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The UK has done a 180 in its coronavirus strategy in the last few weeks. First, we were told to 鈥榯ake it on the chin鈥�. Now we鈥檙e only allowed out once a day to do our food shopping.

I鈥檝e lived in London for two years now, and I didn鈥檛 really think things could get any worse. 2020 was supposed to be the year of the actual Brexit, and Boris Johnson would be the Prime Minister for another five years, following the reelection of the Tory government last year. And yet, it did get worse. Now we鈥檙e hit by a pandemic, and the whole country is in lockdown.

As a PhD student, my life here has in many ways continued much in the same vein as before. In the last few weeks I鈥檝e just continued writing my thesis. Still, of course, everything has changed. Once a day, we鈥檙e allowed outside to buy food, or do some kind of exercise. If it weren鈥檛 for the staggering death toll being reported in the news every day, you鈥檇 think the country had never been healthier: it feels like the whole neighborhood has come out to join me for my daily park run.

鈥淭ake it on the chin鈥�

Two weeks ago, the UK did a complete 180 in their coronavirus strategy. Until then, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been telling the British to 鈥渢ake it on the chin鈥�, implying that they should ride out the storm in a typical British, stoic fashion. The authorities鈥� main tactic against the virus seemed to be that of 鈥榟erd immunity鈥�, with the rest of UK life to go on as usual. In a society sharply divided by class, and where trust in politicians and authorities is consistently low, people immediately started to see this advice in relationship with Britain鈥檚 longer history of eugenics, where the state should work towards improving the genetic quality of its population. Suddenly, people were speculating whether politicians and members of the UK upper class saw the virus as a convenient mechanism of 鈥榥atural selection鈥�.

Catastrophe

So why the reversal? The 180 came when researchers at Imperial College London published an article that showed the potentially catastrophic results of the authorities鈥� guidelines. A more interventionist approach, on the other hand, could halve the number of deaths. Furthermore, drastic measures were needed to better equip a healthcare system that has been underfunded for years. These days, reading the newspaper is heartbreaking: healthy nurses and doctors are dying because they don鈥檛 have the proper protective gear, and patients can鈥檛 breathe because there aren鈥檛 enough ventilators available. It鈥檚 still too early to say anything definitive about whether the new strategy is working, and we can expect to see the death toll rise for at least a couple more weeks.

700,000 volunteers

As a Norwegian, used to thinking of the state as my primary caretaker in all facets of life, it was interesting to register my own sense of surprise as I read that the NHS had gotten 700,000 new volunteers last week. All neighborhoods in London now have a local mutual aid group, where neighbors help people who are in full quarantine by doing their shopping and helping them with other errands. That鈥檚 how societies are organised during a crisis 鈥� when you trust the lady down the street more than your local council representative.

Differences across borders

My flatmate鈥檚 family lives in India, where the state infrastructure is even less equipped to deal with the outbreak of a global pandemic. There is a strange form of cognitive dissonance tied to following Norwegian, British, and Indian news about the virus at the same time: our fears are so devastatingly similar, and yet so unevenly distributed. In London we鈥檙e now hunkering down for more weeks of national lockdown, and more uncertainty.

• This post originally appeared in V氓rt Land under the title 鈥淪toisk ro fungerte ikke鈥�. You can read it in the .
• Translation: Indigo Trigg-Hauger