Johnson is talking about all the wrong things.
His COVID priorities are skewed to the extreme.
Some days I honestly think Boris Johnson gets up with the sole mission of undermining and sabotaging his own government’s response to coronavirus. I really can’t think of any other plausible explanation for these horrendous own goals and blatantly obvious missteps.
Johnson is talking about individual responsibility and the perils of walking with a friend outside, or sitting down on a bench in a park, all when we know that the overwhelming majority of transmission is outside, and people going for a walk, sitting on a bench holding a coffee, or talking to a friend outside, masked, from an appropriate distance, are all activities almost incapable of spreading the virus, save a miracle. But yet, the government posts draconian videos telling you not to get a coffee, to stay indoors, and that if you do things the govt’s own rules allow, you’ll get fined.
And yet, you must go to work. Don’t work, but do work. And the focus on offices and people working in close proximity is minute. We’ve heard some positive noises the last few hours about this from No 10, but this has been pretty much ignored, so bosses can still exploit and endanger their staff, right in the middle of a global pandemic, doing 5000% more damage to the spread of the virus than someone sitting down in their local park for 5 minutes. The govt’s priorities are skewed to the max, and it makes zero sense.
Of course the only dimension through which this shitshow makes sense, is the govt wants to make this individualised, and conform it to their Thatcherite dogma, as opposed to recognising the need for collective action, support, and solidarity, rather than penalising people trying to do the right thing. We shouldn’t be here this far into the pandemic, but we are, and the govt is making it as hard as possible, by offering minimal support to those trying to do the right thing.
The govt’s skewed priorities are putting us all at risk during this unparalleled crisis.