Brief thread on Oldham, for anyone who’s interested.

The problem with locking down Oldham today - aside from the obvious economic devastation - is that its numbers are down on last week, when govt didn’t lock it down.

Oldham council and GM have made the case to govt, over the last couple of days, that the local approach is working: hyper targeted door knocking, testing, messaging, backwards contact tracing

Infection rates have fallen from over 100/100k to around 85 in the past week. That’s not to say there hasn’t been criticism of Oldham council within the system here. But officials believe the approach is now working

The second problem is that the virus is not really believed to be spreading within the businesses that would be shut as a result of lockdown: it’s a household thing. There have been workplace outbreaks, as there have everywhere; but this is fundamentally about households.

The third thing, which people are very much aware of now that more data is being published, is that hospital admissions and deaths have not risen in line with the case numbers. Which again makes it harder to make the argument than earlier in the pandemic.

The system here has essentially made an offer to govt: this is an opportunity to try something else. Instead of whacking places with catastrophic lockdown every time numbers go up, try their targeted approach; try and follow Germany or S Korea.

On the flip side, however, there was also a lot of fatalism among ppl I spoke to yesterday, who believed Hancock had already made up his mind. One reason would be to be seen to be doing something ahead of schools reopening. There are few votes to lose in Oldham.

So that’s where we are. Feels a bit depressing that the lives and already-weak economy of a quarter of a million people have this looming over them, but perhaps Oldham will manage to dodge this.

Sorry the other thing I forgot to mention: there is also real concern about civil unrest. To what extent the govt considers this, if at all, I don’t know. But there’s undoubtedly a worry about this, as per the council leader’s comments yesterday: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/full-lockdown-oldham-would-damage-18797369