As a 'carry over' from my last episode.
The handling of this lockdown has been(in hindsight.....and I know hindsight is a wonderful thing) calamitous(I can think of no other word which covers it).
Every single thing in our lives since the end of February has focused on a virus.
Every news bulletin, every communication from government(and in my opinion the daily bulletins from Downing Street have been too much) every newspaper, every TV program, every advert has been about the place we are in
There has been no balance. No wider view.
We have been told by a senior government minister that he did not say that the 70's and above should stay home......yet all the media of every description focused on the elderly(or what they perceived to be the elderly).
It was almost as if they would be the only ones who would be getting the virus.
They gave younger people the impression that they would be OK.
They happily divided society by age alone.
Why should it make sense to quarantine the 'well'?
They told us we needed to be shut away because we were vulnerable to those who carried the virus but had no symptoms.
Why was it OK to take those who were desperately sick with the virus, into the intensive care units of District General Hospitals?
Why weren' separate facilities set up for those who may have the virus?......in the old style isolation hospitals which were situated away from the places that other sick people were accommodated in.....and nursed by professionals who would be caring only for those in the isolation facility?
Why weren't there controls over people coming into the country.....especially those, who in the early days, had come from China.
They should have been required to quarantine themselves for 14 days......and please don't tell me that this would be impossible.....there would have been places that could have accommodated them like those who were taken to Arrowe Park.
Testing, why was testing not one of the frontline weapons?.....so that those who tested negative could carry on working and the country would not be paying for well individuals to stay home on government funded pay at 80%.
This testing should have been done on a weekly basis....and those who tested positive would be removed from the community to a place of isolation (with their immediate family if that was what was required).
Who can say how this would have panned out if some of these measures had been adopted?
I am not a scientist, but then it takes common sense with a sprinkling of science to deal with situations like this.
The coronavirus will kill many more people yet.
It will create mental illness for some, it will cause the death of businesses(many of them small family run concerns),it will create poverty on a scale that will be reminiscent of the time after the wars....it will cause the death of hope and aspiration.
Our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren will be paying for this both financially and in social terms.
I am not being gloomy, I am just being pragmatic, realistic
I also got to wondering that if it had been known that the Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority communities were more susceptible to dying from this.....and they had all been advised/directed to stay at home until a vaccine was available....what would have been their reaction?
And on that I will leave you to ponder.
The handling of this lockdown has been(in hindsight.....and I know hindsight is a wonderful thing) calamitous(I can think of no other word which covers it).
Every single thing in our lives since the end of February has focused on a virus.
Every news bulletin, every communication from government(and in my opinion the daily bulletins from Downing Street have been too much) every newspaper, every TV program, every advert has been about the place we are in
There has been no balance. No wider view.
We have been told by a senior government minister that he did not say that the 70's and above should stay home......yet all the media of every description focused on the elderly(or what they perceived to be the elderly).
It was almost as if they would be the only ones who would be getting the virus.
They gave younger people the impression that they would be OK.
They happily divided society by age alone.
Why should it make sense to quarantine the 'well'?
They told us we needed to be shut away because we were vulnerable to those who carried the virus but had no symptoms.
Why was it OK to take those who were desperately sick with the virus, into the intensive care units of District General Hospitals?
Why weren' separate facilities set up for those who may have the virus?......in the old style isolation hospitals which were situated away from the places that other sick people were accommodated in.....and nursed by professionals who would be caring only for those in the isolation facility?
Why weren't there controls over people coming into the country.....especially those, who in the early days, had come from China.
They should have been required to quarantine themselves for 14 days......and please don't tell me that this would be impossible.....there would have been places that could have accommodated them like those who were taken to Arrowe Park.
Testing, why was testing not one of the frontline weapons?.....so that those who tested negative could carry on working and the country would not be paying for well individuals to stay home on government funded pay at 80%.
This testing should have been done on a weekly basis....and those who tested positive would be removed from the community to a place of isolation (with their immediate family if that was what was required).
Who can say how this would have panned out if some of these measures had been adopted?
I am not a scientist, but then it takes common sense with a sprinkling of science to deal with situations like this.
The coronavirus will kill many more people yet.
It will create mental illness for some, it will cause the death of businesses(many of them small family run concerns),it will create poverty on a scale that will be reminiscent of the time after the wars....it will cause the death of hope and aspiration.
Our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren will be paying for this both financially and in social terms.
I am not being gloomy, I am just being pragmatic, realistic
I also got to wondering that if it had been known that the Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority communities were more susceptible to dying from this.....and they had all been advised/directed to stay at home until a vaccine was available....what would have been their reaction?
And on that I will leave you to ponder.