Needless to say, the three alert levels have attracted plenty of comment on the social media platforms of choice. The highest level involves working from home, avoiding inessential travel, some help from local authorities and, of course, the miserable successor to dishy Rishi's furlough scheme. Eyebrows were raised when it came to the exceptions: schools, universities, and pubs ... serving food. A curious mix and no mistaking.
The Tory approach to the Coronavirus crisis was characterised at the outset by complacency and then incoherence. Not because they are uniquely incompetent, though Boris Johnson certainly is, but thanks to the contradictory interests pressing in on them. Just because the R number is galloping like an Ascot winner doesn't mean the Tories are about to change tack and, indeed, they have not.
On schools, there is some earnest handwringing about the consequences lockdowns have for pupils. The point about mental health and missing out on learning are well founded and backed by evidence. This begs the question if private schools have mitigated the impacts of closure for their pupils why the government hasn't provided extra resources to facilitate greater coverage of at-home tuition in state schools. Yes, children are largely spared the debilitating consequences of Covid-19, but they're as effective at spreading the disease as any adult. Refusing to countenance the closure of schools leaves a gaping hole in any lockdown. Why the dogmatic insistence, then? A balance of harms in which Covid infection is a lesser evil to the damage done to education? I'm not buying it. Over the summer it was crystal how opening the schools was a necessary step to get workers back into the workplace. In other words, the determination to restore labour discipline was front and centre. The same applies here. Keeping the kids in school even if workers stay off or work from home is vital for a rapid shifting down of restrictions. If children aren't at home, it's easier to get employees back in. Putting it simply, the health of class relations come first.
It's the same when we're looking at the situation in universities. In many places they're driving infections, not because students are irresponsible but thanks to the givernment's stupid decision to kickstart Covid's second wave by compelling a million young people to move around the country into communal residences and badly ventilated classrooms. SAGE advised shifting to online teaching to mitigate infections, but the Tories felt differently. They still feel differently. Again, it's not because they particularly care for students' education or even the health of universities themselves, which they think are manufacturers of anti-Tory voters. It's because of their coalition of voters. Providing accommodation to students is a significant slice of their landlord base, and property speculators aplenty have investments tied up in new halls of residences. The Tories are protecting their constituents. And this applies with the new tier. Not matter what happens, the universities will stay open. The health of rent payments come first.
And then we have the most egregious and transparently favours-rendered aspect of the top tier rules: pubs serving food can remain open as the virus runs rampant. If there are ways of interpreting this other than a thank you to Wetherspoon's Tim Martin, I've yet to see it. Unless a pie with a pint has mysterious anti-covid properties a glass sans accompanying noms lacks. Just prior to the EU referendum, Martin turned his pubs into Tory madrassas for old men. They sat round all day imbibing the rightwing propaganda etched onto the beermats and filling out the company literature, occasionally joined by the old windbag on a tour of his pubs. Martin contibuted to a coherence and firming up of the Tory vote, and allowing his business to carry on operating unhindered is their thank you. Sure, some other pubs are going to benefit, but the stupid food rule is going to drive many others to the wall. The health of close Tory allies come first.
It's frustrating. The politics of the Tories' coronavirus management are there to be seen, called out, and criticised. And yet in Keir Starmer's most forceful intervention yet, he still keeps away from the politics. A so-called circuit break lockdown is sensible, but won't work if it leaves holes-a-gaping on schools, colleges, and universities. And it won't chip away at the Tories unless Labour pushes the envelope and tries steering the politics of the crisis to issues where it's strong: support for beleagured businesses, attacking corruption, properly funding public services, and pushing its post-covid plan. The Tories, after all, are feeling confident enough to encroach on Labour's turf. Time to switch it up or have them switch us off.
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7 comments:
Wouldn't sending the students home be pretty much the worst thing that could be done now?
As they're young they're exceedingly unlikely to become seriously ill with this virus, and so in a few weeks they will have recovered and now have immunity, but if they're sent back they're likely to infect the older members of their families (and other people back in their home towns) who may be seriously at risk themselves.
It would be like sending the elderly Covid patients back to care homes all over again!
