Comment
DAN WOOTTON
The government’s travel quarantine plan seems designed for PR purposes and will wipe out our tourism industry
A HAPPILY ever after dream for Greta Thunberg and the extremist anarchists of the Extinction Rebellion has become a living nightmare for the rest of us who don’t see going on holiday as committing a crime against humanity.
The travel and tourism industry is decimated. Every week brings yet another hammer blow – from quarantine to closed borders to social distancing on planes.
So much of it, we’re told, is based on science.
But in reality it appears to be motivated by a desire to silence government critics on social media who are so keen to revel in every apparent “misstep”, which are in reality often sensible attempts to keep our dying economy on life support.
Let’s take the likely 14-day quarantine on Brits returning to the UK from any country abroad as an example.
Practically, I can’t think how it will work.
Someone who lives in Cornwall flies back to Heathrow from a hard hit US state.
On the plane they have regular contact with flight attendants, who are likely to be exempt from the two-week lock-up given their job is to fly.
As they disembark the aircraft they come into contact with the skeleton staff at the airport – foreign exchange attendants, luggage handlers and the cashier at Pret.
They then need to get home, which involves a combination of tube, bus and rail where they could come into contact with hundreds of people.
By the time they’re at their home address any containment if they are infected has been futile.
Even if the traveller lived in London they would still be almost certain to take public transport to get home.
And don’t get me started about what happens once these travellers actually arrive at home.
Are authorities seriously suggesting that those in quarantine would choose not to leave their house for two weeks? Especially given the difficulty in securing supermarket slots at the moment.
The alternative is for the government to follow the New Zealand approach and take over hundreds of hotels close to Heathrow and lock people up inside them for two weeks, delivering food to their door.
Given the massive logistics and costs involved that option appears to have been ruled out.
What sounds much more sensible is the proactive and practical response being advocated by the chief executive of Heathrow who is introducing heat monitoring tests among a raft of measures.
If our testing capability improves to the level Boris Johnson has suggested then why not test every new arrival into the country? Those with Covid-19 could be quarantined at an airport hotel. Those who test negative could be set free.
It’s unconscionable the government would choose to unnecessarily wipe out our tourism industry and risk the future of airlines.
But that appears to be an unquestionable consequence of a quarantine designed more for PR purposes than practical effectiveness.
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