.
When Laura Kuenssberg reported the abrupt volte-face by the UK about Covid-19 by saying ‘the science has changed’… she was aiding a cover up.
The government had changed its position – but not in response to any global shift of opinion. It was a panicked Road to Damascus re-conversion to the WHO guidelines that other nations were already following .
The government had gone and fallen off its scientific ass. Laura Kuenssberg helped to gloss over how the UK had dumped its in-house faux-scientific notions and crawled back inside the tent of mainstream medical practice.
Happily, I don’t work for the BBC so I am free to try and shatter the tactical silence of media shills like Kuenssberg.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines on pandemics reference international health care professionals and contain protocols for containment, mass testing, contact tracing, PPE standards and disinfection procedures.
China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore deployed these protocols to very good effect (though China initially delayed).
By contrast the UK downplayed the seriousness of Covid-19 and developed its own strategy.
Eight assurances were issued by the UK during January through to March that coronavirus posed a “very low” or “low” risk. Cabinet ministers promised on at least 16 occasions that the NHS was “well prepared” : these statements were delusional foolishness.
These odd pronouncements flowed from Tory ideological bias against state intervention and financial vested interest. Boris Johnson’s licentious libertarianism couldn’t form a health policy alone, but the Tories had already found some experts to chime with their prejudices.
The government sidelined medical professionals in the formation of its scientific theories about pandemic management:
“According to Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet, the dominant voices in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage)…were mathematical modellers and behavioural scientists.
“There is evidence on modelling and on behavioural science, but I don’t see the evidence from the public health community or from the clinical community,” he explained.
Another bout of jingoistic exceptionalism had been birthed as Brexit Britain was prepared to go it alone and embrace ‘herd immunity’.
Government scientific adviser Graham Medley, confirmed on Newsnight that the UK wanted ‘a controlled epidemic’ to generate ‘herd immunity’.
Dr Davis Halpern, also part of the Sage group said:
“There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows as it will do, where you want to cocoon, to protect those at-risk groups so they don’t catch the disease. By the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity has been achieved in the rest of the population.”
The ‘controlled epidemic’ idea kept UK schools, pubs, workplaces, public transport and sporting events open while other nations locked down. Now, faced with a biblical public health disaster, the Tories are keen to imply that they ‘followed the science’ all along – but this is a lie.
In truth they spent crucial months after the Chinese outbreak following a bespoke and ideologically driven policy. As a result the UK now has a wholly preventable pandemic and its ongoing response is characterised by confusion and chaos as it tries to adjust on the fly to the tsunami it has invoked.
There is chaos about:
- Testing
- Oxygen
- Ventilators
- PPE equipment
- ICU beds
and NHS staff have been warned to stay silent.
Yesterday Matt Hancock announced (fanciful?) targets for testing and new ‘guidance’ on PPE. These plans needed to be in place to prevent a pandemic – not made up on the hoof as events spiral out of control.
People in the UK are now dying in their thousands from Covid-19 – including health care professionals bereft of proper PPE.
The UK has reported 684 deaths today with no end in sight; South Korea has seen 174 deaths in total.
China – the nation with no lead time at all – will soon have less deaths than the UK. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have suffered just 5 deaths each.
Public health policy must be correct or people die.
Operation Cygnus revealed in 2016 that the NHS was in no shape to deal with a pandemic: the Tories did nothing.
The Tories have chosen economic expediency and ideological dogma as the pivots of health policy for a decade. As a result the UK is reaping the bitterest of harvests as an underfunded and unprepared NHS is swamped by a wholly preventable pandemic.
Boris Johnson is apparently self isolating. From his hideaway he leads applause for nurses and for his government which he says is doing “absolutely brilliantly well in delaying the spread of the virus.”
This is typical of the mendacity and delusional state of this conservative government: a shambles of which Johnson is the exemplar. The UK is not doing “absolutely brilliantly well” in dealing with Covid-19. The Tories are in fact delivering a fatally dysfunctional response: one driven by hubristic dogma and venal self interest.
The Tories must not be allowed to hide behind the BBC and the right wing press. Their failures are going to result in tens of thousands of needless deaths and will savage the economy.
That is the truth that must be spoken.
If we let them get away with this, heaven knows what a mess they are going to make of much bigger threats like climate change and biodiversity loss.
The other horses of the apocalypse won’t kneel before Tory dogma either. Reality is like that.
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.
If you found this article useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
I am frankly appalled about leaders who cannot lead. If they know they are putting people lives at risk without a care in the world we will inevitably stop believing in their made -up plans on the back of a cigarette packet.Start being real Leaders people we loved whole-heartedly who are able to see what is happening on the ground & that isn’t Boris Johnson.