The thought of a second nationwide lockdown fills me with dread

What, asks Janet Street-Porter, will the government – which seems to have no coherent master plan – do to eradicate this anxiety so many of us feel?

Boris Johnson in the Commons (Commons)

I’m a pretty robust person, but the prospect of fresh national restrictions to slow the rate of Covid-19 infections have brought on a sense of dread. I spend most of my time alone, writing, apart from two visits each week to a TV studio in highly controlled conditions.

There’s no hanging around chatting, no socialising. After three hours I return to my solitary bubble. With the easing of restrictions in August, I’ve ventured out for a meal half-a-dozen times, always with great caution. I went to a rented cottage in Scotland on holiday via sleeper train, but thought carefully about the journey and the risks involved.

Every time I cough or sniffle, I’ve worried, quite a change for someone who has spent so much time pushing boundaries, not interested in age-appropriate behaviour.

I’ve always enjoyed being out several nights a week meeting friends and enjoying culture, so the impact on my mental wellbeing has been marked. I’m resentful of the raucous young boozers lining the streets of Soho, Manchester and the quaysides of Newcastle. The fallout from their selfish behaviour has been the latest imposition of local lockdowns, but if these new rules don’t work, what’s the next step from a government who have (so far) shown they lack a master plan?

If Boris Johnson won’t fund marshals to monitor the new rule of six (councils are expected to pay) and the police say they don’t have the capacity to enforce it, how can anyone prevent young people gathering out of sight to drink in groups? If university students can’t go to pubs (where responsible owners tried to impose rules), they will gather in tiny bedrooms and halls of residence to flout the new restrictions.

Now, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, is talking about the possibility of a new national “circuit break” lasting two weeks in October. The fact he didn’t dismiss the proposition means that plans are well advanced. Without mass testing, without a vaccine, what are the chances that this two week draconian shutdown (keeping schools and workplaces open) will stop the rising rate of infection?

All the signs suggest a large section of the population will simply not comply. This coronavirus pandemic is creating generational divides – and those over 45 are entitled to be fed up with socially irresponsible twenty-somethings

During this crisis, there’s been a lot of concern about the elderly, particularly the two million aged over 75 who live alone. Much has been written about the damaging effect of lockdown on their mental health. But they are not the only victims of isolation and loneliness.

The number of people living alone in the UK – more 7.7 million – has risen at a faster rate than the population. We seem to have forgotten that – as a result of divorce and fluid relationships – that many of the 2.6 million folk aged between 45 and 65 who live alone will have had a challenging time since March. They’ve spent six months unable to socialise, meet family members, take a holiday, go on dates, meet for bingo or yoga, have sex with new people. Millions were working from home in small flats, only seeing people via a screen. Even when some were eventually allowed to return to work, socialising was restricted and journey time spent wearing a mask.

On the radio, one young woman who lives alone and works from home expressed the same fears that I have about the government’s approach to containing the latest spike in infections. It’s a heavy-handed, one size fits all approach. In areas like West Devon – one new infection last week – and Buckinghamshire – just nine – why can’t the rules regarding hospitality and hotels be relaxed where the chances of contracting the virus are minimal? The death rate from Covid-19 remains ridiculously low compared to cancer and traffic accidents, so why is the public still being treated like children unable to decide for themselves what level of risk they wish to take?

Last week, I went to an excellent new restaurant (Noble Rot) that’s opened on the site of the legendary Gay Hussar, in Soho, where MPs regularly dined and plotted Maggie Thatcher’s demise. I couldn’t help but admire the new owner’s chutzpah. But if there’s a new lockdown, yet another business could go to the wall, and millions of pounds of investment will be lost.

One in five hospitality venues have still not opened, and when the furlough scheme ends at the end of October, there could be up to a million redundancies.

New national curfews and two week lockdowns will deal a devastating blow to an important part of the UK economy.

Theatres and music venues are struggling to reopen – social distancing makes it almost impossible for an event to be financially viable. Next week, legendary musician Van Morrison is playing two shows at the London Palladium and releasing Born to be Free, a new song demanding that people should have the right to think for themselves.

What will eradicate this underlying anxiety so many of us feel about life returning to normal? You can’t help but scoff at the government’s declared intention to vaccinate the entire population, when they can’t even roll out a tracing system that gives results within 24 hours. Travellers from the UK arriving at Rome airport get a Covid test with the result within 30 minutes. Why not here?

At the start of August the government excitedly announced they had placed an order worth £161m for the “Nudge” test – but it costs £30 for each patient and can only carry out 16 tests in a day, meaning it will have a very limited impact on testing numbers.

Van the Man has a point. So here’s a message to Johnson. Send home students who don’t abide by rules. Let the army patrol the streets of Newcastle and Manchester. But don’t condemn single people and everyone over 50 to house arrest again.