So Mister Boris Johnston, has the tide turned as you predicted?
On 19th March 2020, just a few days before the British Prime Minster, Boris Johnson, went into self-isolation with Covid-19 symptoms, he declared to the daily televised Downing Street briefing that in 12 weeks “we can turn the tide”. “I am absolutely confident that we can send coronavirus packing,” he said using his best boastful bluster. Well Boris Johnson, twelve weeks have now passed and we can hear the thousands of cans being booted down the road as far as they can be kicked before we hear the truth (sic). So what has happened in the intermittent 12 weeks? Well basically the UK has gone through chaotic turmoil of epic proportions. If it wasn't so very very serious it would the slapstick Great British Farce with a Government led by Billy Bunter, Brian Rix, Sid James and the 'Carry On' team. Ironic that the British Government devoted more eagerness to defend the Prime Minister’s rule-breaking adviser, Dominic Cummings, than it did to safeguarding the lives of the fragile elderly in care homes. Likewise the British people must contemplate the ridiculous situation where pubs, zoos and bookies will be open before many young people get back into the classroom.
It is the sheer numbers of infections and deaths at the peak that have shocked many. Two days before Johnson made his prediction, the UK government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said less than 20,000 deaths would be “a good outcome”.... so what is this outcome?
An upsetting element of the pandemic for epidemiologists is that so much about Covid-19 is still unknown. It is, after all, less than six months old. The embattled World Health Organisation has changed its advice on several occasions recently as more is understood and lessons gained from the global impact. Latterly the WHO has had to clarify that it still doesn’t know how often asymptomatic people pass on the virus, after previously saying it was very rare for this to happen. It’s not known why some people grouped together, such as meat industry workers (for example in Ireland and the US), have become infected at such distended rates while others, such as prisoners also grouped haven’t to the same degree; so far at least. There’s uncertainty over how the virus will react to changes in weather such as the summer or winter variations. Even the symptoms of the virus, previously thought to always include a fever and cough, have confounded previous expectations. We are warned but we don't know how large, or when, a second or third wave of infections will be but we are getting an idea that those deemed as most vulnerable would again be the target. Covid-19 has held a mirror up to our society and made us to look at who really is defenceless, who really does make to society work, or who has literally put their lives on the line while the rest of us were cloistered in our houses.
If all that recent pandemic pain, suffering and economic destruction got us to less than 5% immunity, what will it take to get us to 60% as detailed in the 'herd immunity' modelling? That’s a sobering thought. I really don't think people haven’t quite got that yet. The true figure of infection in the UK is almost certainly “multiples more” than the stated confirmed cases, but it is obscured by the lack of testing and response misdirection postulated by Downing Street.
Amid Covid-19 pandemic uncertainty, two things are very clear. First, the virus is universal and ubiquitous – a threat to all humankind. Second, its impacts are deeply unequal, decisively determined by social class, race, ethnicity, income, nutrition, education, living conditions and geographical location as well as by gender and age.
It follows that the large, unjust societal inequalities found both within and between wealthy and developing countries and ruthlessly exposed by the virus are just as powerfully insurrectionist in nature today. Just as Aristotle first wondered or when Marie-Antoinette told the starving poor to eat cake; or indeed when Boris Johnston eventually blames the science and points his grubby little Trump-like finger at the boffins. Boris Johnston is very quick to shout 'world beating' or 'leaders in the world' but maybe a global depression which Britain is "leading the world". Ironic or what?
The numbers are stark. The road has been difficult and many homes are in mourning for those missing from empty chairs at dinner tables. Twelve weeks ago the seven-day rolling average for daily deaths in the UK was just 21; on the 12 week marker it is 10 times higher. The UK has second highest rate of death in the world. While many countries with below standard and poorly equipped medical facilities have dealt with the virus and, so far at least, held it at bay unlike the UK. At the same time Greece (with a estimated death toll of 183) welcomes sun seeking holidaymakers, the Brits still cannot stay overnight with extended family. While pavement cafe life is alive all over Europe Brits can't even get a coffee to sit down with. What we do know is that the essential workers managed to keep the virus at bay despite the lack of support, political will and physical resources. We stood and applauded for them every week while obnoxious politicos sniggered that 'thinking they were getting away with it' or breaking the rules when it suited. In most cases children haven't even seen grandparents for over 3 months but their parents can go to the bookies, buy self assembled furniture in megastores full of strangers and try on last year's fashion in clothes shops.
