Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

Perhaps there's one thing most of us can agree on?
*Repeated lockdowns are a symptom of policy failure.*
To avoid them, we need:
- A professional test, trace, isolate, support system
- Widest possible vaccine coverage
- Universal mask wearing wherever transmission is likely
🧵

- Major refurbs of schools, colleges, workplaces etc, to make them C19-safe.
- For schools, this means:
a. dedicated government funding for ventilation etc
b. Nightingale classrooms and outdoor learning facilities
c. Hiring new teaching assistants and vaccinated retired teachers

- Clearly stated objectives for the current lockdown, and a set of published criteria that must be met before ending it.
- An overall pandemic strategy, publicly visible, so that it can be debated and refined.
- More funding and greater security for the NHS.

- An end to privatisation and outsourcing of health services, which have proved so disastrous in the pandemic.
- Sick pay people can survive on.
- Universal credit people can survive on.
- Furlough for the Excluded 3 Million.
- Full financial support for people isolating

Astonishingly, the only one of these things that seems to be happening is the vaccine programme.
All the rest either hasn't happened or has failed.
The likely result is that we'll continue to be trapped in a repeated cycle of lockdown-relaxation-lockdown.
Which none of us want.

Sorry, I forgot quarantine and Covid-safe borders. Another massive failure.