Don’t Blame us for your Second Wave Shambles!
So this lunchtime Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, two figures we’ve become readily accustomed to on our screens now appeared to tell us exactly what the craic is now regarding a second wave, without any member of the government present. I must admit I was secretly hoping they’d gone rogue especially after that Spectator pic had done the rounds. Chris Whitty looked like he was set to rip Johnson’s throat out, Matt Hancock had been sent to the corner forgetting his dunce cap and Dominic Cummings was eyeing him up like some kind of alpha male rival to his rule! Sadly as soon as I learned it was going to come from Downing Street I knew this wouldn’t be the case. The government didn’t want any questions, so by sending Whitty and Vallance out alone they dodged it. There has of course been conjecture as to where Johnson was to not brief the public, though it seems that might involve some jet-lag.
The headline to take away from the advisors however was that we’re heading for 50,000 new diagnoses of Covid infection per day by Mid October, leading onto 200 deaths a day by mid November if we don’t stick to the rules. We’re into the feared second wave, blame must be attributed and although neither Vallance or Whitty I thought particularly took aim at the public, that is very much the impression the government want you to have. Johnson and Co are desperate for a scapegoat now and if we let them, it’ll be us. Sadly, there are those intent on helping with this. Protests in London against masks and lockdown at the weekend, show there is a distinct lack of anything resembling common sense amongst a significant proportion of people. It doesn’t help that social media blue ticks are sneering at mask wearers or the liberal melts berating anyone for daring to suggest we enter a second lockdown. Perhaps they’d have tuned in to listen if it had been presented by Kirstie Allsopp & Denise Welch, those other well known epidemiologists. These are the idiots who will let the Tories off their ineptitude. Wear the damn masks. We were all taught as children that coughs and sneezes spread diseases and so it is with this. The mask limits spread, so keep your germs to yourself.
We have a Prime Minister, reputedly recently having taken another jolly, this time to Perugia in Italy, absent in the line of duty yet again. I don’t know if Perugia has a castle but if so, perhaps he was testing his eyesight. We have a Health Minister whose own party think he’ll literally say anything he’s told to now and both of them have had this virus, one seriously, learning nothing from the experience — despite having it themselves they couldn’t give a fig if anyone else does!
The world-beating track and trace system, privatised and screwed up — a task other countries from Cuba to Vietnam have had no problem developing. We locked down too late to control the spread of the virus, shown to be effective, if costly from an economic perspective. The fact is if you don’t prioritise lives over money, then who is the money going to be for? We need to learn the lessons, we need to take notice of what we’re told, but the government doesn’t do that, it still refuses to countenance another lockdown this time around. School closures will be a last resort now, despite lessons being quite capably taught online by excellent teachers around the country and despite the obvious fact that by shutting down the largest assemblies of people going — people of all ages at that — being effective in halting the spread, again it won’t happen until its too late.
Take New Zealand for comparison. They saw a small number of cases and locked right down. Today they’re lifting a 5 week lockdown virtually nationwide after just 25 deaths.
Johnson and his hard-right halfwits, despite having six months to learn lessons themselves and prepare us more adequately against the known threat of a second wave have failed completely. Not only is their failure so complete, and so damaging for all of us, by progressing a Bill through parliament that will break international law, means any moral credibility they might once have had is gone. Why should any of us listen to a government telling us we have to do this, we have to do that because rules are rules, when they tear up the rules themselves — rules they themselves agreed to in writing at that!
As an island nation we should be able to lock down effectively — more checks at the ports, close the airports, or at the very least implement the testing and quarantine strategies you failed to do last time.
Johnson is apparently going to chair a COBRA meeting tomorrow, hopefully from within the actual UK somewhere, but this will be the first one held since May. If you want to believe a government is doing all it can to deal with a crisis, you expect it to be holding crisis meetings. To have not bothered for 4 months is criminally reckless when 65,000 people have already died from Covid this year, that’s not the public’s fault, that’s on the government.
This week we could see restaurants and other hospitality outlets shut for a few weeks, but not most workplaces and certainly not schools. For heavens sake it was only a fortnight ago you were literally PAYING people to eat out! Doing everything they can claims Hancock, but to anyone with half a brain, this clearly isn’t true. It’s tinkering around the edges and hoping for the best despite SEEING how things unfolded earlier this year. They won’t go far enough, they’ll react too late again and we’ll head into winter as unprepared as ever we were before. So remember the words of Whitty and Vallance today as you go about your business. I for one think much of their briefing was aimed as much at the government as it was at us. We know Johnson won’t listen, so make sure the blame goes where its deserved, at him and his shambles of a government, not at each other and demand they sort this out. If we need to lockdown, do it properly, put lives before the economy, because nothing matters more than lives — economies can be rebuilt, lives can’t and an economy won’t be fixed until this virus is under control. Wear the damn masks, Sack Dido Harding and let the actual NHS develop test and trace, or given we’re running out of time, buy Cuba’s version or something and if you really have anything to say tomorrow Johnson, let it be your resignation, you’d save more lives that way.
If you enjoy my work, feel like it and can do so without hardship, please also consider contributing to the ongoing development of the page, or just buy me a coffee.