Over the last twelve weeks Boris Johnson has experienced Covid-19 at first hand. We actually don't know how many people have died in the UK as result of the virus. We actually don't know whether it was a policy to return older patients from hospitals to care homes without testing. We actually don't know if the science, the politics or the economy sets the agenda. But what we do know is that registered unemployment claims have surged by 70% to more than two million and more job losses are predicted to spiral upwards as the furlough scheme is wound down and jobs evaporate. What we do know is that the British economy will, according to the Bank of England, face the worse recession in 300 years and then the economy will have to deal with the complexities and negativity of Brexit (remember that?). What we actually know is that twelve weeks later, the UK has one of the highest excess death rates in the world. And yes we also know that the NHS has coped: but it’s coped on the back of discharging its patients into care homes; cancelling operations; delaying treatments for cancer and we also know that the austerity that caused chaos in the NHS probably indicates that they will have waiting lists around 10m by wintertime. What we do know is that advanced planning was shambolic, major deficiencies in the stockpile and poor quality testing kits, swabs, ventilators and protective equipment for medical staff marked the opening stanza of the pandemic in the UK. It was a muddled and sometimes unbelievable. The images of the astonishing responses we witnessed daily etched in the sheer panic driven faces of deficient politicians in the daily briefings. One after one offering a cocktail of 'nonsense' slides and manipulated statistics concealing the truth and the reality of situation.
In recent weeks the lock down is being loosened, but fears of a second wave are rife. We have also witnessed the global response to another pandemic; that of racism. Millions have risen in protest to the blatant murder of George Floyd. Change is demanded and inevitable. But I wonder why the people did not also rise about the way in which the global leaders have responded to the viral pandemic and defend who it mostly attacks? Both are ultimately tragic and still working themselves through a ravaged world.
The main elements of political revolutions have not changed much since Aristotle identified them more than 2,300 years ago. Whatever the objective, he wrote in Book V of The Politics, inequality is the chief cause of revolution. Justice and equality are “the fundamental basis of any state”, and inequality, being a kind of injustice, is potent grounds for challenging that state. “The lesser rebel in order to be equal, the equal in order to be greater. These then are conditions predisposing to revolution,” Aristotle declared. So what has happened on the streets of many American and British cities is a scourge on our collective conscious! So what happened in our hospitals and care homes is equally a disgrace! Why did we not rise against the political handling of the virus? Why did we not shout out against the designers of austerity and capitalism? If the two pandemics show us anything it is that change is possible with dynamic responses from the masses. It may seem like pie in the sky. But so too did the idea of millions working from home, and curtailing transport, rail and air travel, schools closing until it happened almost overnight. Whether recognised as such or not, this is a revolutionary manifesto that will demand the utter transformation of current political behaviour, structures and organisation.
A revolutionary programme for the post-pandemic world also includes substantive plans to address inequality, poverty and the global wealth gap. We need more urgent approaches to linked climate, energy, water and the mass extinction crises and, for example, the adoption of so-called doughnut economics that measures prosperity by counting shared social, health and environmental benefits, not GDP growth.
In Europe, centralised, top-down misdirection of the pandemic has created a crisis of representative governance fueled by exceptionalism. The utter chaos of the Trump administration continues in free-fall and bringing the disunity to the United States in its wake. Also the authoritarian oligarchies such as China, Russia, Hungary and Brazil, weaned on totalitarianism, continue on their boastful, authoritarian path to inevitable further political change. The world is in crisis and only root and branch change can make it better.
An awful lot rests on how the pandemic and the Black Lives Matters campaign continue to generate global shock waves and how the eventual after-effects are directed and shaped that will form the new world order that will surely come. I, for one, can't wait!
That's what I think....Let me know what do you think?