Tories scramble to blame us for their public health disaster

Tory values and criminal negligence are about to unleash a medieval horror show in British hospitals – and they want to blame you.  

The UK government is STILL ignoring many of the successful steps taken by Asian nations to contain Covid-19 but the ongoing and cumulative moral consequences of so doing are to be parked at the door of your personal failings – welcome to Tory Britain.  

In China and Taiwan, strictly enforced lock downs of schools, non-essential workplaces, leisure facilities and eateries were backed up with blanket travel bans. A mandatory home quarantine kept city streets almost utterly deserted, mass testing provided vital data to contain the virus and widespread disinfection operations targeted known hot spots.

By contrast a great many non-essential offices and factories STILL remain open in the UK amid no internal travel restrictions. Testing remains inadequate and NHS staff are having to make their own make-shift protective gear as hospitals face chaos. 

Proper containment measures are now being taken around the world but Britain is still refusing to follow their example. Despite months of lead time and detailed Chinese scientific data – the UK chose not to act and is still indolently avoiding the experience of other nations 

The crass exceptionalism that drove their Brexit delusions is behind the Tory response to Covid-19. We are being dominated and failed once again by a handful of privileged fantasists.         

The situation is deteriorating fast. At time of writing, the UK had 5018 cases and 233 deaths – this disastrous public health failure is the direct result of criminal Tory mismanagement and negligence.

The world was alerted to Covid-19 in mid January. As the seriousness of the situation grew –  the UK’s  ‘action’ has been characterised by shambolic PR announcements and creative inertia.

Government mutterings about a ‘containment phase’ were dutifully relayed by a media cabal seemingly unable to notice that keeping everything open as usual… was the exact opposite of any sane containment effort.

Once the spin about ‘containment’ and ‘mitigation’ became untenable, a ‘herd immunity strategy’ was unveiled to much self-satisfied chortling from right wing newspapers and blogs. The message was clear – the rest of the world was over-reacting but Britain was going to keep calm and carry on.

Government scientific adviser Graham Medley, breezily outlined on Newsnight that the UK’s approach was to allow ‘a controlled epidemic’ of large numbers of people, which would generate ‘herd immunity’. Medley suggested that, ‘ideally’, we might need ‘a nice big epidemic’ among the less vulnerable. 

A (now tactfully hidden) Observer article outlined the costs (thus far) of ignoring the science and best practice modeled by south east Asian nations.

“The first coronavirus cases in Taiwan and Italy came only 10 days apart. On Sunday Taiwan, which has deep cultural and economic ties to China, has recorded just 153 cases and two deaths. Italy has more than 47,000 cases and 4,032 people have died.

Leaders are now taking measures that would have been unthinkable weeks or even days ago, locking down tens of millions of people from Berlin to Madrid and San Francisco and pouring billions into rescue plans. But had they acted a few weeks earlier, they could perhaps have avoided much of the human tragedy and economic catastrophe they now face.”

In Spain and Italy right now – multiple eye witness accounts are emerging from besieged hospitals where ventilators for the elderly are being switched off, so that younger patients might live – those condemned to death are sedated and know nothing of what is happening to them.

These horrific scenes are coming very soon to British hospitals. Given the systemic vulnerability of the NHS to exactly this kind of crisis – every possible effort should have been made to properly contain the spread of this virus but instead we got months of wilful dither and delay.

The lack of ventilators and emergency beds in the UK was explained simply by British Medical Association chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul as  “a result of a decade of under-funding” and that Britain’s “starting position has been far worse than many other European nations”.

Public health is primarily a matter of government policy – not personal responsibility (although that is very important). The official UK response to Covid-19 has eschewed the medical science that might have bruised libertarian sensibilities and business interests . Instead the idea (until very recently) has been to ignore the global scientific community, embrace its own herd immunity ideas, protect business and if some older people have to die then so be it. 

The UK establishment is used to ignoring science and the common good – that’s how the Environment Agency embraces its many friends in the fossil fuel industry.  Implying that this avoidable national pandemic is a consequence of failures in personal responsibility is a classic Tory move which exonerates them and blames the victims. 

Once the bodies are buried and the system returns to full throttle, we must not allow this Conservative government to blame US for its incompetence and callous indifference. This health disaster was avoidable – the Tories are responsible and must be held to account. 

Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.  

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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.     

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