especially with steroids, have had a drastic impact on survival rates for the elderly and sick whom this virus targets so viciously. But the death toll will rise.

Most are trying to stick to a routine to stay sane.

Gardens were spruced up in the first lockdown, houses were repainted and freshened in the second, and for this third significant imposition, under the heaviest of grey skies, there is a collective and depressive retreat to the couch.

It feels little has changed 10 months on with ongoing economic carnage, significant concern about the ability of the NHS to treat the rising cases, let alone function at some level for heart attack, stroke and cancer patients, and a Johnson cabinet lurching between dramatic pronouncements and 180-degree turns on the run.

Britons refer to this time as resembling a “dank graveyard’’, and wonder, understandably, will this ever end?

Despite the fast-tracked vaccine rollout to help protect the elderly that should boost the nation’s spirit, many people have been terrified by the government’s overt panic. The nation is now plunged into its darkest mood since WWII.