Thread by @philwoodford

My reaction to the news today? Well, *of course* Saj would have Covid two days before the VC Day celebrations! Of course he bloody would. This is the UK, after all, where the pandemic is permanently mired in irony as well as ineptitude. Let’s take stock as 19 Jul approaches. 1/20

2/20 Only in the UK would we be hitting 50k+ Delta cases a day and climbing, while telling kids they can go clubbing again and pub-goers that they can prop up bars.

3/20 Only in the UK would the Chief Medical Officer publicly back the opening, but then tell people to be careful. And then suggest that we might only have a five-week window before we lockdown again. (Make the most of it, folks!)

4/20 Only in the UK would the bullish unlocking policy have been driven by the sudden replacement of a minister, who’d been found in a tabloid clinch with an aide (in defiance of his own health regulations).

5/20 But the stupidity and confusion pervades every aspect of our response to coronavirus, doesn’t it? What about the so-called #pingdemic from the NHS track and trace app, for example?

6/20 The sheer idiocy of this app is almost beyond description. If I don’t want to download it, I don’t have to. I *never* get pinged. So people self-isolating are effectively self-selecting.

7/20 If the app tells them to self isolate (random encounter with unspecified person), it’s just advice. But if someone phones them up and tells them to do it, it’s compulsory. That’s right, isn’t it? 🤔

8/20 When cases are low and we’re all trying to *avoid* each other, a ping to say you slipped up makes some kind of sense. But when 1% of the population has rona? The Metropolitan Line closes. google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.…

9/20 The UK is a country where if you’re wandering around the corridors of an office to find a meeting room, you wear a mask. But once you’re *in* the meeting with other people, you take it off.🤔

10/20 Kids are put into ‘bubbles’ in schools, but mix on public transport while travelling to and from the site and socialise with each other outside. 🤔

11/20 Venues are encouraged to make themselves ‘Covid-secure’ through sanitiser, signs, ventilation, one-way systems and whatever. But this supposed Covid security has never been a defence against being closed by the government.

12/20 We have internalised the endless mantras about hand-gel and spray and Boris’ 2x Happy Birthday, without any serious scientific evidence that it is more than #hygienetheatre google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…

13/20 So there has been plenty of stupidity and confusion on the part of the government all round. And that’s before we even get into late lockdowns, crony contracts, PPE shortages and all the rest. But the stupidity extends to their opponents too.

14/20 The UK is the country where the opposition says we should prevent all avoidable deaths from Covid, but understandably doesn’t advocate the only policy that would actually achieve that goal: reintroduction of lockdown.

15/20 It’s a country in which we were told normal life would resume after the vulnerable were vaccinated. And then it would resume when a wider group was vaccinated. And then best to delay another month. What’s the harm?

16/20 And now we should only resume when *every* adult is double vaccinated. Anyone who thought anything different never understood Covid. And if we want herd immunity, we need to vaccinate kids too.

17/20 But who said that vaccines alone would allow us to get on top of Covid? They’re not foolproof. Maybe we should keep mitigations forever? What’s the harm of masks and distancing? It’s like wearing a seatbelt.

18/20 Our Covid lockdown meant no flu deaths. So perhaps keep the restrictions to counter flu? Particularly as a resurgence is threatened because of… err… our suppression of the bug 🤔google.co.uk/amp/s/www.inde…

19/20 The government is accused of pursuing a ‘herd immunity’ strategy through infection. But as numbers of young people seeking their first jab decline and only half of parents say they’d let their kids have a shot, will we ever achieve it through vaccine alone? Probably not.

20/20 The UK at Freedom Day 2021. Divided between people who bluster that we can ride out Covid and learn to live with it and those who advocate more vaccination but are never satisfied that it can really protect us enough to unlock. Desperate times.