Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/31/bojo-admits-coronavirus-out-of-control-announces-uk-lockdown.html
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I mean, you pretty much do have to leave certain workplaces (examples including hospitals, grocery stores, pharmacies, prisons, gas stations, certain technology infrastructure) open to an extent or you’ll have consequences potentially more undesirable than the disaster that’d be involved in saying “Fuck it, let’s let it spread until herd immunity kicks in”
EDIT: I’d argue that schools and universities are almost certainly not included in those “certain workplaces”
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Just think… if they’d pushed all the money they’ve spaffed up the wall with the likes of Deloitte and Serco into the public health laboratories, local public health authorities, and empowered them to scale up swift turnaround testing at scale and local track/trace systems, including full involvement of all GPs, and mandated wearing of masks in all public places at all times, back in the spring, we might have avoided an earlier lockdown and might have avoided this one, and many lives might have been saved.
But instead they corruptly threw money at friends and donors who had companies with no experience or capability to provide PPE, gave billions to private consultancies and outsourcers to waste on achieving incredibly bad value for money outcomes, that still - months later - cannot hit any targets (but whose contracts have no penalties for failure - they get paid anyway), threw money at the public to go out and mix in public for a cheap meal (which was probably responsible for 20% of covid clusters subsequently), sent students back to university, creating superspreader events, to avoid having to bail out universities their £9k per student that would have been at risk (to say nothing of accommodation fees, etc) with remote learning, and so, on and on.
These people ARE scum.
They are lower than vermin, who exist to prove that Aneurin Bevan was correct - Toryism IS nothing “but organised spivvery”.
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“Now” isn’t the time. That was about a month ago. For all the talk of the damage to the economy, they left it so late that we needed a month long lockdown to fix shit, rather than just a couple of weeks.
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Really sorry to hear this. Like the UK, the US has the same problem. It is up to the individual to decide to act in the interests of the many, instead of being selfish. This is the primary challenge of Democracy.
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I don’t think anybody really knows how long they are going to need it. The rational thing is to is to look at things like testing results (assuming you have widespead, effective testing) and adjust your response to how prevalent the virus actually is.
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“Construction” is one of the exempted fields, too. Obviously important things are being constructed, but it’s mostly…
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At least Wales timed theirs with an extra long half term holiday.
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That’s not wrong but it is also a government’s job to anticipate that not everyone will and to shape policies in such a way that society still benefits. That’s where the UK and US government’s went wrong on coronavirus (and many, many other things).
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i mean the point of government is a whole bunch of people collaborating to solve problems that can’t be solved individually.
and a government can do things people individuals can’t. mandate masks at a grocery store, close bars, pay unemployment, forgive rent or mortgage payments, etc. ensure that bad actors can’t cause super spreader events and the like.
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Aussie here, from Victoria. Our lockdown lasted from August to October, so two and a half months. But our population is comparatively small (5 million) and people here generally got with the programme. Forget about locking down for a couple of weeks. A month is too short as well.
If the UK locks down as hard as us now they will be still in lockdown going in to 2021.
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Our egomaniacal PM couldn’t do that, because Starmer (the opposition leader) called for it and agreeing would have made him look weak. Instead he threw out insults and did nothing for three weeks - and now here we are.
So fucking tired of the weakness of ‘strongmen’ leaders.
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Precisely this. Four weeks ago the government’s science advisors were recommending a two week partial lockdown. They dithered, and now we have a four week, more comprehensive lockdown.
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Over here the aim will be simply to get the number of cases down to a level deemed manageable. Locking down until there are no new cases, as Melbourne did, would be impossible.
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That’s probably good for BoJo because he can then blame the inevitable mess that happens in January on the lockdown, and not on Brexit.
Many children will be hit pretty hard when schools are closed, and they will suffer from that for years to come, and die prematurely from poverty. More so with the impending disaster of Brexit. Just because it doesn’t affect the middle class doesn’t mean it‘s ok.
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That seems to have been the plan all along, to use the economic damage caused by the pandemic to hide the economic damage caused by Brexit.
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Yeah, but it’s not like half the country‘s dumb enough to buy that. Oh, wait…
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Meanwhile, his appointee as head of the vaccine task force is leaking insider information to a gathering of vulture capitalists.
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I agree with everything else you said, but even a few months of no school at all probably wouldn’t have consequences that bad. And that’s not even considering that remote learning could be organized in a fair way.
I’m from poor family, I missed way more than a year of school due to health problems, and yet all that time not spent at school didn’t harm my career in any way.
I will probably die prematurely, but from PTSD due to spending my childhood being regularly beaten by my father (he dealt with stress this way), and not from lack of school attendance.
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