| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:More good news | |
| Posted by: | Robert Fish | |
| Date/Time: | 28/01/21 14:13:00 |
| Kudos to the government for having taken bold and early decisions about vaccine sourcing, and kudos to the NHS for the efficient administration of the vaccination programme. Praise be that the government didn't set up yet another expensive and inefficient outsourced system for this purpose. But the idea that Johnson's administration is no more incompetent than any other European government is ludicrous. The number of deaths per million inhabitants is far higher than in any other major European country. We've now even passed Italy's deaths per capita, despite the fact that they were the first European country to face this disease, before anyone really knew anything about it. Johnson was fatally dilatory in ordering the first lockdown, and then over-eager to lift restrictions. Sunak's Eat Out, Help Out campaign was unbelievably stupid. The outsourced test and trace scheme was, and still is, an utter fiasco. Aside from the incompetence of the tracing efforts, no financial incentive was provided for poor people to remain at home during isolation. When the second wave came, it was clear that Johnson had learned nothing from his mistakes earlier in the year, as he rejected SAGE advice in September to implement a circuit-breaker lockdown. Then came the Christmas farce, and yet another last-minute u-turn. These are just some of the highlights (or rather, lowlights) in a pattern of incompetence. What they all demonstrate is that, despite his whacking majority, Johnson was always looking over his shoulder at the lunatic fringe in his own party, and too weak to give unpalatable news to the public until events overtook him. It's no good apologists for him trying to blame the irresponsibility of members of the public. This was a relatively minor factor which exacerbated the problem of control of the virus, but in any case the mixed messages regarding restrictions and the brazen defence of Cummings's lockdown breach hardly helped. No-one, but no-one, could have handled the campaign against Covid-19 as badly as Johnson. Vaccine procurement is the only argument which can be advanced in his defence. |