Investors, Markets Jittery as Delta Variant Dashes Hopes of Return to Normality  

ROME - It was 'Freedom Day' in Britain Monday — except for the country's prime minister, Boris Johnson, who was locked away and forced to self-isolate because he’d had contact with one of his key ministers who tested positive for coronavirus.

Johnson's confinement underlines the stop-start challenge the British government is finding in its efforts to open up the country while seeking to curb the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the virus, which was first detected in India.    Freedom Day was earmarked for the lifting of nearly all pandemic restrictions and was meant to be Johnson’s moment of triumph, a reward for a rapid and successful rollout of vaccines.   “Instead it became a bewildering farce,” according to political commentator Michael Deacon, a columnist for the country’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, where Johnson made a name for himself as a journalist before turning to politics. “Say what you like about Fate, but she’s certainly got a sense of humor. How darkly comic of her, how wickedly mischievous, to arrange events so that Boris Johnson would be forced to spend ‘Freedom Day’ in solitary confinement,” commented Deacon.