Boris Johnson's risky one-way street towards freedom

Once again, Great Britain is Europe's problem child: The delta variant is causing the corona numbers to rise.

And Boris Johnson?

Critics say the prime minister wants to pour fuel on the fire again.

London - "Careful but irrevocable" - that is the motto of the British prime minister for the way out of the pandemic.

For a long time, Boris Johnson's slogan sounded like a successful model.

Over the months, the number of corona cases in the United Kingdom decreased rapidly, but there was still a lot of time between the individual easing steps.

The people had a perspective and largely went with them.

For weeks the incidence was around 20 and the British thought they'd finally made it after a long, hard winter.

But then Delta came along.

The highly contagious variant, which was probably brought into the country by travelers returning from India, caused the number of cases to skyrocket within a very short time.

For months, the British incidence was well below the German one, now it is worlds in between, in Great Britain it has reached 214 - and thus one of the highest levels in all of Europe.

Time to pull the emergency brake again? This rather obvious idea seems to be further away than ever in the government district of London. Instead, 60,000 fans are allowed to go to the semi-finals and the final of the European Football Championship without any significant gaps in Wembley Stadium and further easing is planned - so even more oil for the blazing fire, as critics say.

Wearing a mask in the train or in the supermarket will soon become a “personal decision”, as a minister said on Sunday. From July 19th - according to the current plan - the English can again sit in the packed theater, celebrate huge parties and even dance the night away in a packed club. "It's a terrible plan," tweeted Christina Pagel from University College London, who is also on a government advisory body. "It looks like we are the only country that throws everything against the wall of vaccines and hopes that it will withstand," said the expert in another tweet.

It should be noted that the “wall of vaccines” in the UK is much more stable than in many other countries. A good 63 percent of British adults are already fully vaccinated, and around 86 have at least the first dose behind them. Nevertheless, there are enough people left for whom Delta poses a danger - especially since really effective protection against the variant should only exist after the complete vaccination.

It should be borne in mind that the number of hospital admissions and deaths has not yet increased to the same extent with positive cases as in previous corona waves. But last week, the hospitals in England were faced with as many corona cases as they had not for a long time. The government's calculation is nevertheless: Younger people and children end up in hospital less often with Covid-19 and also die less often from it. The fact that some of them also have to struggle with long-term consequences and that high numbers of infections leave room for new, even more dangerous mutations of the virus is ignored.

Even doctor and public health expert Azeem Majeed would prefer not to loosen this up any further. "I would wait a few more weeks," said Majeed of the German press agency. Then the vaccination campaign has progressed even further and one can see even more clearly how many severe courses can really be prevented. Especially with measures such as distance or masks, it actually makes sense to keep them indoors. “Wearing a mask doesn't hurt anyone. You should keep doing that until autumn, ”says Majeed.

The fact that Boris Johnson now insists on sticking to the July date after a slight postponement of his "Freedom Day", which was initially planned for June 21, has a lot to do with expectation management. He has been emphasizing for months that the relaxation of “dates, not dates” should be made. At the same time, by naming possible dates, he stirs up so much hope in his people that it is difficult to row back.

It is a completely different rhetoric than in Germany, for example, where the delta variant has been expecting increasing numbers for weeks and a tightening of the restrictions is not ruled out.

Even if everyone may hope for it, there is no talk of a “one-way street to freedom”, as Boris Johnson never tires of calling out.

This makes it easy for lobby associations to rail against politics in the face of any hesitation and to threaten impatient backbenchers with disloyalty.

"I think it is a mistake to say that this is a one-way street," says expert Majeed.

Nobody could foresee which variants or developments would arise and whether restrictions would be necessary again.

Chancellor Angela Merkel left no doubt on her farewell tour in England on Friday that she is also not a big fan of Boris Johnson's game of risk. "The British government will make its decisions," she said during her visit to his country estate in Checkers. "But I am worried and skeptical whether that is good and not a little much." Dpa