Clowns serve a very important function in a circus in that they distract people between acts while the kit for one act is being removed and the next is being prepared. They also serve another very important purpose and that is should something go disastrously wrong they can be used to distract the publics attention while the mishap is being sorted. That is what has happened over the last few days with Covid 19. In order to distract people away from the Cummings affair the government has jumped from stage 2 of its steps to easing lockdown straight to stage 1 without an explanation other than like the clowns it is designed to distract people from the disaster that is Cummings. The problem for them now is when the infection and death rate start to rise again as they invariably will they have no way left of distracting peoples attention from their utter incompetence. As they sing at the end of the song "Where are the clowns? Send in the clowns. Don't bother they're here".