New Covid strain found in UK: Will the country of explorers & colonisers be able to stay home?

Many parts of Britain, the land of Daleks and the hot water bottle, find themselves in a precarious condition since Sunday. The outbreak of a new strain of the Covid virus — imaginatively named VUI-202012/01 by the natives of this island-bananarchy — that is ‘75% more contagious’ than plain old Sars-CoV-2 has resulted in a ‘hard lockdown’ being imposed. Which means no stepping out for Christmas shopping for some 16 million Britons, no eating out, no lager louts, and no multi-culti ‘household mixing’.

The last one is the real test, especially for folks like former government adviser on the coronavirus Neil Ferguson, who had to quit in May after admitting that a woman he was in a relationship with visited his home during lockdown. If social distancing is tough for the people that gave us John Donne’s ‘No man is an island entire of itself ’, then physical distancing may be impossible, Brexit notwithstanding.

No ‘household mixing’ may mean ‘the other wo/man’ being left in not-so-splendid isolation in high and dry Yuletide. But countries like India are right to stop flights, even carrying Republic Day chief guests from Britain, till the ‘out of control’ situation is controlled. For there is reasonable doubt whether the country once home to explorers, colonisers and middle-distance runners will be able to, for once, stay home.