We have, according to Boris Johnson, a national emergency. For once, I will not disagree with him. Omicron is creating a crisis with regard to Covid on a greater scale than any that we have faced before. As a consequence, I dutifully watched his broadcast to the nation last night. Having overcome my initial reaction, which was that if we face a crisis he could at least comb his hair to emphasise the fact (a sentiment I expressed more colourfully on Twitter) three immediate thoughts came to mind.
The first was that if we faced a crisis, the reaction was remarkably tepid. All that has been done is to bring forward the deadline when everyone should be offered a booster vaccine in the UK. However, the assumptions underpinning this offer are clearly absurd. That is partly because the rate of vaccination has to be double that which has been achieved to date and I am really not sure that the army can make up that difference. There also seemed to be a failure to factor in Christmas. Worse, an appeal to staff in the NHS to work ever harder will not go down well after the revelations of the last week, for which there was not a word of remorse. As messaging went, this was dire. I can't see this promise being honoured.
Second, implicit in this single approach to tackling this crisis are a number of ongoing beliefs that the government still appears to hold. The most significant is the belief that immunity can be created if not by infection, then at least by injection. By now the fallacy of this argument should, I would have thought, have become apparent. In saying so I am not belittling vaccination, and I would urge everyone to be vaccinated. What I am saying is that this programme is clearly insufficient to tackle the crisis that we face by itself.
The paltry measures that were announced last week, and which will now be debated in Parliament tomorrow, are in the context of the scale of the problem that we face also utterly inconsequential, even if they could be enforced in their mediocrity. Requiring that a mask be worn in a theatre is so wrong when in reality theatres and all other places of mass entertainment should now be closed. With a virus as virulent as this one is we cannot afford anything that looks vaguely like a mass spreading event and yet they are being permitted all over the country, day in, day out. I just wish our Opposition had the courage to say so. We need lockdown, and we need it now.
Nor was there was any indication of lessons learned, let alone the announcement of a program to at last recognise the fact that Covid is an ongoing threat that must be managed within our society. So, there was nothing about additional NHS resources. Nor was there anything about NHS pay. There was not a hint that schools, universities, places of work, hospitality venues and other locations must be made safe before they can be reopened because we can now be certain that there will be further waves of Covid to come. This requires mass programmes of ventilation and filtration. Nor was there any hint that mistakes have been made, including the declaration of a 'freedom day', which was nothing of the sort.
However, the third issue was probably the most important, and that was that there was no suggestion that Rishi Sunak will be sent back to the Despatch Box any time soon. Even if, for reasons that are incomprehensible, no further lockdown takes place (and for the record, I think we will be in lockdown by next weekend) there are a wide range of issues that need to be addressed now, including a critical need for investment in everything from intensive care facilities (without it being claimed that these will represent new hospitals) to the ventilation systems on which it is very likely that our long-term ability to control Covid is dependent. In addition, in the short term there are bound to be costs of business disruption. So far none of these issues has been mentioned by any leading politician, and that dismays me because it is so obvious that these issues must be addressed and that state intervention is required to make sure that they are.
The simple fact is that so far it would seem as if no lessons from Covid have been learned. It is as if the assumption is still being made that, just like a common cold, we will get rid of this and life will return to normal pretty soon. After two years that assumption is so glaringly wrong that I would have thought it would have permeated even the most impenetrable of political brains, but that does not appear to be the case. Instead, we face the quite extraordinary prospect of up to 100 Tory MPs, all of whom are dedicated to removing our right to protest, voting against the government to maintain the right to not wear a mask and who are vehemently opposed to any other measures to tackle this crisis. It is as if they think that delivering death in the community is now what politics is about.
It is n0t and it really is time that we had politicians demanding the level of change that is really required to handle this crisis which to date others none of them have been willing to embrace.
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I concur but the Government reaction takes us to the heart of their Libertarian back bone.
These people are not here to govern; they are here to dismantle, to demolish. Not to sustain. Breaking things is their priority.
We must come to terms with them as they are and spread the word.
In my world – housing development and redevelopment – you don’t appoint demolition contractors as builders.
That is what we’ve got in Government right now.
Events move quickly. I think by Tuesday night the rebels, who thought they stood for freedom and common sense, will be shown up as the narrow minded, selfish, innumerate fools that they are. Do any of them understand the word “exponential”?
One such rebel claimed we needed more evidence before we acted! Does he think we plucky Brits are less susceptible to Omicron than those South Africans?…. or are we living in a world where any evidence from overseas must immediately be discounted?
Isn’t the new normal ‘let them die in a ditch, I’m having a party’ ?
Again spot on about Covid Richard.
Labour’s David Lammy pathetically parroted ‘schools must stay open at all costs’ on BBC this morning without asking why children 5-11 are not being vaccinated (millions in other countries have been), not a mention of making schools and other premises safe through masks, monitoring, ventilators etc.
It’s really chilling there seems to be a tacit agreement between politicians and the media, not to ask why children are being subject to a ‘herd immunity by natural infection’ experiment. Children do get ill, children do go to hospital children do die, and children do spread it.
Is this really and advanced open democracy when some questions are taboo?
