As far as this government is concerned this isn't a health crisis. It's a financial opportunity. Mos tof them have already made money during this, from their portfolio's and investment funds. In response to the lockdown, we got a financial services advert. Corona virus is met with "attractive" rates of lending and interest. This is the only language they speak. Like they were hawking ISA's and mortgages. Short change for a life.
Locally there's a thing going round. Part of the plans to hold a virtual summer fete (for city dwellers a fete is where local people in villages commune with the spirits of rain and ice cream vans). So outside the odd house there eerie effigies, sometimes with (for reasons I cannot fathom) tins (presumably empty, or otherwise some kind of offering to the aforementioned gods) of Thatcher's cider tucked inside. Like a desperate alcoholics version of Santa Claus. It's like some witch doctor covid related ceremony is taking place. The world is growing ever stranger.
So that was social distancing. Remember that? Remember how we all nervously played Tesco Tetris? How we all stood behind each other impatiently waiting for our turn on the veg aisle? Remember how we inched past each other like we were afraid to come into contact with anyone or anything. Nervously smiling at the toxic insanity of it all. Yes, those were simpler and more horrific times. Well we can bid them goodbye as the whiff whaff overlord has allowed "1 meter plus" as the new normal.
This isn't social distancing. It's just social; it's how people behave normally. With the pubs and restaurants being allowed to open in a couple of weeks it will all be completely ignored. Do you really think landlords are going to police social distancing amongst their regulars? People already stupid enough to drink and drive (if the car park of my lcoal is any indicator) aren't going to behave responsibly. Besides the landlord and bar staff will be ensconced in their perspex panic booths, dispensing drinks and washing the shit out of pots and pans. I predict a rise in the sale of pub cleaning products. Someone's going to make a killing!
Will this lead to a second wave? If anything could, it's the great British public piling into pubs and beer gardens for the remainder of the Summer - and they will. So I guess this is as severe a test as anything else. The alternative is that this will just become so much background noise to which people will become gruesomely accustomed. People will die and no one will care even though all it will take is a lack of vigilance (stay alert!) and corona comeback!
It's pretty clear that the scientists aren't really on board with this. But who cares what experts think anyway. Dominic Cummings will just replace those that aren't on message. I think the taste of beer is going to override what stuffy old science boffins say, right?
It's not really rocket science to draw a reasonable correlation between easing lockdown and rising infections. The real problem is the delay between. For cases to be confirmed and thus reported will take a couple of weeks at least. Not helped by the shambolic tracing that's in operation. We still do not have this sorted out. I despair of this. By the time they get their act together, and they won't, it is going to be too late to be useful. But all track and trace turned out to be was an opportunity for cronyism. I suppose we can all be grateful that at least Grayling wasn't in charge of handing out contracts. He'd have given it to a corrupt diamond mine or something (Arron Banks?)
So, in short, we are in limbo right now. We do not know what will happen, if it's happening, or already happened. By the time we do, it'll be too late. Like an alien invasion!
Class War
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