government briefings

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Covid for the credulous? Take your pick: Tory daily media briefing or Johnson speaking at the Select Committee on the Impact and Science of Coronavirus

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This handsome fellow wanders about in the fields behind our cottage, in nearby gardens and recently into the road, luckily depleted of traffic. He’s very self composed, curious and doesn’t alarm easily. You can come across him anywhere. I’m thinking of dressing up as a pea hen so he fans his tail feathers.

And so to running. I’ve managed to consistently run 8.3k every other day for five weeks. My dodgy knee has held up (just). It remains swollen and stiff and unfortunately this really hasn’t changed much in the last year. I had an video assessment by the musculo-skeletal clinic and the physiotherapist took me through my knee x-ray. He showed me areas of mild to moderate age related arthritic changes which would account for the problems I’m experiencing. He suggested strengthening exercises, rest, cross training, cycling and perhaps a steroid injection in the future. I’m still hopeful the swelling and weakness will subside and I will try to expand my excercise regime as suggested. Update: I’ve had a rest from running and did a bit of cycling instead, one 18k and one 31k. I could still feel my knee but less so. I went for an 8.4k run this morning and it felt much better. Who could possibly have guessed that a rest and some cross training might be helpful?

Due to the covid lockdown the roads are relatively traffic free and a lot more people are running and, particularly, cycling and walking. Being required to essentially stay at home except to exercise and forgo work and a social and cultural life forces a change of perspective. The sudden  drop in pace has given an opportunity to think about how we conduct our lives and prompts us to think more critically. It can help us to appreciate what we hitherto took for granted or take up activities to express our creative potential. That’s on the positive side, of course.

Unfortunately the pandemic has shown  how precarious our lives and livelihoods can be, how quickly we can fall into a financial crisis and how dependent we are on economic stability and on strong government to plan for and manage in a time of crisis.

This Tory government, brought to us by Brexit supporters, is truly the government they deserve. Inept, short sighted, mean spirited, intoxicated by spin and slick presentation. The daily Covid updates are a masterclass in political embroidery, designed to give a confident presentation of the government response to the crisis followed by an equally confident question and answer session wherein the right questions are posed only to receive answers to a soft questions the politician wish they had been asked.

These briefings are clearly intended to convince the credulous and the critically unthinking, that is, the Brexit demographic. The litany of statistics is not particularly enlightening to most people and the emphasis on so many millions of personal protective equipment (PPE) provided by government, in the face of so many reports of shortages, in the early weeks, was shocking.

The government clearly left the care homes to their own devices. They received little assistance with PPE and hospitals discharged care home residents back without testing for covid infection or didn’t admit them in the first place. For weeks the daily number of covid deaths did not include those from care homes or outside hospitals.

The government was recently shamed into dropping the National Health Immigration Health Care surcharge, currently at £400 per person annually, rising to £624 in October. Boris Johnson defended this surcharge at Prime Minister’s Question Time, despite the thousands of frontline health workers working in the NHS and dying in their work.

The goverment dropped testing and tracking in March. They failed to heed the findings of the Operation Cygnus simulation exercise carried out in October 2016 which showed a pandemic would cause the health system to collapse from lack of resources.

They delayed a comprehensive lockdown.

Their emphasis on “following the scientific advice” has more resonance if we read it as “following the political science”.

As for Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, and  high profile breaker of lockdown rules, I can’t really get too incensed. What else would you expect from this amoral, self serving government.

Johnson at the Select Committee. More waffle, more bromides.

And to top it all, my good crop of gooseberries have got powdery mildew.

 

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A different reality now. I’m grateful to be able to run

Under the UK Covid -19 restrictions we are allowed a daily period of exercise, up to an hour, and within a reasonable distance of home as long as the journey does not exceed the period of exercise. I am in the lucky position, living in the countryside, of not having to negotiate my way past people on narrow pavements and maintain social distancing. It’s much easier to run around walkers by running into the road now that there is much less traffic. The density of population is far less so there are fewer people around.

Nevertheless there is a heightened fear and anxiety, in some,  of runners spreading contamination by coughing, spluttering, spitting and heavy breathing when they pass. particularly if they do not give a wide birth. All runners and cyclists have a responsibility to behave with care and consideration, especially at the present time. There is a running etiquette to observe and this includes not alarming people. In previous times it was good manners not to startle pedestians by passing too closely or by coughing to announce your presence if there were few peope about. Coughing, of course, is wholly inappropriate now but all runners need to think ahead and behave sensibly.

My knee injury is coming up to a year old. It’s still stiff, weak and a little swollen. My appointment at the Musculo-skeletal clinic is on hold indefinitely. Nevertheless I am able to run up to 8-9k every other day without experiencing discomfort or pain. So it has improved and unless I ask too much, hopefully it will continue.

We may feel we are hunkering down and waiting for the Covid crisis to pass but there is no justification for suspending our critical faculties. You would hope that your government would act with integrity and in good faith. That they would take timely decisions acccording to need and necessity and the process would be transparent.

The daily government, medical and science press briefing are a wonder to behold. Boris Johnson, before he became seriously ill with Covid-19, was gung ho, up beat and clearly didn’t take matters seriously enought to practise social distancing. The government maintained the fiction that he was only mildly unwell and still fully in charge up to the point he was taken to ITU.

Each  briefing brings an avalanche of numbers concerning items of personal protective equipment suggesting the government is meeting supply needs despite the clamour from hospitals ,nurses, doctors and others anxiously reporting the complete opposite.

The care homes appear to have been abandoned in terms of PPE. Not only do they have an appalling lack of PPE, the government has failed to include their high level of mortality in the numbers dying from Covid-19.

Covid-19 have caused a disproportionate number of deaths among the black, asian and minority ethnic population. The goverment was very slow to acknowledge this fact. They have also substantially under recorded the number of deaths among health care workers and people working in health care. Their preferred focus is on doctors and nurses to whom they readily pay lavish homage. Porters and ancillary staff don’t quite cut it.

The press/media questions after the briefing do not bring any clarity. The minister of the day, flanked by medical and science experts either do not answer the relatively tame questions or resort to generalities, spin, platitudes or just plain praising their own efforts.

I believe the government was very slow to react to the virus threat initially and several weeks were lost. I think a lot of decisions are made which are politically inspired despite the mantra that they have always been led by the science.