I wish I knew why Labour would not take this fight to protect children to the government
The Labour Party was formed to represent the interests of the labour force, something that Starmer and the majority of Labour MPs are currently striving every sinew to prove that they do not. It does make me miserable (and considerably worried) to write this but the present composition of the Labour Party while not as toxic as the Conservative Party under Johnson by any means, is still so utterly distant from what the country needs so acutely that the measure of comparison of the two is trivial almost to the point of irrelevance. As has become the sad norm; the current Labour Party leadership and most of the PLP are desperate to be seen as the pro-business, small government, ‘non-interference’ technocrat option by our seeming inherently conservative mass media owners and heads of business, that they will sit still and mute in order to gain endorsement by these people. I fear that this last point is why the Labour Party not only fails to oppose this horrific government but actively employs every kind of logical fallacy when its representatives are given a platform on which to engage with the public on any matter of importance. Considering Johnson’s somewhat back-firing tirade during PMQs last week, the threat of being accused of ‘scoring political points’ should no longer hold any fear, even for such a demonstrably meek and conformist version of the Labour Party as we see today.
“It is as if they think that delivering death in the community is now what politics is about.” – one could think of the Cam-moron years of austerity as a dress rehearsal.
John Harris in the Guardian had a good article that is relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/12/boris-johnson-crisis-contempt-covid-levelling-up
Some of the links are interesting (Sad Little Men) & it all boils down to: the majority of tories (& most of the leadership) regard most UK people with contempt. Given this, is there any surprise that they are “delivering death in the community” – a community that they hold in total contempt.
Agreed. I bought Sad Little Men this very morning. There are already a number of books on this theme but this one seems to be striking a particular and timely chord. We should bear in mind there’s really very little point in getting rid of Boris while the system which elevates him and his like to the highest offices in the land remains in place.
Agree, what Johnson is proposing (broadcast a day later than he made it, showing how much of an “emergency” he thinks it is) is totally inadequate and lockdown should be introduced now because the NHS has not the capacity to achieve 100% booster vaccinations by 31 December.
And now Sky News are reporting that there are no more home testing kits available, as far as I am aware just in England.
No provision for their recomendations then, nor is there any suggestion or advice or help about how people are supposed to support themselves during what might well be frequent bouts of isolation. You get the feeling they’re really not taking this seriously at all.
It is hard not to come to the conclusion that this really is a government that places profit above people – in this case literally people’s lives. This though Simon Wren Lewis and others have pointed out the utter fallacy and short terms that the economy will be better off in anything other than the very short term.
As they have been from the beginning, they are fixated on herd immunity, whether it is through vaccination or infection. The deaths, damage to health and appalling impact on the NHS are for today’s Conservatives, entirely acceptable. You can be certain that they have not thought through how on earth they are to deliver the increase in boosters or the consequences of diverting NHS resources on other health problems.
Its going to be another grim Christmas and New Year.
‘Fraid so
I may have said this before but the current situation merits it being said again.
In Scotland, the phrase, “He would sell his grannie” is one of the strongest condemnations of a money fixated person. The tories are now proving that they are indeed such people.
I firmly believe that the majority of folk do not share this idea that money is more important than people, especially the most vulnerable.
It’s time the opposition got up off its knees and loudly condemned the tories’ callousness.
We have another popular phrase in Scotland which concisely describes them; “TORY BASTARDS,”
The acceleration of the booster programme is a good idea. About 2 weeks too late, as with everything this government has done. Even before Omicron emerged, we knew that the waning of efficacy of the vaccines was a serious issue for the most vulnerable, but little was done to push the rollout of boosters despite the fact we were seeing around 1,000 deaths per week at the time.
The failure to vaccinate children with the huge amount of safety data available is a shocking failure by government and the JCVI. I’d imagine that the inquiry (when it eventually comes) will be damning on both groups.
Last night’s broadcast was an attempt to be seen to be doing something, without having the balls to do anything like what is required. I expect the lockdown will finally be put into place this weekend, when the data shows things are beginning to get really bad and the halfwits of the CRG will go suitably quiet, though still with nothing learned. By that point we’ll have four-fold the cases (perhaps even more given the Christmas parties and busy pubs) out there spreading the virus around and it won’t take long for the virus to find its way into the more vulnerable population who aren’t able to keep themselves away from danger.
In fact, given the sheer transmissibility of Omicron, I do wonder just how the accelerated vaccine rollout is going to be carried out safely? I got my booster a couple of weeks ago, my wife has hers booked this weekend. Same place, a small pharmacy with chairs dotted around where you sit to wait for your jab and then sit for 5 (or was it 10?) minutes after the jab to check there haven’t been any reactions. Given that most of the public doesn’t realise that the cloth or disposable surgical masks are much use for protecting yourself and half of those aren’t worn correctly either, I can imagine we’ll be seeing some super-spreading events at the vaccination centres!
I’ll recommend to my wife that she waits outside after her jab, even if it is cold and wet. That’s assuming she gets through the week avoiding infection as she teaches classes of unmasked teenagers…
Just leave after you have been jabbed
Don’t drive
Stay nearby in care of reaction. But go outside. I did. It was the safest thing to do.
To repeat a mistake is carelessness. To repeat a mistake twice is incompetence.
To repeat a mistake three times is malevolence.
So as each wave of infection has revealed lack of preparation, a failure to increase capacity in the NHS, to follow WHO guidelines in managing a pandemic, to fail to have an effective test and trace system, to protect adequately the most vulnerable (the latest news is the NHS is clearing its beds back to nursing homes!) the reaction of the government party has been denial, paralysis, and scene shifting.
They were right to gamble on vaccines but they have been wrong in denying vaccines to the rest of the world. This makes more variants inevitable and a deja vu a recurring theme.
Covid has become a good excuse for increased inequality, increasing the power of the executive, reducing scrutiny, diluting the rule of law, and diverting public funds to cronies.
The issue is whether they will get away with it.
The balance of probabilities is they will not.