BRITAIN ENTERS CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN.

In the past few minutes, Boris Johnson has announced that the UK is going into lockdown from this evening. In a statement in Downing Street (which you can read in full here), he announced that people will not be allowed to leave their homes unless they are doing so for the following:

– shopping for basic necessities

– one form of exercise a day such as a run, walk or cycle and either alone or with other members of the same household

– medical needs or caring for a vulnerable person

– travelling to or from work but only when absolutely necessary.

The police will be given the power to fine people and disperse gatherings and all non-essential shops and events such as weddings and baptisms will be banned.

I absolutely understand the need, but it will be interesting to see how — and for how long — it plays out, given that the British police have been inching towards Airstrip One mode for quite some time. In 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.”