Staying popular with the horses

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It’s easy to understand how the English government has concluded that having hundreds of young people packed together in poorly ventilated venues such as nightclubs while large numbers of people in the relevant age group are still unvaccinated is not the most brilliant idea ever, although it’s a lot harder to understand why it was not so obvious until hours after declaring that the clubs could open. How exactly did something so blindingly obvious only become so after it had happened? It’s also easy to understand how they concluded that taking steps to mitigate the problem by only allowing in those who have been fully vaccinated is better than doing nothing at all, once the original mistake has been committed. But I struggle to imagine the conversation around this which led to the conclusion that the right thing to do was postpone the implementation until after most of those concerned have been fully vaccinated. It’s a bit like a committee running a stable full of horses which takes a decision to change the lock after the first horse has bolted, but then decides to delay implementing the decision until after the last horse has escaped. It might well be more popular with the horses, but that’s rather losing sight of the original objective.