Shropshire Star comment: Extraordinary effort, but we need to stay vigilant
Freedom. It is something we yearn for. It is something, as we have been reminded in the past few days, people fought and died for, and thanks to them we have come to expect freedom as being natural and a basic right.
They fought for freedom, but in the past weeks we have given up our freedom voluntarily.
Giving up freedom for a good cause is a sacrifice and despite the dreadful toll from the coronavirus pandemic we are seeing the first indications of what will count in the circumstances as a victory.
In the beginnings of this desperate period we could hardly conceive that days in which hundreds of people are dying would be considered a pointer to better times.
Beyond those individual tragedies is the curve, that flattened curve which is now starting to head in the right direction. Invisible above the curve are untold numbers of people who are now alive who would otherwise have died had people ignored the lockdown.
It was not part of the government's contract with the public that the lockdown would last forever, so during a crisis in which decisions repeatedly have had to be made with incomplete knowledge – as this virus is new and unknown – some of the most difficult decisions are about how we emerge from lockdown and take baby steps towards a society which is once more functioning, and an economy which is once more generating jobs and wealth.
The wisdom or otherwise of relaxing this and that will only become apparent by looking back – and there is a growing army of self-styled wise counsels who had all the right answers.
There are things that could have been done better. There are things that could have gone catastrophically worse, with an overwhelmed NHS.
This has been an extraordinary national effort in which the public's co-operation has been both impressive and vital.
Everybody wants this battle to be over, a wish so strong now that the temptation is to convince ourselves that we have at last come through.
Coronavirus has been a national tragedy. It would be a tragedy compounded if we let it come back just when we had started to get it on the run.
