Monday 11 September 2023

Seconds Out, Round Two

Here we go again, Covid has decided to pay a visit. My symptoms started off relatively mild - running nose, head ache, trouble sleeping, slightly feverish. The latter wasn't particularly pleasant during the last few days of hot weather. But this morning it went up a gear with new symptoms - extreme fatigue (it's taken two hours to write this!) and vomiting followed by passing out. Do not recommend!

It didn't have to be like this. Covid presented an opportunity for modernising Britain's building stock, with government stepping in to offer grants/funding for fitting air filtration systems, making our infrastructure future pandemic ready and a mitigator of other respiratory illnesses. The government didn't have to switch from a vaccine-only strategy to no strategy whatsoever. Test and trace needn't have been scrapped, and protections for workers with Covid didn't need abandoning. None of this would have stopped the circulation of the new variant, but it would have lessened the rate of infection, spared the infected the inconvenience and worry about whether their symptoms will be seriously debilitating. The Tories should be condemned for this, as should the Labour front bench who carry on as if Covid isn't an ever-present health emergency.

The new variant has forced the government's hand and they are having to abandon the do-nothing strategy, but predictably their proposals are limited and do not meet the scale of the challenge. Sadly, it's not likely the Tories and Labour will ever be held to account for their responses to the pandemic. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak may have mismanaged the pandemic and caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and millions of needless infections, but as far as the politics go it's been a master class in disaster management.

4 comments:

David Parry said...

2 hours to write 3 brief paragraphs?!

Man, that's rough!

Here's hoping you get well soon.

JJ said...

I am sorry to hear that, Phil. I hope you get better soon.

I've just been down with it for a torrid week and a half, then ongoing fatigue and heavy sweating. It is really unpleasant, and I've heard of others having it, so there seems to be another wave hitting and our rulers seem content to ignore it: surely a competent government would react to this kind of event?

Phil said...

You would think, but the very limited measures they're reintroducing is very much dictated by their politics of pandemic management. I.e. Don't do too much otherwise people might start expecting things.

Mark James said...

Hope you are getting better Phil. I caught my COVID ( it’s over now) at Bramall Lane watching the mighty Blades ( Sheffield. Utd ) against Manchester City!