“”The harder the lockdown the faster it passes, the UK gov have been lax and incompetent, perhaps intentionally (i.e. they are murderers), so it'll last longer and cost more lives and to the economy . . . whether you voted for a smart *rse latin talking chimp who is absolutely incapable of dealing with this (or any other) issue, only you will know . . . if you did . . . chapeau . . . you get what you asked for . . .“”
extraordinary rant!
its doubtful any government could have done much better than this given the lack of readiness that ALL governments are guilty of. We do largely get the politicians we deserve as those who speak bluntly with hard truths don’t get elected.
warnings of such virus’s have been made and talked about for decades in the scientific community but nobody in power ( or the public at large)took any notice.
In particular , our insistence on travelling anywhere without taking the blindest bit of notice about its effects or potential to spread such a virus has been a major factor .
there were major international protocols agreed in 2008 following SARS to cope with this but governments throughout the world threw the rule book out of the window , probably out of a mixture of panic ( helped along as ever by sensationalist press, uncontrolled crap on social media and a largely scientifically uneducated population) and unpreparedness as soon as a real pandemic hit.
In the U.K. , in particular, we have happily moved our manufacturing base abroad ( hence a lack of PPE and chemicals available for testing kits easily to hand) but we have an amazing health system so it’s not surprising the government prioritised that, especially after seeing Italy’s very modern system on the brink of collapse.
As for the issue in this thread, it raises many questions so we’ll have to wait for the detail but it’s possible that it helps to prevent ‘re-seeding’ the virus. It is also possible the government sees it as a way of permanently cutting aviation to meet climate targets - something which is pointless of course if it’s not done internationally. It certainly will help wipe out a large part of the aviation industry if it’s not financially mitigated against.
At the end of this there will either be a vaccine, medicines to mitigate the virus’s effects or enough herd immunity so that the virus becomes just another disease that we routinely accept kills several thousand older people each year, as in flu, until the next one comes along.
Theres no way aviation can carry on as it was before this as it plays a critical part in spreading such diseases so probably health checks, temp scans etc etc will be with us permanently, as in the security procedures after 9/11 and perhaps a permanent reduction in flying may not be a bad thing from an environmental impact point of view. ( separate debate)
The answer should be to protect the most vulnerable and get the rest back into work but as a politician you then have to tell over 70’s ( for example) to stay indoors and then answer the people who lose somebody younger so back to the top, there’s no point in ranting and criticising everything the government dies as none of us could do any better given our political system
Read a book ... ‘ how contagion works’. By Paulo Giordini - it helps explain the conundrum we’re in