I think Boris Johnson has an Etch-a-Sketch brain. Any experience, plan, or information he gets can be erased with a shake of his head. It would certainly explain the hair. It would also explain why he keeps making the same mistakes in regards to the Pandemic.
Covid was first detected in China in December 2019 (officially, at least). First cases in Britain in January 31st. The number of cases grew slowly at first, then exponentially, as these things do. We saw how quickly Italy fell to the disease, but Boris didn’t take it as a warning. When the UK finally locked down March 23, 2020, it was about 3 weeks too late, and led to a 3 month lockdown.
Numbers started growing again in late August, 2020. By September, experts were calling for a 2 week lockdown to stop the spread; a Circuit Breaker lockdown. Boris delayed the decision, took a wait and see attitude, and eventually locked down in November for 4 months, which was too little, too late. December brought varying regional restrictions. We saw in the New Year with another lockdown, for 4 months.
When the extra-contagious Delta Variant emerged, it took the Government 3 weeks to shut down flights from India. Meanwhile, extra flights were put on to get all the Brits home with whatever bug they happened to have on them.
Now here we are, October 2020. New cases, which were high but stable at 30-35000 per day, have shot up to 50,000 per day. At the moment, there are no restrictions on the public. Mandatory Masks and Social-distancing, limits on group size, vaccine passports; those are all Plan B, which Bojo will implement ‘when the time is right’.
New Cases, Hospital admissions and deaths are all rising. Slowly right now, but I think we’ve all learned something about exponential growth since this mess began. It’s slowly at first, and then it spikes. I don’t understand why BoJo has not implemented Plan B. Telling people to wear masks and social distance costs him nothing, and they allow the day-to-day to continue as normal. Keep Calm and Carry On.
The hesitation over small restrictions means bigger restrictions are now under discussion, like a return to the rule of 6, and a ban on mixing households. The word ‘Lockdown’ looms large over all the discussions. Boris is relying heavily, solely, on the Vaccination program to see us through without restrictions. It’s a terrible gamble to take. All it takes is the emergence of a vaccine resistant variant and we all lose. The higher the rate of transmission, the more likely a new variant becomes.
I don’t understand Boris’s binary attitude. It’s not Masks or Vaxx, it’s Masks and Vaxx. Take all the precautions we can, we don’t have to choose. Instead he is blaming people for not getting vaccine boosters quickly enough. My second dose was May 26. I can’t get my booster until December. NHS rules.
We’ve been here before. Boris will eventually implement Plan B. It will be about a month too late and have little affect. He has gone from stating there will be no lockdown, to saying all measures are under consideration. He likes having things ‘under consideration’. That way he can voice all the arguments without having to take a firm stand on any of them. He also likes advising and suggesting measures, leaving it to the people to decide. That way he can take credit for the advice if people follow it and it works, but can avoid blame if people ignore him or it doesn’t work.
I have to wonder if Boris Johnson really wants a career in politics. It seems like making decisions is not his thing. Learning from past experience is definitely beyond him.
So That Happened 