Rewarding those who self-isolate should ideally be accompanied by punishment for those who don’t. But this requires confidence in the rules and their enforcement, which has been lacking. Test-and-trace infrastructure is bursting at the seams in several countries, with delays so long that people don’t see the point in following official guidelines. And in the U.K., increasingly complex limits such as “the rule of six” are patently unenforceable, with politicians encouraging people to spy on their neighbors and rat them out. More testing capacity and rules that can actually be enforced with fines would help.
On top of carrots and sticks, transparency and education can help compliance. New rules such as closing restaurants and bars at 10 p.m. rather than 11 p.m. haven’t been justified with any scientifically backed explanations, the kind of thing that can chip away at public trust. Worse, some doctors reckon they may simply shift parties to private homes indoors. Clear and understandable rules tend toward better obedience, according to Joan Costa-Font, associate professor at the London School of Economics’s health policy department. This is one area where Sweden, despite criticism of its more individualist approach to stay-at-home curbs, is doing well.
Given the public is starting to lose trust in rules handed down from above, the least policymakers could do is stick to their own guidance. Yet they are proving their own worst enemy, whether it’s Dominic Cummings flouting lockdown or French Prime Minister Jean Castex’s feeble “I no longer take the metro” excuse for not downloading France’s contact-tracing app. Apparently the U.K. government doesn’t even understand its own rules, judging by three confusing errors by officials explaining new restrictions in just three hours on Tuesday — one by Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself.
Covid-19 disobedience goes deeper than we think. Those whose fingers are hovering on the lockdown button can, and should, do more to curb it.
Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the European Union and France. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes.