New coronavirus restrictions come into force in England

Chocolate shops and stationery stores were busy as usual. Universities held in-person lectures.

- Benjamin Mueller

London

And workers crowded into some offices and factories, often with nothing more than a bottle of communal hand sanitizer to protect them from the rampant spread of the coronavirus. In England on Thursday, the first hours of Lockdown 2.0, as local papers called it, looked very little like a lockdown at all. The situation exposed the enormous difficulties of European governments, struck by a second wave of the coronavirus, as they try to put the genie back in the bottle after months of encouraging people to flock back to offices and pubs.

Since the spring, when lawmakers with little dissent ordered people to stay home, the political consensus around lockdown measures has collapsed. As a result, England’s new shutdown rules were shot through with loopholes, and companies openly flouted what relatively lenient restrictions were in place. At the same time, citizens and scientists alike fretted about the virus spreading unchecked for much of the winter.

“It feels very much like a lockdown in name only,” said Steve Gremo, a software developer in Kent, in southeast England. “In March, it seemed like the country came to a complete halt. It was not the same vibe this morning at all.”