The unstoppable spread of Tier Four restrictions

‘They can arbitrarily draw lines on a map of the country, placing millions under the most restrictive rules with barely a few hours notice.‘

I hail from the historical English county of Huntingdonshire (located on the Western edges of Cambridgeshire), the birthplace of the first but unfortunately not the last political leader to prohibit Christmas festivities. It often brings laughter to school children when they are informed by the teacher that a former ruler of this country would ever ban Christmas – a testament to the bizarre epoch we have all found ourselves inhabiting.

A secondary characteristic of Huntingdonshire is its remarkably low COVID rates relative to the rest of the country, despite waking up chained to tier four lockdown restrictions on Boxing Day. From the most recent figures at the time of writing, there have been 157 cases per 100,000 of the population, which is lower than much of tier three England, including the cities of Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield.

In early November, there were only 125 reported cases of COVID-19 across the entire county, and even a fall in the number of reported cases during the ‘second’ national lockdown. When the one-through-three tier system was being hurried through Parliament, the local MP, Jonathan Djanogly, spoke of the unfairness that his constituents faced by being thrust into tier two (although this was due to the equally illogical allocation of the tiers on a county-wide basis, disallowing any distinction between rural and urban conditions). Djanogly was not allowed a vote this time, as the Government still rules by decree with respect to implementing regionalised lockdowns; they can arbitrarily draw lines on a map of the country, placing millions under the most restrictive rules with barely a few hours notice.

Cases in Huntingdonshire began to spike around the onset of Christmas, as the number of reported COVID infections doubled. Whilst all localities of Cambridgeshire have case rates below the national average (besides the city of Peterborough), what explains this rise, and consequently its placement in tier four, is simple: having a dramatic rise in cases close to tier-four areas.

When the Government welded another step to its tier ladder on the 19th December – panicked by a new mutant strain of COVID 19 – the announcement inadvertently launched an exodus from London, the epicentre of the recent COVID outbreak. After learning that Tier 4 cloaks the capital and much of the South east, along with forbidding any travel to other tiers, many Londoners elected to escape before midnight, and to spend Christmas with their families rather than the atomised experience that would have awaited them.

Reminiscent of evacuee children packing the train stations to flee before the Luftwaffe arrived, London’s stations remained filled to the brim all the way up to the last train. Does this fully explain why the rest of the East of England has had to suffer with them in Tier-four? Partly, but those scurrying away from London would have spread to all parts of the country. More importantly, this was a sign of things to come.

Other areas that were cast into tier-four were the surrounding areas that were previously under tier-three restrictions, including Peterborough in northern Cambridgeshire, Bedford, to the west, as well as large parts of Essex, to the east. The last strongholds of tier two East Anglia became cut off from the rest of the nation. Of course, where tier-two allows shops to remain open, tier-four does not, so those looking to do some last-minute Christmas shopping hopped into the adjacent counties. Plus, without armed guards to patrol the county lines acting as if they were East German border guards in a previous life, what is there to stop extended families from celebrating Christmas together? We have learnt that this flu-like virus spreads the most indoors, a feature we have known about winter illnesses since time yonder. Can the Government not foresee that the populace will not abide by such draconian measures?   

The writing was on the wall for Huntingdonshire. After only spending a mere day in tier-three, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire were thrust into tier-four. Then the domino effect was fully realised, as on the 23rd, it was declared that the remaining pockets of Tier-two East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire) would go into tier-four on Boxing Day.

The much-needed Boxing Day sales, needed to claw back lost revenue because of the last two national lockdowns and dilapidated annual football, was eradicated by Whitehall directive.

Whilst restaurants can remain open for take-away only, it is likely they would have noticed this financial shock. With no reason to go to the towns and cities in search of the shops, there is no reason to grab a bite to eat on the journey. The local high street is now a ghost-town, and I truly wonder, to the point of despair, how many businesses closed their doors for the last time on Christmas Eve?

The tier-four domino effect will spread to the rest of the UK – a national lockdown in all but name. I wrote back in November that a third nation-wide lockdown will await us in the new year, due to shoppers being ‘packed like sardines’ both on the street and in-store (despite the best efforts of corporate social distancing measures) as well as families gathering together for Christmas. I previously – albeit naively – believed that the rollout of the vaccine and oncoming ‘herd-immunity’ would overturn this prediction, as I penned the article before the world had heard of the name Pfizer, but how wrong I may still be.