Thread by @t0nyyates

The Tory/lockdown sceptic worry for kids' education during the lockdown stirs a voice inside my head 'what exactly were you arguing as the Coalition implemented its austerity plans that impacted on education spending?'

The concern from the same camp about this affecting poor kids most, and exaggerating educational inequality, makes me wonder what they think luxuriantly funded private schools all the time, pandemic or no, are doing. Is that level of educational inequality just about right?

Also not sure about what is being envisaged: allowing R to go >1 temporarily, expecting the vaccination program to subsequently suppress to <1, accepting the burst of deaths and incapacities in the meantime, hoping that the viral spread doesn't collapse schooling in the process?

Are there no concerns in such a plan for the increased risk of new mutations and therefore a risk that we are in the same situation next Autumn?

Is this the expression of complete lockdown tolerence that no amount of future risk justifies any further school closure, and that after a year's lockdown the sceptics still think it was not worth it?

It often seemed before that the sceptics influence in the govt as a hard to ignore but ultimately insufficiently powerful force, was self-harming.

By tilting government policy, encourage lockdowns to be too light, and too short, and to begin again too late, they maximised their costs, generated further lockdowns and disruption.

The entirely impotent lockdown sceptic that could have been ignored entirely would have found themselves apopleptic but for a few weeks only, as the virus was suppressed almost entirely, as in NZ or Aus.

Successful suppression of the virus would have enabled them to gather again in face to face conferences to discuss the suppression of their discourse and liberties.