It was meant to be a press conference, but felt more like a hostage video.
Two obviously uncomfortable men, sticking to the (Tory) party line, while also trying to get across – delicately, diplomatically, via carefully crafted sentences slipped in now and then – what they really thought.
Poor Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance.
As that infamous Civil Service tweet said back in May 2020, “Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?”
Of all the wildly irresponsible, dangerous, unacceptable stunts Boris Johnson has pulled in his time in power, this is surely the worst. Ending self isolation and free tests to save his career is nothing short of gross negligence.
Quick reminder: 1 in 20-25 people have Covid in the UK at the moment. Over a thousand people died last week.
The British Medical Association calls the decision, “Premature, incredibly concerning and completely illogical.”
Vaccines are, of course, brilliant – although you can still feel rotten, and pass on the virus, albeit to a lesser degree – but more than 10% of the population haven’t been jabbed. That’s nearly seven million lives at risk.
Even the branding of this cruel disaster is heinous, yet another lie. Boris Johnson is not removing “restrictions” – he is robbing us of safety precautions. These measures were protecting us, and now they’re gone.
The most disadvantaged people in the country, who can’t afford to shell out for tests, or stay off work without isolation or sick pay, will be disproportionately affected, as they always are under this government. Attempting to stop the spread of a virus that has killed nearly six million so far is now, apparently, a luxury.
It’s hard to see how this won’t create even more division in our fractured society, between those who have the money to buy tests and self isolate and those for whom both are simply impossible.
It’s another move which further cements the message Johnson has always sent to those on lower incomes... you don’t matter.
As Zarah Sultana MP commented, “Boris Johnson just said workers should learn from Germany, where they ‘don’t go to work when they’re sick’. The proportion of workers’ salary covered by sick pay is 100% in Germany. It’s just 19% here.”
But at least those struggling families can still go about their lives, albeit while catching and spreading Covid willy nilly, so they’re better off than the clinically vulnerable. For them, Monday’s announcement was a prison sentence.
The other massive issue with Johnson’s reckless statement is that there will always be those who don’t listen to what someone says, they look at what they do. Actions speak louder than words.
And so, as much as the message that the pandemic wasn’t over was repeated, many people will only note that all rules are gone, so it must be fine now, wahey!
And those people, no longer concerned with whether they’re carrying Covid wherever they go, will be everywhere from tomorrow.
Sitting next to you on the bus, or train, in a pub or restaurant, at the cinema, in the supermarket queue.
It’s real-life Russian roulette out there from now on, the Covid Wild West. Best of British luck and all that.
Everyone wants to get back to life being as normal as possible as quickly as possible – it’s been the one thing uniting us since the pandemic began.
Allowing this disease to let rip through our communities undetected is the exact opposite of how we achieve it.
