Every morning I wake to the sound of announcements on the television and from journalists in the print industry, telling us about the reopening of bars and restaurants, workspaces, airline destinations and the shops in an effort to convince the general public that the pandemic is behind us and, with a few caveats, we can resume our lives again. The business leaders and the economists are clearly happy to shake off the cobwebs of 100 days of lockdown, its business as usual and they can get back to making money.
But tucked away on the inside of the newspaper or the second or third lead story on the media news channel are the stories of new Covid 19 outbreaks popping up all over the place and worryingly enforcing the reapplication of lockdown in places which a week or more ago were deemed clear of the virus. Hot spots such as Brazil and the US, India and Africa with higher casualties announced daily and even more pertinent for us, areas and cities in Europe declared clean, are now once again off limits.
Just as we relaxed our wishy wash restriction on what was required of travellers arriving here, we can now, not only once more go overseas but welcome all those people from abroad who can now come here with no health checks and certainly without the pesky delay of having to quarantine for two weeks. How inconvenient was that, to limit the freedom of movement of those much lorded tourists who seem to be the only source of income we have here in the UK.
When it came to the physical health of the people versus the economy (the tourist industry and the airlines) there could be only one winner and it wasn't our health. So until we start dropping like flys and the infection rate goes through the roof, we will be encouraged to believe the worst is over and we should get back to near normal.
It's the deceitfulness of this story peddled by our politicians through our media, particularly the newspaper media, who's emblazoned headlines encourage this belief that we are out of the woods when clearly we are not. The editor plays to our basic desire to have fun, to spend and gavotte on the beaches of Spain and to party nearer home. The facts that this insidious virus is highly transferable even when the carrier has no symptoms making the population at large highly susceptible. Some nations have started to relax their lockdown but only after putting into place a test and trace system which will quickly identify where a fresh outbreak is occurring and who the transmitters are. We in our incompetence have only just started a fledgling test and trace system mostly aimed at testing the people who are coming into contact with patients in hospitals and people at high risk such as the elderly. We are unwrapping a parcel with no idea what's inside and with no adequate plan if and when the contents are seen as extremely harmful.
Our incompetent Prime Minister and his assistants are running a war without understanding the enemy or if they do understand are wilfully encouraging the troops to go over the top and into battle poorly equipped and much in ignorance. History of course tells us we are good at this since in every conflict we expend lives through poor planning and executive incompetence. We always have 'half an eye on the money' with little willingness to face up to the long term consequences that if we don't plan to spend on contingencies we suffer.
PPE was a case in point, the release hospital patients into the Care Homes, the poor advice given the public when the virus was in its early stages, the denials and U turns, the inability to galvanise the manufacture of things we were short of with manufactures waiting for the call back from the ministry which never came.
We like the Americans are handicapped with an electoral system which can be tampered with to produce results which are not in our interests. Boris and Donald, not the brightest pair, are the result of a single slogan electioneering platform, "Make America Great Again" and for Brexit Briton "Take Back Control". Populist sloganeering, high on nationalism but low on detail, they both captivated populations pre-prepped with the propaganda of anti EU and anti China sentiment, It stirred the ashes of discontent of a population who were in the midst of global change and had lost confidence.
The power of the Fourth Estate has never been so damaging. The laws banning too much power held in too few hands, damaging and destroying the balanced reporting necessary to preserve both sides of any political picture were over time dismantled.
The proprietors could now make and break the news according to an agenda, often with mercenary intent, feeding a gullible public with fake news or the vial character assignation of who ever gets in their way.
It's all too easy of course with a public who's gadfly attention span makes them unable to read to the end of this blog, much preferring the lurid headline with little or no reasoned argument to support it.
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