A parallel universe

Subject: A parallel universe 

Who writes the script for the journalists,  journalists  who seem to be suppressing their journalistic right  of asking challenging questions. It's as if they have given up trying to be rational with a man who seems to claim that the earth is flat.  Boris Johnson has just appeared before the television cameras to say that his plea for the public to practice social distancing hasn't worked and that he is now providing guide lines as to who and which sections of the public can leave their homes, other than for shopping and must conduct their work from home.

Only key workers such as NHS workers, transport workers, carers  of vulnerable old people, refuse collectors, postmen, delivery drivers and the supermarket shelf packer, generally people who can't work from home. This exclusion leaves a huge swath of people exempt and exposed to not only catching the virus but bringing it home to infect the very people he  insisted should self isolate.
The graph of the rise of the infection in Italy is being replicated here with the same step by step exponential rise which in Italy and now Spain has overwhelmed each country and brought their respective health service's to their knees.
The catastrophe unfurling before our eyes could have been avoided if we had taken note of what was happening in Europe, if the Government had decreed a ban from going out, if we had tested the population for the virus so that we knew who was a carrier and could isolate them before they could infect others. The South Koreans led the way with thousands of their people tested virtually from day one and it worked with the infection rate now in the hundreds not the many thousands as it was at the hight of their epidemic.
We could have chosen to learn from them but we chose not to. We chose  to to ignore the facts on the ground preferring our own facts enunciated each night by the two wise men flanking Boris. According to their modelling the infection rate was best absorbed within the population (the herd effect) and that at worst the majority would only experience a mild infection. The sight of the death toll in Italy and Spain and the incredulous  voices from across Europe and the world at large as to our attitude eventually made Johnson back peddle. Even now he has refused to make the decisions which we see made in Italy, Spain, France and Germany where cities have been placed on lock down.  In London, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool its business as usual for many. The Tube and the buses run as normal, the building sites carry on as usual and that segment of society who can't do their work on a computer from home are left in limbo having to come to work as usual, fearful that if they don't they will lose their job. Heathrow still has flights in and out,  the perfect incubator trailing the virus right into the heart of our major city.
We clearly operate in a parallel universe, the universe according to Boris and the one which is disintegrating not 50 miles away on the continent of Europe.