A reminder of how this all started
"letting some light into a darkened room"
Johnson, his advisors and the Cabinet, and indeed the Labour Party led by Keir Starmer and Parliament have never 'taken responsibility'.
Johnson is the self styled economic Superman, who publicly rejected all 'medically irrational' response to the Corona Virus, on February 3rd,
"We are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other."
His own words, his own speech.
And a month later, on the morning of March 5th he suggested, with a smirk on his face that revealed the lie, that he had dropped the idea of Herd Immunity, one of the 'theories' which 'had been debated'. Then he says 'I think we need to strike a balance' which does not imply stopping the spread, which is what all the East Asian states had chosen, what New Zealand had chosen, and what others were choosing. What then is the balance between stopping the spread and allowing it to rip through the population - it is trying to manage a slow spread (which was known then to be impossible, and has since been proven three times to be the case, and we are at c.20% of population infected with 80% still at risk.)
transcript :
"Philip Schofield: Is the delay essentially trying to spread this out so it doesn’t all happen at once and overwhelm the NHS, and that you can actually delay it into perhaps the summer when it’s a little bit quieter and the ordinary flu might have died down a wee bit, is that what you’re doing?
Boris Johnson: Well it’s a very, very important question, and that’s where a lot of the debate has been and one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures. I think we need to strike a balance, I think it is very important, we’ve got a fantastic NHS, we will give them all the support that they need, we will make sure that they have all preparations, all the kit that they need for us to get through it. But I think it would be better if we take all the measures that we can now to stop the peak of the disease being as difficult for the NHS as it might be, I think there are things that we may be able to do."
Watch his careful denial.
Following that appearance on morning TV, all his main advisors spoke in the following days about reaching herd immunity - all of them knowing there was no viable vaccine available in any reasonable time horizon, and that Herd Immunity as a concept only applied to a vaccination program, it has no Public Health meaning outside that context- as if it were possible and a in the long term a good thing.
Sir Patrick Valence :13th March
Professor John Edmunds, SAGE : 13th March
SKY NEWS : Explaining Herd Immunity as part of the Government's Strategy.
23rd of March Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Valence cite 'Mathematical Studies' and 'Behavioural Science' as informing Government Policy, with no mention of a Zero Community Transmission Strategy that had been proven in Wuhan, South Korea, Taiwan, SIngapore, Hong Kong and was being proven in New Zealand....
So whilst they claim to have rejected a Herd Immunity strategy, the social material reality is that every single policy position that have taken has been designed to allow slow spread - which is a tacit acceptance of Herd Immunity as a target.
It is impossible to control a slow spread of an infectious aerosol carried disease, and they all knew this all along. any attempt to do so guarantees that there will be surges that demand shutdowns. Opening after shutting down without eliminating community transmission absolutely guarantees that there will be another surge.
The only way to control it is to stop it, to suppress the virus and eliminate community transmission. Then keep in place rapid, efficient locally driven cluster control systems to ensure any new outbreaks are dealt with. it also requires tightly controlled quarantine borders.
These are all relatively simple mechanisms. They make demands of Government to ensure all the people are well informed, never misinformed. They make demands on Government to support all the people through the process, including lockdowns when they have lost control of community transmission.
Evidence of intentionality
The UK Government, the Ruling Faction (that includes all the media, news broadcasters and pundits, the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, the right wing grooming operations) have never adopted a zero community transmission strategy
The Great Barrington Declaration promoters in the UK had a
meeting with Johnson in September, which resulted in delays to closing schools, which led to more spread of the virus. Teachers infections rates were +300% more than their local areas.
The Spectator
publishes a lie - claiming there is no Scientific Consensus, claiming that the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration represent a split in the virology, epidemiology and public health science communities.
An astroturf campaign -
USforTHEM funded by US NeoLiberal think tanks, co-ordinated by Conservative party back benchers, promoting herd immunity and opposing school closures, smaller class sizes and other mitigations of spread whose efforts have fed into Johnsons policy positions.
This is ALL deliberate action - at this level it cannot be described as incompetence.
Billionaires in the UK have made an
extra £25 billion in the past year.
The
Crony Contracts have created many, many newly minted multi millionaires.
one of these politicians is honest, the other is a political grooming gangster - the different outcomes speak volumes.
