Thread by @chrischirp

THREAD: Boris Johnson is basically talking bollocks about the 3rd wave in Europe inevitably coming here and he must know it.

It's cynical opportunism to blame any resurgence in England on the European wave. It is frankly absurd. Here's why: 1/6

bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-po…

The Europe wave is not coming here *because we've already have it*.

Instead, it's taken two months for our "Kent" strain (B117) to spread across the EU and start a new wave there. OLD restrictions work on the OLD strain but NOT Kent. So cases go up as soon it is dominant. 2/6

If cases start steadily going up here it will be for one of two reasons (or both!):

1) As we found out in Dec, OLD mitigations don't work on B117. But opening up with OLD mitigations relying on vaccination to help keep cases down & chaotic mass testing (esp schools). 3/6

2) A new variant starts spreading here (e.g. S Africa or a new one) which can infect vaxxed people -> and so spreads quickly as it can infect way more people than B117 and so out-competes it.

This is real threat of the EU wave - but we CAN IMPOSE QUARANTINE on arrivals. 4/6

It is unbelievable to me that the govt has known for 8+ months that Covid is airborne and done almost nothing to support better ventilation in schools, workplaces, retail, hospitality. Or fixed test & trace & *supported* isolation properly so that we can open up MORE safely. 5/6

So basically, it is entirely on the Govt if we have another wave this summer - not the EU.

This line from Boris today makes me think that he knows his roadmap won't be enough & is preparing his scapegoat.

God forbid they take responsibility for anything ever. 6/6

PS It's on European governments that they ALSO failed to learn the basic pandemic lessons and sat around while B117 spread over the past few months.