Covid#25 - Treating each other as grown-ups

Pictures of Bournemouth – my home – have been hot news over the past few weeks.  A German friend recently returned to the UK and told me that photos of our beach had even made it into his local newspaper in Germany!  The reason: the crowds enjoying the early summer sunshine.  There’s nothing too unusual about that – photos of Bournemouth’s crowded beaches make it into the national newspapers at some point every year – but the context is very different.  This year’s influx of visitors comes hot on the heels of lockdown, amid ongoing fears of the virus.

It’s caused consternation across Dorset.  There’s great concern that some of those visitors may have brought coronavirus with them, from parts of the country with higher infection rates than those in the south-west, which have always been the lowest.  The photographs portray an apparent disregard for social distancing; the patch of sand occupied by each family is clearly less than two metres from their neighbours’.  It’s true too that it’s nigh on impossible to maintain that social distance whilst walking along the prom or down the zig-zag paths that lead from the clifftops to the beach.  Traffic is heavy and its brought inconsiderate drivers and parking infringements with it.  After weeks of cleanliness on the beaches, the amount of litter is appalling.  The behaviour of some leaves much to be desired: my neighbour had to help rescue one drunken beach-goer who fell from a rock-groyne, cracking open his head and knocking himself unconscious before he fell into the water.  Not far away, at Durdle Door, three tombstoners nearly killed themselves by jumping from the rock-arch into the sea, and thousands of visitors had to be kettled in large crowds on the beach to make way for emergency helicopters to land.

The strength of feeling locally is understandable for all the reasons I’ve written about in other blog-posts – it’s prompted by the same anxiety some have about breaking their personal lockdown and leaving their house or visiting supermarkets or sending their children back to school.  They have successfully protected themselves, they have survived; they know the virus is still out there, they’ve seen what it can do and they’re frightened of catching it.

This is where this blog-post gets controversial though; I don’t think their condemnation of all those visitors to Bournemouth’s beaches and Dorset’s beauty-spots is warranted.  I think judgement of those beach-goers and the names they’re called on social media is unfair.  I think the demands of local politicians for measures to be taken to deter them from visiting are unnecessary and the comments of one Member of Parliament who wrote that people have ‘abandoned common sense’ are patronising and offensive.

Those of us who live in Bournemouth or close to Dorset’s stunning coast are wonderfully lucky to live in such a beautiful place with such easy access to some of the country’s best beaches.  I believe we should have more empathy with those who live in greyer inner-city neighbourhoods, or those in landlocked towns without their own garden, or those who have been imprisoned on the upper floors of blocks of flats.  We should recognise our good fortune in living where we do and be happy to share it with them.  In better times, we’re happy to welcome them and to take their money – our towns thrive on tourism and without them we’d be far poorer – so in these darker times, it seems wrong to enjoy our beaches ourselves whilst turning visitors away.

Bournemouth and Poole have so many miles of golden sand that in any summer, once you’re on the beach, it’s not difficult to socially distance yourself from others.  The photographs in the press are always of the busy sections of beach close to the two piers.  If you restrict yourself to those short stretches or one of the other points where it is especially easy to access the beach, it is always crowded on a sunny day, but if you walk for ten or fifteen minutes, it’s not difficult to find a much quieter spot.  There’s nothing unusual in that, pandemic or no pandemic.  You wouldn’t find me near the piers in any summer and I’ve had no trouble socially distancing myself on a quieter stretch of beach in the past few weeks.  There may be occasional larger groups of more than six people but generally, they keep themselves to themselves and respect others’ social distance.

I understand why some people think it is too soon after lockdown to visit the beach.  They have made grown-up assessments of the risk to themselves and the people closest to them and reasonably choose to stay away.  Others, like me, live in different circumstances and reach a different conclusion.  We all take personal responsibility for our decisions and the level of risk we take.  The vast majority of those visiting the beach are not reckless and don’t deserve the names they are called on social media.  They accept that we need to find ways of living alongside the virus because it’s not going away any time soon; they know that unless they lock themselves away indefinitely, there is going to be an element of risk to everything they do for the foreseeable future; and they may have reckoned on the risk being about as low as it’s going to get.

