Who doesn’t love a good scandal? And Britain’s rich in them right now. They’re buzzing like flies around the rumpled head of our prime minister. We have so many that–metaphor switch here–it’s like standing in front of a dessert buffet with a too-small appetite and a too-small plate.
To translate that, I can’t cover them all, so let’s focus on the Covid-related one: Before the third lockdown, Boris Johnson allegedly said, “No more fucking lockdowns. Let bodies pile high in their thousands.”
Allegedly? Well, yes. The source of the quote is, so far, unnamed, and Johnson denies having said it before changing the subject, but it’s being taken seriously and the subject doesn’t stay changed for long.
You can probably guess, even without following British politics closely, that letting the bodies pile up isn’t a popular stance.
I’m sure someone in government is looking for the source of the quote even as I type. Back in October, someone leaked government plans for a lockdown and an inquiry was ordered so that blame could land somewhere. To date, the culprit remains unnamed. More recently, families of people who died of Covid have been calling for an inquiry into the pandemic’s mishandling and the government’s said it doesn’t have time for that sort of hindsight. Haven’t these families noticed that we’re still in a crisis?
However, there is time for an inquiry into top civil servants taking outside jobs that may be conflicts of interest. There’s also time for an inquiry into who leaked text messages between Johnson and a businessman in which Johnson promised to change some tax rules the businessman had complained about. There won’t–if Johnson & Co. can help it–be an inquiry into the exchange of messages itself.
After all, there’s only so much time a government can devote to inquiries.
Sorry to have passed up the other scandals. They look delicious, but it’s not nice to be greedy.
Yeah, but what are we doing about Covid?
A taskforce–we’re still in Britain in case you folded your map away–has been told to find two new drugs that will stop mild Covid from progressing to severe Covid. If that makes it sound like someone’s misplaced the drugs and they’d show up if you’d just move the couch away from the wall for me, please–well, that’s probably not what they have in mind.
You can shove the couch back in, thanks. It hides the dust.
The drugs they’re looking for have to be something people can take at home instead of in the hospital, and they have to come in either tablet or capsule form.
What’s the difference between a tablet and a capsule? Does it matter? They’re both pills. If you’ll just shut up and swallow one, by tomorrow you won’t remember which it was.
When he announced the task force, Johnson said experts expect another wave of Covid later in the year. In spite of which, and in spite of the possibility that the pills dropped into the heating ducts and won’t be found until years from now when the whole system’s torn out and replaced, no one’s adjusting the steps toward easing the country out of lockdown. The economy must be revived. Let the bodies–
No, he’s not going to repeat that particular quote. And I hope we’re not in that dire a position this time around. Almost 47 million people have had at least one dose of a vaccine. That’s out of a population of almost 67 million. In precise percentages, that’s a lot of people. But it’s not a suit of armor. If another pandemic wave comes, it does no good to tell the newly bereaved, “Well, nowhere near as many people died this time around.”
How likely is the taskforce to succeed? I don’t know, but I do know that it isn’t the world’s only group working on the problem. With luck, someone will get there, and whoever shows up first–and second and forty-eighth–I’m prepared to applaud.
*
So how vulnerable is the country?
Professor Adam Finn, of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, expects a third wave this summer. He considers the country vulnerable and says the dates for easing lockdown may need adjusting.
Britain’s vulnerabilities include new Covid variants, the still-large number of unvaccinated people, and the inevitable breakthrough cases among the vaccinated. The number of deaths expected in that wave vary from 30,000 to 100,000, depending on what software the statisticians rely on. The time when the wave’s most likely to hit also varies. What does seem to be solid is that another wave will come.
You remember that Greek myth about Orpheus going down to the underworld to bring his love Euridice back to the land of the living? He’s told not to look back at her until they’re above ground, and he doesn’t until he comes into the sunligh. Then he looks back, but she’s still in the shadow of the underworld and, damn, you blew it, Orph, so back she goes, yelling, “You damn fool, you never did think of anyone but yourself,” the whole way down.
We need to think about that tale as countries emerge from the underworld. Don’t let yourself believe you’ve solved the problem just because you feel the sunlight on your own silly skin.
*
That noted non-scientist our prime minister, however, says there’s nothing in the data to show that everything can’t go ahead exactly as planned.
And meanwhile–
A nurse in Manchester, Karen Reissman, was fined £10,000 for protesting the 1% raise that the government saw fit to give the nurses it spent months applauding. She’d handed in a risk assessment for the protest, but the Manchester police decided the rally was breaking Covid rules anyway.
“Somebody calculated that if I used my 1% rise, it would take me 56 years to pay the fine off,” Reissman said.
Believe me, the fine will be appealed.
I’m just hoping that this time all the scandal just might take the (alleged) corrupt shpe-shifter out. The downside of that is we’ll probably end up with that reptile Gove as PM.
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You have to wonder what comes next. Gove? Rees-gasp-Mogg?
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Doesn’t bear thinking about.
I think Rees-Smug is down for Governor of Carthage or Mesopotamia or some such, though.
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It doesn’t. The impulse to hit the man is so-o-o strong, I don’t think I’d survive the nightly news.
