Editor’s Note: Holly Thomas is a writer and editor based in London. She tweets @HolstaT. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.
Last week, the UK became the first western nation to authorize Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, leapfrogging the rest of Europe and the United States. According to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, an initial 800,000 doses will be delivered from Pfizer’s facilities in Belgium to the UK this week, followed by “many millions” more before the end of the year.
The government has also added the vaccine to the list covered by the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979, meaning that anyone who becomes at least 60% disabled as a result of having received it will be eligible for a compensation payment from the government of £120,000 – around $160,000 in US money. It’s a massive vote of confidence from the government – and the fact that almost no one in England seems to be talking about it is a measure of just how confused and mismanaged the public discourse around the vaccine rollout has been in the last week.
Unfortunately for the shiny new vaccine, what should have been the joyous news of its imminent arrival happened to coincide with England coming out of its second lockdown and into an updated “tier system” of restrictions.
Most of the country falls into tiers two and three (the more serious) with most of the population, including London, falling into tier two. In tier two, people are allowed to go to the pubs, bars and restaurants - but only outside, unless they’re with their support bubble or household, and whether inside or outside, they must be in a group of six or less. And you’re only allowed to order alcoholic drinks if they come with a “substantial meal.”
What’s a substantial meal, you might ask? It’s a fair question, and the answer, per our government, is so long and confusing that trying to wrap your head around it will leave no brain space for any other peripheral concerns - like say, a life-saving vaccine, and what it could mean for our lives and loved ones.
Having devoted half a second’s thoughts and prayers to the pubs and bars which don’t serve food and are unlikely to survive much longer (and almost zero thought to the vast majority of people who can’t afford to pay for an entire meal every time they fancy a pint) the country fell into an agonizing debate, the focal point of which was: Does a Scotch egg count as a meal?
In case you’ve never had the pleasure: a Scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in miscellaneous grey sausage meat, rolled in weirdly orange breadcrumbs. Sometimes this concoction is tiny, sometimes almost threateningly large.
They’re the sort of thing you’d almost always find next to sandwiches and lunch items in supermarkets, and sometimes, they’re served as pub snacks. But wait, are those snacks actually meals!? Luckily for us plebs, the government lost no time in stepping in to clear the matter up.
Environment Secretary George Eustice kicked things off, saying a Scotch egg constituted a substantial meal, as long as there was table service. Does that mean a packet of crisps can be a meal, asked Twitter? Never mind - Eustice was swiftly contradicted by Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, who maintained that two Scotch eggs were a decent starter (they’re not). Shortly afterwards, Gove contradicted himself (neat), and said that actually, a single Scotch egg was a substantial meal, and that the concept of a substantial meal has existed in law for years (but didn’t elaborate on what that concept was).
Tangentially, as if to make absolutely sure that the country’s attention was diverted away from the one thing the government has managed to do right in the last 10 months, a few other ministers - including Matt Hancock - started making baseless claims that the UK’s swift acquisition of the vaccine was only possible because of Brexit - a completely false line which spun so out of control that the prime minister’s office and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) had to step in to contradict it.
And so it was that this fantastic news, which will doubtless save thousands of lives, relationships, livelihoods and businesses, was steamrolled by a mixed-up country overshadowed by Brexit and obsessed with the pub.
It’s hard to blame us. After a year in which the government tied itself into knots over mixed lockdown messaging, hypocritical aides and increasingly indecipherable restrictions, we’re conditioned to expect the worst, nerves tingling in anticipation of some eleventh-hour ineptitude. Though it’s agonizing, in some ways it’s a serviceable distraction from some more important - and challenging - issues which are yet to be addressed.
We’re theoretically not too far away from coming blinking out into the light after a long, painful pandemic. Many of us have lost loved ones, jobs and homes. A lot of us are unsure how to reintroduce our post-Covid selves to friends we’ve not really kept in touch with, or perhaps not been too impressed by for the last 10 months: The people who ignored the guidelines and did as they pleased, while our vulnerable friends and relatives had to shield, as we feared for their lives.
Ironically, it’s a bit reminiscent of the feeling post-Brexit, when everyone seemed to reassess their relationships, depending on how people had voted. And while the Scotch egg question was ridiculous, it sidestepped a more important point.
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Thousands of pubs, bars, restaurants and other venues are still closed, and may never reopen. It’s hard to overstate how important this is on a personal level, let alone how many people’s livelihoods have been or will be destroyed.
These are the places where we made friends, celebrated victories and embarked on relationships while sipping nervously on flat vodka and Diet Cokes. They provided the social lubricant which propped up so many friendships - very often on empty stomachs, apparently. Now that many of us are looking at each other a little differently, the vaccine has brought with it an important question - one we’re apparently prepared to go to any lengths to ignore. Where do we go from here?
