Beyond Coronavirus: Towards a new Flexible Fire and Rescue Service

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may yet rue the day when he said at the daily press briefing from Number Ten Downing Street on March 19 that a turning point in the national effort against the Covid-19 global pandemic would be seen in around 12 weeks from now. His statement, using words that were ill-judged, may yet cause a number of people that are not yet fully engaged in the national effort to defeat the virus to adopt the age-old adage of ‘keep clam and carry on’ going out and socialising.

Those people, many of them of a younger generation, appear to think of themselves as being invincible. Through the crucible of social media, they develop a virtual immunity to the virus and believe, because the advice has been contradictory, that it is the elderly that are most at risk and that therefore they need not adopt the kind of measures that the rest of the population take seriously. This narrow interpretation of the situation, no doubt amplified through the echo chamber of social media, persuades many that they need not worry about catching the virus.

Read the full article on page 14 of FIRE magazine April 2020

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