Who Would Have Thought...

Who would of thought it, eh?  That telling people they could go on foreign holidays, that they could go to the pub, not to mention forcing them back into their offices, would result in an upturn in Covid-19 infections?  Not our pathetic excuse for a government, apparently.  As ever, they seem to be caught on the hop, as surprised as ever that things are turning to shit.  I'm not going to say 'I told you so', as I really hoped that this was something that I was going to proven wrong about, that somehow the pandemic would somehow remain manageable during the Autumn and Winter, despite the government's reckless haste in relaxing lockdown measures.  Yet here we are, once again facing the government's dithering as what to do as the infection rate rises and rises.  They don't want another national lockdown, yet what, realistically, are the alternatives?  We don't have an effective test and trace system, despite government promises and the fact that they've had months to develop one.  Apparently, they were more interested in ensuring that the lucrative contracts went to the right people (ie their friends) than they were in ensuring that the system worked.  Moreover, an effective vaccine is still unlikely before next year.  Damn it, for my own reasons, I don't particularly want another full scale lockdown, but I'm struggling to see any other effective way of containing the threat.

But hey, it's all our fault, anyway.  At least that seems to be government's attitude - if only everyone had stuck to the rules with regard to social distancing, then we'd all be OK.  Except, of course, it was the government that undermined these rules by telling everyone that the danger had passed  and you should go back to work, oh, and that it would all be over by Christmas.  Not to mention the entire Dominic Cummings debacle - by failing to sanction a high profile government advisor for breaking the rules they were sending a clear message that they themselves didn't take them seriously.  I see the consequences of this attitude daily - people walking around shops without masks, not observing social distancing either inside or outside of shops, ignoring the one way systems in shopping centres, barging past anyone who is observing it.  The whole situation has been further exacerbated by all those contrarians and conspiracy theorists who either deny that the virus exists or that the measures required to contain it are somehow invalid.  To do this, of course, requires a wilful misinterpretation of facts and data.  They ignore the virulence of Covid,(which is what makes it such a threat, as it can rapidly result in tens of thousands of infections which could overwhelm health services and cripple the economy far more effectively than any lockdown), to focus on its relatively low fatality rate per thousand.  Which, itself, ignores the fact that, due to the virulence, these will all occur over a very short period of time.  Oh, and the falling infection rate - that was due to the fact that we had a national lockdown. which prevented, via social distancing, the virus reproducing because it was denied new hosts, cretins.  I think that it is this inability to grasp the principles of cause and effect that upsets me most - it's a basic concept for intelligent life. 

 So, where do we go from here?  To be honest, I have no idea and I'm pretty sure that the government doesn't, either.  The fact that it seems more concerned about the possible damage to the profits of Tory donors than it is human life, means that another full lockdown is unlikely.  Probably, they'll do their best to keep fudging the issue until it looks as if a vaccine is ready.  Anyway, that's enough ranting for now - I've been avoiding them for a while, but I wanted to break the recent Monday pattern of simply chronicling all the schlock I'd watched over the weekend.  (Not that I didn't see a whole lot of it this past weekend, including Night Killer, one of the most morally fucked up Italian horror movies I've ever seen - and that's saying something.  Needless to say, it is fucked up on every other level, too).  But I'm sure we'll come back to that.