Shops, salons, restaurants, pubs and gyms reopen this week, and the government has wasted no time in issuing gentle warnings to people to respect social distancing and to generally keep order. Such warnings have the convenient side effect of absolving the government of responsibility for when such order is, inevitably, not kept.
There is no easy answer to this particular problem. To take one example, there are many parents of young children desperate to replace their toddlers’ shoes, a task that is particularly difficult to do online. Children’s shoe shops have been considered non-essential, yet few people would consider a child having shoes to be anything less than essential.
As such, there may very well be large numbers of parents who will not be dissuaded by a crowd of any size. This is not some moral failure on their part and it is highly likely that said shoe shops will be very busy.
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