When the government announced a four-stage alert system, I was relieved: finally, we would be getting a set of clear directives.
So much for that idea.
By Monday of this week we didn’t so much have four codes as seven, with some regions both one colour and another, and it wasn’t clear what the difference was between yellow and orange and green except, maybe, how nervous we were supposed to feel.
Maybe it’s because of that lacklustre rollout that this week’s “28-day challenge” seems so jarring; a tool meant to keep people safe needs to be finished before it is put in place.
If you install a seatbelt in every car, but it won’t lock until the end of the month, then people die waiting for it to start working, and then everyone gets whiplash when things suddenly kick in as they were supposed to.
