Is England’s Freedom Day the Model for Living With Covid?
As we fight against new outbreaks and variants, we need to depend much more on personal responsibility. But we can’t abandon rules altogether yet.
Anti-vaccination protest in London.
Photographer: TOLGA AKMEN/AFPIt’s a pity Hans Monderman isn’t around anymore. Deceased in 2008, he was the Dutch engineer and urban philosopher who pioneered the concept of towns without stop signs, lane markings, traffic lights, curbs or rules of the road. I’d love to ask him what he thinks about the current trend away from government restrictions and toward personal responsibility in containing the pandemic.
The vanguard of this development is England under the U.K.’s faux-Churchillian prime minister, Boris Johnson. This month, even as infections are soaring again due to the more contagious delta variant, he proclaimed “Freedom Day” and dropped almost all rules on masks and distancing. Simultaneously, he and his ministers reminded people that the pandemic is far from over and that they need to behave responsibly.