Okay, I don’t usually watch the nightly news. But still, sometimes is entirely too often. And then there’s the radio. That bored voice.
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No. I’d have to do something I’d regret.
Or regret a bit, anyway.
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Ah, yes, those mixed feelings …
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What a dork B.J. is.
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He is. I’d be happy to see it all catch up with him, although I shudder to think what we’d get next.
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You never know. The worst may be yet to come.
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I would never rule that out.
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Me neither.
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Johnson must be teflon coated, any other PM would have been ousted by now. What a sh*t show.
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I guess that’s the advantage of running as a known liar. It takes a lot to shake your image.
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Ellen, you can’t make this stuff up! (shakes head). Scandals, inquiries—it’s crazy making. Only you could make reading it easier. Push the couch back and hide the dust. Getting my second Pfizer vaccine shot this Friday. Protected, then? Who knows what virus variant lurks around the corner! 😷😳🤨 Christine
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Second vaccination? Yay! I got mine last Saturday. It’s not 100% protection, and I have to keep reminding myself of that, but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.
You’re right, I couldn’t make this stuff. It’s too over the top.
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Great—85-95% is good enough protection. Breakthrough cases are a small number. I can’t even listen to the news—if it bleeds it leads. Reading online news is all I can take! 🤨
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You’re right about the small number of breakthrough cases. As a society, it’s reassuring. As an individual, I do still worry, although nowhere near as much as I did before I got vaccinated.
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Ellen, get it set in your mind there are germs—waiting—everywhere. Don’t get paranoid. Just don’t give them a chance to do their dirty work. 😷🎶🤨
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Good advice. Thanks.
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😷🎶😎
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Dr Johnson (as far as I know no relation to the PM) said there was no deciding the point of precedence between a flea and a louse. Johnson, Gove and the rest of the crew. But aren’t you being a bit unkind to reptiles?
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Okay, I confess, I don’t know a lot about reptiles, so it’s entirely possible.
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Maybe Mr. Johnson should stop talking.
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It’s not in his nature, I think.
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Our former president is in exile in Fla but his minions in Congress keep on being dangerous / crazy ? vile? All of the above
Compared to “let them die by the thousands” “Let them eat cake” sounds quite innocuous. But equally clueless. “It all depends on whose ox is being gored.”
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The odd thing about a pandemic is that everyone is the ox. Some people far more so, of course. I keep seeing articles on the many ways the pandemic hits the poor hardest, and people in prison, and in care homes, and shift workers who don’t work 9 to 5, and people of color, and–oh, hell, the list goes on endlessly. But in spite of that, no one has a get out of jail free card this time around.
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I assume Boris won’t mind if the thousands of bodies that start piling up in the third wave include those of his own family?
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Um, yeah, I think that might be where he’d draw the line, oddly enough.
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Surprise surprise. He’s probably already booked private nurses and ventilators for his family ahead of the third wave.
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In the early days of the pandemic, it was widely publicized that it was hitting the Black community harder than whites, and I’m reasonably sure that added to Trump’s decision to downplay it. In all seriousness. There are people who live in such an entitled world that they think they’re entitled to have a pandemic skip over them.
Okay, now I’ve gotten myself furious. Send chocolate chip cookies. Please.
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Yes, the pandemic applies to us lesser mortals only. Those in the corridors of power have made themselves exempt to all its rules and regulations.
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Yes, but not from the virus itself. They may be–and are, given the space and relative safety that money can buy–less likely to get it, but the virus is no respecter of rules of titles or money. Or power.
The great leveler.
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Indeed.
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I am enjoying the “Cash for Curtains” scandal myself. I find it amusing that Johnson has shown himself corrupt and useless in some many matters (lies to everyone, his wives, parliament, the country, the queen) yet the issue of who paid for his decorations is causing him more trouble that all of those scandals.
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I’m loving it. It’s the scandals we can all understand that brings politicians down. Let them steal millions in some arcane scheme and we’re baffled. Let ’em put up horrid wallpaper at someone else’s expense and, boy, does that ever wake us up. I was particularly amused this morning by the description of Theresa May’s redecoration as a John Lewis horror.
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I know! I cant afford John Lewis and they look down on it! (I am but a poor artists etc etc)
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I know. And here I’d sue anybody that made my house look like that. And I’m not lawsuit prone, but really!
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Its the sort of decor I liked about 20 years ago (rich colours and a bit over the top) but not any more.
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I can go for rich colors (if someone with a decent eye adds them, which is to say, not me), but multiple large and powerful patterns in small spaces? Ack! The walls are closing in and my eyes are spinning.
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Yes, not those strong colours on all the walls, one maybe.
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The thing about that sort of color is that in the right hands it’s glorious. In the wrong ones, it’s a mess. The woman we bought our house from tried a bit of that. I wouldn’t say she had the right hands. We bought white paint.
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Such a sad post. :( Such a good sign of the time. Such terrible wording in his quote. Such awful last news. But the flowers are pretty.
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In bad times, we need to hold onto every scrap of beauty we can find. Stay well, Manja.
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