An incoherent approach to controlling Covid-19

The recent approach to controlling Covid-19 transmission in England seems particularly boneheaded: the recent local “spikes” were entirely preventable by a proper system of testing, tracking and tracing, identifying contacts of individual cases and locking them down; this system is just not in place, and no macro-statistic of total tests undertaken will substitute for it. This is what “local measures” should mean, not targeting huge swathes of the urban population. Second, the measures recently adopted are incoherent to the point of absurdity – I can go out with friends for dinner, but not visit my mother? The danger here is lack of credibility, exacerbated by a complete inability to enforce such parochial restrictions.