No reopening please, we're British

So why on earth is Boris Johnson slow-rolling the country’s emergence from lockdown? The exit plan from the current—third—lockdown began March 8, when schools reopened, and won’t be complete until late June. Sorry, make that “until late June at the earliest,” appending Mr. Johnson’s favorite three words. Nonessential retail, beer gardens and gyms won’t reopen until next week, restaurants not until May, and no one can say when draconian restrictions on international travel will be eased. Precisely because the medical news in Britain is so cheerful, its difficulties escaping lockdown serve as a cautionary tale for everyone else. The task, it would appear, no longer is to suppress the virus or meter hospital demand or save lives or anything health-related. The task is to manage the dangerous interactions between a fearful political class and an overweening medical class.