Thread by @danielgoyal

Oh my, Johnson must be getting desperate. His tactic for holding onto power now seems to be “talking up” his success in managing the pandemic.

Some things to bear in mind as the battle for the narrative continues…

While we can get distracted by the ‘with’ or ‘from’ Covid argument, here is the excess death data…one of the good overall measures for how a nation responded to the pandemic.

Ireland, Germany and France had about half as many excess deaths as the UK.

We averaged between 500 to 1000 extra deaths at home per week, throughout the pandemic.

Note, only a fraction were Covid.

We cancelled a huge number of surgeries.

[2020 data]

And waiting lists are now at an all time record of nearly 6m.

And note the steep increase as Omicron surges and displacing care for millions…and Johnson decided to “persevere”.

bbc.co.uk/news/health-58…

Even our access to urgent and emergency care has been severely reduced.

Getting an ambulance for Cat 2 - stroke, chest pain..- has more than doubled to an AVERAGE of 53 minutes.

The delays get even worse once arriving at A&E. A new record for our government in people waiting more than 12 hours in A&E.

Note: much, much worse on this Omicron wave.

Delayed action has led to thousands of deaths and millions suffering.

The PM has failed to learn and has repeated the exact same ‘too little too late’ approach in all four waves.

And we are only just keeping up with our counterparts on vaccines…

Impression
It would be neither just nor of use to future outbreaks for Johnson’s pandemic leadership to be considered anything other than disastrous.

The strategy seemed to be mass infection + healthcare rationing in 2020.

Then vaccines, mass infection and further rationing of healthcare in 2021.

We have had two years to prepare: better masks, ventilation, improve NHS capacity…and Johnson has failed.

Four chances…OUT!

Boris set to use “success” in pandemic to stay in office.

The actual outcomes ⬆️

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