There may well still be some people around who don't appreciate the gravity of this crisis. I am beyond pussy-footing around with such people. I have watched in horror for weeks now a deadly countdown of delay and prevarication, even denial. I saw American contacts on social media obsess over government, as if the rights of the individual over government direction and order was the most important thing at stake in the demands for timely and effective action to halt the spread of coronavirus. I witnessed the same downplaying of the threat in the UK, from the same wretched sources, economic libertarians in government and media, dumb complacent populists in the body politic. I don't give a damn about upsetting such folk any more. There is little point being reasonable with them. Such people do not respond to reason. You have more chance persuading an orc. They don't show much aptitude for learning by hard experience, either. So you just have to present reality as it is. The Covid-19 variant in Italy is responsible for the deaths of over 100 medics, 40 of whom are doctors. The image here is of the UK medics who have already died as a result of Covid-19. As a result of a lethal combination of ideology and ineptitude on the part of the UK government, the UK will have worse numbers than Italy. Those who are still saying 'Boris' is a 'character' and the government is doing a good job are not merely fools, they are complicit in thousands of avoidable deaths. The rottenness in UK politics runs throughout the whole body politics, top and bottom.
We live in an age when a death-dealing politics has become normalized. What kind of civilization continues along the course of climate collapse, despite myriad warnings?
The government couldn't get away with an overt policy of herd immunity so they are implementing the policy by the back door. The government has already infected thousands since January by leaving the airports and schools open, with all the non-essential workers crowding together on public transport at the same time. The complacent view that "herd immunity" is no worse than the flu has doomed thousands. That has happened as a matter of deliberate political choice, not incompetence. And now the implications are becoming clear, the government and its goons and cronies are attempting to deny their complicity, blaming people for partying and for going to the parks and beaches!
The medics are in the business of saving lives. The government is writing the lives of people off. They have calculated that it is cheaper to let people die. This is a dry run for climate change. Instead of the political choices we could have made as eco-citizens of the Ecopolis, politics in this dystopian future will be all about who the powerful and those complicit in their governance choose will die first.
It's entirely possible that this is really a case of incompetence and negligence blended with an aborted attempt to be calculating and efficient. The chaotic response and mixed messages would indicate that. Either way, a lot of people are going to die as a result of the mismanagement of this crisis by the UK government.