Lockdown letter: fraying at the edges
The UK has reached lockdown fatigue. COVID-19 is exposing differences in values in society. We need an exit plan that enables us to co-exist with the virus.
Week seven and my seventh lockdown letter recording life at this extraordinary time.
The virus is exposing differences in values within families and friendship groups. I’ve spotted at least three arguments spilling out into social media feeds this week. Local Facebook groups have a vigilante mood.
Hardcore lockdowners are zealously following government guidance while lockdown dodgers are find excuses not to follow social distancing.
Government adviser Professor Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London hasn’t helped. He resigned from Sage, the UK Government’s COVID-19 scientific advisory panel this week.
Ferguson breached his own guidance to meet his lover, claiming immunity from the virus having been tested positive for anti-bodies and self-isolating for 14 days.
The lockdown conflict plays out in parks, supermarket queues, footpaths, beaches and the countryside. It’s leading to difficult conversations within families and arguments amongst friendship groups.
This isn’t a north versus south issue. Images of lockdown dodgers have been posted in several local Facebook groups that I follow, both in London and the North East. The resulting conversation polarises opinion and plays to the newsfeed algorithm.
The mainstream media is also undermining the lockdown. Newspaper front pages this week celebrated the expectation of lockdown being eased. It’s not helpful.
VE Day celebrations on Friday played out on television news programmes as a series of street parties. Social media inevitably had a caustic response.
Planning for the future
We’re still waiting for a plan from the UK government about what come next. It was expected this week but has been pushed to a Sunday evening address by the Prime Minister. We urgently need to start the conversation about an exit plan.
I’ve become a sponge for data and scientific papers in search of lockdown exit options. There’s a huge amount of information available publicly thanks to organisations making data available in an open source format and academic publishers publishing pre-peer review COVID-19 papers.
The COVID-19 community on Twitter is incredible. Media watcher, author and professor Jeff Jarvis has created a Twitter list of almost 600 entomologists, virologists, healthcare professionals and public health professions at the forefront of research efforts.
We’re not going to solve COVID-19. We need to learn to coexist with the virus. Dr Erin Bromage an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth published an article this week called The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them about what this means in practice. It’s a sobering but pragmatic read.
I’m enjoying the conversations about the future of the media, marketing and PR in the community of practice that I created three weeks ago. I’ve published an article about brand conversations during the crisis based on a recent discussion.
This week the community has explored data sources, COVID-19 memes, the Plandemic COVID-19 conspiracy theory, Google’s lockdown insight tool, government responses to the crisis, track and trace apps, and the recovery. You’d be welcome to join us.
Stay indoors and stay safe. This too will pass.