Arguably, they have good reason to think this way.  Sampling has concluded that one person in one-thousand currently has the virus (down from one in four-hundred a couple of weeks ago), infection rates have remained relatively low with reports a couple of weeks ago of just two new cases of Covid19 across the whole of Dorset, and the R dropped below one and even now, there is uncertainty about claims that it has risen to one in the southwest, not least because of the overall low number of infections in the region.  Some worry that crowded beaches will inevitably cause a spike in cases, citing the football match between Liverpool and Real Madrid and the Cheltenham Festival early in the pandemic, but there’s no real evidence that either of those events caused localised outbreaks nor that they support a direct correlation between numbers on the beach and rising infections.  We’re told too that the risk outdoors is relatively low.  A study quoted by Professor Peter Openshaw last weekend found that of 320 outbreaks, only one originated outdoors and other scientists have said that you are highly unlikely to contract the virus by only walking past someone, even at less than two metres.  It’s a view that seems supported by the basis for the new track and trace system – only those who have been less than two metres from a confirmed infection for fifteen minutes or more are deemed at enough risk to self-isolate.

Of course, social distancing remains the sensible precaution but even this isn’t as clear-cut as previously, with the Prime Minister openly questioning the two-metre guidance and suggesting it could be less.  Nonetheless, to most of us, it does seem reckless to ignore it, so promoting it on our busy beaches ought to be the focus of our local authorities, using council staff and volunteers to persuade visitors to spread out along the miles of sand, rather than condemning visitors and looking for ways to stop them from coming. 

If you’ve lived in the area for a while, you know that traffic, inconsiderate parking, litter and irresponsible behaviour are not uncommon on the sunniest, warmest days of the summer.  There are days every year when we are incredulous at the traffic-jams on the main road into Bournemouth; parking is always a nightmare on those days and we locals know it is best not to drive anywhere; bins regularly overflow and disposable barbecues abound; sadly, news reports of people diving into the sea from Durdle Door or injuring themselves in other ways are not uncommon.  Perhaps this year, in the circumstances and after so many weeks of calm and quiet, this all seems especially shocking but I’m not convinced it has anything to do with coronavirus and I think it is disingenuous of council leaders and other politicians to conflate these particular challenges with the pandemic.  They manage them every other year and, whilst their services and staff may be unusually stretched and face rare challenges this summer, I don’t understand why they can’t address them better this year.  Take the litter-issue for example: if social distancing requirements make it impossible to collect litter, how have our household bins been emptied regularly throughout this emergency?

Libertarians and human rights activists would make other legitimate arguments against stricter restrictions; indeed, they might question all the restrictions that have been imposed on us.  They might ask why some people should have right of access to the beach while it is denied to others and they would contend that the state has no place directing us how to behave in order to stop becoming unwell.  Whilst some measures may have been necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, that danger has passed.  Boris himself may well fall into this camp and feel more comfortable providing information and advice than issuing edicts.  He’s alluded to as much in his trust in our common sense.

In deciding how we each respond to the pandemic, emerge from our lockdown and live with coronavirus, we must all consider the risk to our own health and those close to us and we should be considerate of others around us.  We should also treat each other as grown-ups, accepting that others will make different choices, taking responsibility for them and the risks they take, and we should respect their decisions.  There remains so much we don’t know about coronavirus that we may even need some people to push the boundaries, test it and take some risks.  They are the confident, seemingly courageous black-run skiers I referred to in an earlier blog-post (#23).  Like pioneers, maybe the risks they take will be proved foolhardy but equally, they may prove justified and help us all learn what we can do and how we can live through this pandemic.