The Tories say that they hope to have eradicated COVID by Christmas. There is no chance, any more than there is a chance they were going to get Brexit done. Its not, because, as Labour, opportunistically, claims, the Tories are incompetent, though they are also that, but because neither of the promises are achievable, however competent a government. Brexit can't be done, because a No Deal Brexit will be so disastrous for the economy - an economy they have already wrecked by their idiotic lockdown - that it would rend the government asunder, leading to its rapid demise. And, to avoid that, the only possible deal with the EU is one that amounts to Brexit in Name Only, or else means the government will have to extend the current transition period. It can't similarly eradicate COVID, because the virus is now with us for good, and the measures it proposes will not change that, or even reduce its transmission in the population.
The only way that the government could push through a No Deal Brexit, given the chaos and catastrophe it would cause, is if they were prepared to implement martial law to beat down the widespread opposition it would engender. No doubt, as with Donald Trump's use of the National Guard, to go into different areas of America to batter down Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, or to use the armed right-wing militia, like the Proud Boys, to achieve that end, there are some in the government, who share his authoritarian, Bonapartist tendencies, and willingness to adopt the same approach here. There would no doubt be some amongst the British, nationalist right paramilitaries prepared to "Stand By", to ensure that Brexit was implemented, no matter how much damage it did. And, after all, Johnson now has support for Brexit from his political hod carrier, Keir Starmer, who has become a bigger Brexiter than Corbyn, and has backed Johnson on all of his policies, helping him defeat opposition on his own government benches, whilst only pleading with him to go even further, to get Brexit done even faster, to remove civil liberties on an even larger scale.
And, Starmer is not alone in that. Whole sections of the Left have adopted a similar position. This is a Left, which, today, has completely lost the ability to think critically for itself. Instead of analysing reality and developing a political strategy based upon it, and the interests of the working-class, it simply allows our enemies to determine our policies, by placing a plus sign wherever they place a minus sign. If you want to know the position of most of the Left on any issue, simply look at what Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Melanie Phillips, or others of that ilk, have to say, and the position of the Left will be whatever is diametrically opposite it, however, ill founded, or ill-considered, that might be. Of course, what it does for them is to get them more Twitter followers from amongst the ranks of that particular tribe, whilst taking forward the position of the working class not one jot. When, early on, Johnson changed tack, and introduced lockdowns as that Left had demanded, it completely undermined their positions, leaving them only the option of criticising him for not imposing them sooner, harder, long, more vigorously.
So, if you are Johnson, or someone even more rabidly authoritarian in the Tory Party, why wouldn't you think that you could get away with imposing martial law, in the event of a catastrophe following Brexit? Well, because the Left today really only tweets to itself. Millions of young people on estates across the country, ignore what it has said about abiding by the Tories idiotic lockdown. Its from the ordinary working-class communities that opposition to martial law would come, as they swept aside a moribund, dead-headed Left that has become decrepit and ossified.
And, the fact is that the Tories - indeed any government - cannot eradicate COVID19. Coronaviruses have been around for a very long time, and they circulate in populations all the time, causing colds, etc. COVID19 is not like Ebola, which, whilst being extremely lethal, killing 90% of those it infects, but which, for the same reason, did not spread widely. COVID19 kills probably only around 0.05% of those it infects, less than for flu. For most of the population, those under 60, indeed, the flu kills far more people. For 80% of people, COVID produces no symptoms, or only mild symptoms, and, for that very reason, around 80-90% of people infected with it, are never detected, and they continue to spread it to others. The idea, therefore, that the virus could be eradicated by Test and Trace schemes is a non-starter.
Similarly, its not the incompetence of the government that is responsible for its idiotic lockdowns failing. Wherever lockdowns have been implemented, across the globe, they have failed. As was inevitable, as soon as the lockdown is relaxed, the virus simply flares up again amongst populations where no immunity has been established, and where, indeed, the lockdown itself prevented the safe development of immunity that could have been achieved by simply isolating the 20% of the population actually at risk from it.
Proponents of lockdown continue to defend their miserably failed policy by saying that this alternative strategy could not work, because its not possible to identify who is actually at risk. Nonsense. We know almost exactly who is at risk. It is primarily those aged over 60, and secondly anyone who has a medical condition that compromises their immune system. All that needed by done was to say everyone who is or has someone aged over 60 in their household should self isolate immediately. That is what I have been doing voluntarily since March. It doesn't require any great sacrifice.
All that is required is that the government ensure that any workers in that position be entitled to full pay while they are isolating; it requires that the government ensures that such households can get their shopping delivered to their door and so on; it requires that any such households that require outside care receive it safely, by the outside carers being provided with adequate PPE, and proper contact protocols established to prevent any possibility of contagion; the same precautions should, from the start, have existed in hospitals and care homes, but instead those institutions became the biggest killers of people from COVID in the country.
Nor, as Johnson claims, does such isolation mean that those involved have to stay in the house. Every day I go out to walk the dog, to run and so on. It only requires that I stay away from any close contact with other people. This is not at all difficult, other than in the minds of those who want to cling to their failed lockdown strategy. Had that been done from March, the vast majority of the 42,000 people who have died from COVID - nearly all of whom are people over 60 - could have avoided being infected, and saved from dying. As for those in the other at risk category, those with underlying conditions, why is it, supposedly, difficult to identify them? All of these people are known on NHS and GP databases; they are contacted each year to get a free flu jab, and so on. So, why could that not be used to contact them and tell them to isolate. Indeed, why could not anyone who feels they are in such an at risk category be able to simply self-identify, and go to a government website to so register?
That is the only way that the virus can, in fact, be defeated, by isolating those at risk, and enabling the rest of the population to safely develop herd immunity so that the spread of the virus can be stopped. As has been identified in the Great Barrington Declaration, and also in the recent study by the team at Edinburgh University.
Today, the government will announce a further raft of measures that will be short of another full lockdown, because it already knows that another full lockdown is an admission of failure, will not work, and will simply provoke a rapid backlash. The result will be that, as with the local measures put in place, it will be piecemeal, confusing, discriminatory and itself provoke a backlash. That is already being seen with Northern Mayors and Council Leaders complaining, rightly, about how their areas are being treated, and their local economies, once again, being devastated by Tory policies. Of course, Labour politicians, in those areas, are in a weak position to complain, because their national leaders are backing Johnson to the hilt, and acting as cheerleaders, egging him on to even greater stupidities.
The next set of proposals will be even more confusing than all the others currently in place, and, as a result, will be ignored even more and rebelled against as particularly young people, in the run up to Halloween, Bonfire Night, and the Festive Season, simply organise their own gatherings, ignoring the rapidly closing down pubs and other venues, and fuelled by lots of cheap booze from the supermarket alongside other substances.
There will be no end to COVID by Christmas just as there will be no Brexit, other than in name only. The idea that the virus is just going to disappear, as it continues to flare up around the globe, because other governments have followed a similar idiotic strategy of lockdowns, and test and trace, rather than herd immunity, is ridiculous. Its like expecting that the common cold, also caused by coronavirus, is going to disappear. But, the Tories know that, and they don't really believe it themselves. They say it because they can't drop their current strategy without admitting it was wrong from day one; they say it, because they have no real alternative solution to herd immunity, and because, as the lockdown has tanked the economy, they have to try to maintain "animal spirits" to keep people spending, even if that means going into further unsustainable debt, in the hope that something might turn up, rather like Mr. Micawber.
This is not going to be a Christmas story that all turns out well in the end, like Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Its more like "Great Expectations", and they were dashed.
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