I'm not suggesting sending students home now. Truth is they will make their own minds up about that. What am I saying is it's daft to keep the universities open to allow students and staff to mix, sending the rates of infections and with it the casualty count spiralling higher.
"he government's failure is extracting a grim blood price once again."
They are getting away with it, because, as with Brexit, Labour offers no different alternative to the one the government is pursuing! They just say do it harder, faster more competently!
They don't question that the policy itself has failed across the globe, leading to tens of thousands of deaths, without stopping the virus, whilst simultaneously causing economic catastrophe that for millions is much worse than the threat of the virus itself. Labour simply calls for that economic damage to be even greater, by calling for an even more harsh lockdown!
There are currently more people dying from flu than from COVID, far more people dying from cancer despite cancer appointments and treatment being cancelled to make way for COVID, and hospital admissions reduced so that many hospitals are down to around 40% occupancy. Deaths from COVID in Britain currently represent just over 4% of total deaths.
Yet after all this the strategy still isn't protecting those actually at risk from it, the elderly in care homes and hospitals, people are still contracting the virus in hospital having gone in for other reasons, in a repeat of the scandal with MRSA, and so on. Meanwhile, the government and proponents of lockdown want to blame all of this death and destruction on young people who are not at risk from the virus, and who are bearing the brunt of the economic damage done by the lockdown! Damage that labour's policy would simply make worse.
No wonder the Tories are not losing ground to labour.
"Yes, children are largely spared the debilitating consequences of Covid-19, but they're as effective at spreading the disease as any adult."
Which simply illustrated the point that the onus is on those at risk from the virus, i.e.the elderly and immuno-suppressed to be the ones ensuring they isolate themselves from the risk of infection, and that we facilitate them doing that. not that we lock down the rest of society.
We don't say, because a few people have nut allergies everyone must refrain from eating nuts. We allow the vast majority to continue eating nuts safely, whilst we warn those with an allergy to stay away from them, and we facilitate them doing so!
" In many places they're driving infections, not because students are irresponsible but thanks to the givernment's stupid decision to kickstart Covid's second wave by compelling a million young people to move around the country into communal residences and badly ventilated classrooms."
You surely don't really believe that. We've both been University students after all. And, even if University students do spread the virus amongst themselves in class rooms rather than via other activity, so what? The fact remains they are not affected by the virus, and there is absolutely no reason why they should spread it to those who are vulnerable provided sensible measures are put in place. After all Sweden has done precisely that without any lockdown and has one o f the lowest mortality rates anywhere in the world currently, having essentially eliminated any new deaths.
"And then we have the most egregious and transparently favours-rendered aspect of the top tier rules: pubs serving food can remain open as the virus runs rampant. If there are ways of interpreting this other than a thank you to Wetherspoon's Tim Martin, I've yet to see it."
Most of this is crude economic determinism run riot. The real basis of the Tories policy is a recognition that the lockdown is going to crucify the economy to an extent there is no way back, but they have no easy way out, having fuelled the flames of moral panic in the first place.
The fact is wit pubs and restaurants many will go bust, precisely because the new rules mean that their revenues are going to tumble, whilst the government reduces its subsidy for people not to work, and asks the businesses to pay wages to people even when the pub or restaurant can't be open. The reality is many of them will go bust, and its where lots of young people work, and is also why those young people are the ones getting screwed by rising unemployment and falling wages.
" A so-called circuit break lockdown is sensible, but won't work if it leaves holes-a-gaping on schools, colleges, and universities."
That was what was supposed to happen for a couple of weeks back in march. It then last six months during which time instead of reducing infections and deaths they continued to rise into the Summer. It didn't work anywhere it was used, and everywhere as was inevitable, as soon as it was relaxed the virus flared again.
If that experiment failed, everywhere, so miserably when applied for six months, what sane person thinks it would work when applied for three weeks? Einstein said performing the same experiment over and over expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity. As the tens of thousands scientists who have signed the Great Barrington Declaration have shown there is a rational alternative in instead basing yourself on focused protection of the elderly and vulnerable. Practical experiment to test that hypothesis was undertaken in Sweden. It was successful.
When people ignore a successful experiment and continue to argue for one that ha so spectacularly failed, as lockdowns have done, you have to begin to ask for the motivation behind that behaviour.
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