Lifting of lockdown demands common sense and caution – Jayne Dowle

I wish I had heard about Thomas Reid back then. Known as the ‘‘common sense philosopher’’, he was an Enlightenment Scot who used the concept of ‘‘common sense’’ to argue that how ever much you might philosophise about it, you can’t doubt the existence of the world around you because you can see it, hear it and feel it.

His down-to-earth approach took hold and helped to form the bedrock of what we might think of as the good old-fashioned no-nonsense British 
character.

If my grandma thought I was daft and impractical, she ought to have met some of the people I went to university with. Some of them are now running the country. Back in the 1980s, they appeared to be even dafter than me.

Why then does the Prime Minister prize this quality so highly, if the evidence suggests that he’s hardly been blessed with a bountiful supply himself?

Following his own exhortation in the Commons, I’m trying to look forward, not back, so I won’t detail some of the catastrophic errors of judgment we’ve witnessed since lockdown began.

However, I can’t say I’m not worried. Boris Johnson is now pinning the nation’s recovery from lockdown on millions of people digging deep into their own reserves of ‘‘common sense’’.

His degree is in Classics – admittedly, references to ‘‘common’’ notions shared by the populace date back to Euclid, circa 300 BC – but does he even understand what it means himself? No wonder Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, his chief medical and scientific advisors, sounded cautious throughout the PM’s valedictory press conference.

‘‘Common sense’’ can’t be neatly measured, quantified, labelled, bottled and put on a shelf. It doesn’t represent a vaccine against Covid-19 –- that’s still months, or even years away. It’s not even a panacea. It’s either the sign of the Government’s ultimate trust in the public to do the right thing, or the ultimate absolving of responsibility.

When pubs, restaurants, cinemas, hairdressers and caravan sites re-open on July 4, we are asked to abide by the new ‘‘one metre or more’’ rule. Effectively that’s it. The pendulum has swung almost entirely in the opposite direction from imprisonment in our own homes and fierce strictures on pain of fines.

Although companies will now be hastily scribbling out the ‘‘two metre’’ signs they were obliged to pay for just a few short weeks ago, the general onus will be on us – and our common sense – to police ourselves.

I’m delighted for the businesses now able to start trading again. But perplexed by the inconsistencies. Weaponised cricket balls which possess the potential to act as ‘‘vectors’’ of infection? Theatres still puzzlingly dark but multiplexes welcoming cinemagoers?

And judging by the state of his own thatch, Mr Johnson is something of a stranger to the world of regular personal grooming. If he was a salon habitue, he would understand that many such establishments offer not just hairdressing, but also beauty treatments and manicures.

It’s inconceivable, really, that these businesses are not being given the full green light to proceed. Where’s the (common) sense in that?

And swimming pools. I heard a very sensible woman from Swim England – clearly blessed with oodles of that common sense stuff – talking about how swimming pools are absolutely teeming with disinfectant as a matter of course. And water. Regular hand-washing is still advised, so I can’t see why immersing your entire body in a huge chemically-enhanced bath is any detriment to health and infection control.

Anyway, if this quick skip of a debate about common sense tells us anything, it’s that there is no consensus about what those words actually mean. You only have to stand in a supermarket queue to learn that one person’s understanding can be entirely different to another’s.

Mrs A might find it comforting to venture forth only when clad in mask 
and gloves, bathed in a cloud of 
sanitiser. Mrs B may feel it appropriate 
to not bother at all and turn up in flip flops and shorts with half her extended family in tow. If this is the way people veer from one extreme to the other when out shopping, I can’t begin to imagine what’s going to happen in a pub beer garden.

We’re being asked to constantly balance risk versus precaution. I’m not so sure that this is good government. Is it right that just three months after the world changed forever and we were confined to our homes to prevent the spread of a killer disease, the only weapon which we now might arm ourselves with is our own common sense?

Especially when it is such an unknown quantity.

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