Virus Rampant - Tories Clueless

Whatever the protestations, and however creative the spin, the inescapable impression given by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his cronies is that they have been, and remain, significantly behind the curve in their reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic. They locked down too late last March, and again in November. Now they are about to lock down too late in the New Year.

All together now: You Don't Know What You're Doing

And at every turn, the paucity of intellectual heft and basic competence is cruelly exposed by the presence of a highly contagious, and indeed, deadly, virus. Whether it is Priti Patel, inexplicably made Home Secretary, lying shamelessly that the Government is ahead of events, or Education Secretary Gavin “Stupid Boy” Williamson forced into a U-Turn on school reopening, the impression of ineptitude is inescapable.

The scale at which Covid-19 has been multiplying through the population has been known about since before the last pseudo-lockdown ended last month. Last week, Lewis Goodall of BBC Newsnight told of “Another member of staff from a London hospital: ‘Things are a mess. Treatment in ambulances, oxygen ran out the other day. It’s horrid. The whole hospital is full of Covid. This is worse than the 1st wave and is going to get worse because the public don’t realise how bad it is’” [Thread HERE]. That was not the only warning.

Look Uncle Arthur, I'm on telly again!

Julia Patterson, CEO of Every Doctor UK, added “from the Royal London Hospital, this email from management … ‘We are now in disaster medicine mode. We are no longer providing high standard critical care, because we cannot’”. And it got worse.

Deepti Gurdasani, epidemiology lecturer at London’s Queen Mary University, warned “we have a very narrow window to act in the UK. If we don't act now, it's likely the window for containing COVID-19 will pass - not just for the UK but globally” [Thread HERE].

As for the hapless Williamson, the Evening Standard reported that he “has said he is confident schools will return in line with the new staggered timetable he has announced … The majority of primary school children will resume lessons as originally scheduled on January 4”. They won’t. Not now. It’s officially January 18. And unofficially, whisper it quietly, it’s February half term. It will most likely be the same for secondary schools.

Worst of all, the programme of vaccination is beginning to descend into chaos. First of all, those given the Pfizer-BioNTech jab were to be given a second dose three weeks after their first. Then their second appointments were to be cancelled, so that more could be given a first jab. But the recommendation from Pfizer-BioNTech is to stick to the three week gap. Then came a frankly staggering revelation has come from the Guardian.

Nadhim Zahawi: said to be organising the vaccination programme

This tells “the Green Book, which is the NHS handbook for staff on how to use vaccinations, has already been updated to say that if none of the first vaccine a person was given is available, they could be given a dose of the other … It says: ‘For individuals who started the schedule and who attend for vaccination at a site where the same vaccine is not available, or if the first product received is unknown, it is reasonable to offer one dose of the locally available product to complete the schedule’”.

But the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines work very differently. All of which points to one grim conclusion: our Government hasn’t got a Scooby Doo.

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