1/n The UK government has flipped from a mitigation strategy (slow the transmission rate but allow population-wide infection) to a suppression strategy (halt transmission and avoid population-wide infection) in the last few days. Notably UK's strategy was an outlier. #coronavirus
2/n The Conservatives are the political representatives of finance capital and their primary concern is ensuring the wealthy (those that can live off their capital, and do not need to work) continue to extract value from all economic activities.
3/n A suppression strategy would have immediately reduced the ability of finance capital to continue to extract value, i.e. it would have "harmed the economy".
4/n Mitigation, they thought, would allow "the economy" to continue with minimal interruption at the cost of a politically acceptable number of deaths: a trade-off that only makes sense to economic parasites who view the majority of the population as expendable resources.
5/n But they realised that a projected death rate (around 0.25 million UK citizens) would be politically unacceptable in circumstances where other countries adopted aggressive suppression strategies. They realised they couldn't get away with it. Hence the flip to suppression.
6/n Already, as a consequence of the iron laws of exponential growth, the Conservative government's reckless choices have caused a large number of unnecessary deaths, as we'll see in the coming 3 months.
7/n The new measures - social isolation, closing schools etc. - will translate into less deaths. But precious time was lost at the initial stages of infection in the UK.
8/n Swift action would have stopped the virus spreading as has happened in other countries. The UK had the luxury of being forewarned but squandered it. Blame lies with the current leaders of the UK who put their own profits before the people, and gambled with our lives.
