The U.K now, officially, has over 30,000 people dead as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This puts us 2nd in the entire world for death rate, only being beaten by the calamity that is the United States. It seems in spite of this the Tory government have seen fit to add to their already confusing message about the pandemic response by implying that they plan on announcing an easing of the lockdown restrictions.
This is the latest in a series of poor messaging and bad decisions by the Government, which began with the disastrous “Herd Immunity” strategy, that meant a slow reaction to the virus has ensured a scenario much worse than it needed to be. This is obvious to see when you compare the response even to other capitalist countries such as New Zealand. They had 1,144 confirmed cases of the virus and only 21 deaths. Compare this to the U.K’s 215,000 confirmed cases and 31,587 deaths as of the time of writing. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, had this to say –
“There were some countries who initially talked about herd immunity as a strategy. In New Zealand we never ever considered that as a possibility ever. Herd immunity would have meant tens of thousands of New Zealanders dying and I simply would not tolerate that, and I don’t think any New Zealander would.”
A far cry from Boris Johnsons message during an appearance on This Morning –
“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.”
This one did not age particularly well. The NHS has struggled constantly for PPE and instead of doing everything they can to help, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has behaved terribly. Firstly he suggested that NHS staff were over using PPE and that it should be treated as a “precious resource” and more recently in the house of commons, when confronted by A&E Doctor Rosena Allin-Khan on the governments response he simply responded that she “might do well to take a leaf out of the shadow secretary of state’s book in terms of tone.”
A real class act.
Another facet of the confusing messaging has been the actions of a lot of the mainstream media outlets. At the first hint of a slight relaxing of the lockdown measures many newspapers were running headlines that made it seem like the lockdown is being lifted entirely. Headlines such as –
The Daily Mail – ‘HURRAH! LOCKDOWN FREEDOM BECKONS’
The Sun – ‘HAPPY MONDAY GO OUT AND EXERCISE ALL YOU LIKE’
It should go without saying that lifting the lockdown while so many people are still catching the virus is an awfully bad idea. Understandably people are frustrated and afraid for their financial future, but the answer is not to ease the lockdown. The failing here is on the Government and the lack of support for ordinary workers. Everything announced has been about protecting business owners and landlords in the hopes that they will pass on some good will to the people that they employ or rent from them.
Here in Scotland, where the message has been a clear deviation from England in that the lockdown has been extended another 3 weeks, there has been no talk of easing it until we are out of the woods. It was announced that there will be “a £5,000,000 fund to offer interest free loans to landlords whose tenants are having difficulty paying rent during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.” The idea being that they will not evict tenants if they can cover the rent with this loan. As we have seen so far in this crisis, many landlords simply do not care about the people that rent from them, as many stories have come out of landlords evicting tenants that no longer have the ability to pay rent.
The government has now announced a change in slogan from “Stay Home, Save Lives, Protect the NHS” to “Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives”. A decision rejected by both the Scottish and Welsh devolved governments as it yet again muddy’s the waters and causes confusion, evidenced in all the footage shown on VE day of people having street parties in clear violation of the lockdown order. It is clear that the government has handled the pandemic terribly and are directly responsible for many unnecessary deaths. With social media replete with calls for warlike unity in a time of crisis, we would do well to remember those responsible for the scale of this disaster. They should absolutely be held to account for their actions.
ACU 